POPULATION-INDIA: Sikh Leaders Clamp Down on Foeticide

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 27 2001 (IPS) - Alarmed by the rapid fall in the numbers of girl children in northern Punjab, leaders of the Sikh religion dominant in that Indian state have threatened excommunication for adherents who resort to female foeticides aided by modern technology.

The fears of the Sikh clergy that followers are using ultrasound methods to determine the sex of unborn children and aborting female ones were confirmed by newly released statistics from India’s decennial census, which was conducted through February.

According to the headcount, the female sex ratio in Punjab has dropped from to 874 for every 1,000 males in 2001, from 882 10 years ago. Even more shocking is the fact that the number of girls for every 1,000 boys in the under-six age group had dropped to 793 over the same period of time.

Apparently, girls in the under-six age group have received no better treatment over the last decade in several important northern states and territories that flank Punjab.

In Haryana, the ratio of girls to boys has dropped from 879 to 829, in Himachal Pradesh from 951 to 897, in Gujarat from 928 to 878, in the federal territory of Chandigarh (the heavily urbanised joint- capital of Haryana and Punjab) from 899 to 845. In the national capital Delhi, the ratio of girls to boys has fallen from 915 to 865 in 10 years.

This week, India’s Planning Commission asked Punjab’s Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for a detailed report on the continued decline in the state’s female-to-male ratio.

“If this (trend) is not arrested in time, there will serious social implications,” Planning Commission Chairman K C Pant warned Badal during discussions Thursday on Punjab’s annual plan.

Badal leads the regional Sikh Akali Dal party, which rules Punjab and is a partner in the multi-party, right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Sikh clergy has plans to rope in the heads of other religious denominations in India for a concerted campaign against female foeticide, which is believed to be prevalent in many north Indian states in spite of legislation against sex determination in the womb.

“It is the moral responsibility of religious leaders to ensure a proper balance in the sex ratio,” said Manjeet Singh, one of Sikhism’s five top leaders.

Though orthodox, the Sikh religion accords a high status to women. In March 1999, the well-endowed Sikh Temple Management Committee (STMC), which controls the community’s shrines around the world, had its first woman head in Bibi Jagir Kaur.

But in the following year, Kaur was forced to step down after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) , India’s premier sleuthing agency, charged her with having had her teenage daughter murdered after she was discovered to have been pregnant through a lover Kaur did not approve of.

India’s foremost demographer, Ashish Bose, says the Sikh edict against foeticide issued last week was a welcome move. But he also worries that nothing similar could be done in other northern states where there is social hostility toward the girl child.

“It is more than clear that the law cannot be enforced unless the government hires thousands of private detectives,” he said.

According to Neelam Singh, an obstetrician who has been running a United Nations-backed campaign against female foeticide in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state, the practice has lately been spreading to the city’s large Muslim population.

“Islamic tenets expressly forbid foeticide but I know many women who do it secretly,” said Sultana Usmani, a government health extension worker who believes that religious leaders have a major role to play especially through counselling.

Much of the problem, she says, stems from the fact that doctors who use ultrasound machines — indispensable for monitoring the health of the growing foetus — can convey the sex of an unborn child to its parents without even uttering a word.

The next step, abortion, is facilitated by lenient laws shaped by population control needs and by legions of quacks and midwives whose services may extend to outright infanticide.

Singh says it is impossible to detect with accuracy the sex of the foetus in the first trimester of pregnancy, when abortion is safe and legal. “What is likely is that male foetuses are also getting aborted because doctors who accept payments don’t want to take chances,” she said.

Leaders of India’s major religions, including Hinduism and Islam, frown on abortion at any stage as murder and most are yet to theologically reckon with modern methods of sex determination.

The Sikh edict was a first. Soon after its issuance last week, the Akal Takht, the headquarters of the sect in Punjab’s Amritsar city, was flooded with messages of congratulations from religious leaders and international organisations, says top Sikh leader Manjeet Singh.

Bose, the demographer, says the girl child is up against an unholy alliance between tradition, with its son complex and customs like dowry, and technology represented by ultrasound and the electronic media which promotes consumerist values.

“The message for would-be parents is clear: If you produce girls you will be financially crippled. Better to spend a few thousand rupees now on pre-birth and sex selective abortions rather spend fortunes on dowries after years of saving,” Bose said.