TRIGGER WARNING: VIOLENCE
FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION: BEACON OF SPITEFUL HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION
Imagine being taken to a dark decrepit building. Imagine being pinned down on the floor. Imagine your underwear being taken off. Imagine seeing a knife being heated on the gas stove. Imagine the hot knife slicing your clitoris. Imagine young girls shrieking in pain.
Meaning and Origin
The Oxford dictionary defines Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as “the practice, traditional in some cultures, of partially or totally removing the external genitalia of girls and young women for non- medical reasons. According to the WHO, worldwide almost 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM. That is nearly as much as the entire population of UP. Another 15 million girls between 15-19 years of age will be subject to it by 2030.
With respect to the origin of this practice in general, there are various guesses. One is that in Ancient Roman Era clasps were fastened through the foreskins or labia of slaves to prevent sexual intercourse. Gerry Mackie, a Political Science Professor at the University of California says, “Since Female Genital Mutilation’s East-West, North-South distribution in Africa meets in Sudan, infibulation may have begun there with the Meroite civilization (800BCE- 350CE)”.
The cruel practice of female genital mutilation is not happening only in faraway Africa or in tribal societies. Young girls aged six and seven are regularly being cut right here in India. Mumbai abounds with untrained midwives who continue to scar young girls from the Bohra community. The practice came from Africa with the missionaries who came in from Egypt and Yemen to Gujarat and started converting traders into Bohras. Since, the Bohras were a trading community the men would often go out for work. They used to be away from their homes for long periods of time. So, in order to ensure that the wife/woman of the house remains faithful, the sexual urges were curbed.
Why it is still practiced, rather tolerated worldwide?
You can hear different reasons from different people as to why the practice is followed. The most common one being that the clitoris is considered as ‘haram ki boti’ or an immoral lump of flesh. The practice is steeped in patriarchy. It’s the belief that a woman’s sexuality has to be curbed and that if you want fidelity or want marriage as an institution to hold up, the woman has to be cut so that she would not go astray. This practice has been used in many communities to mark the transition in a girl’s life to that of a woman and to uphold her social status. Moreover, misconceived notions that FGM ensures cleanliness, hygiene and beauty and promotes fertility couples with intergenerational pressure and religious identity keep this cruel tradition of “Khatna” alive. This notion is followed in Guinea Bissau and Sudan.
Some communities justify it as a “coming of the age” ritual where the girl transitions and is now identified as a woman. Older women who have undergone the ritual act as gate keepers of the custom. They view elimination of the ritual as an attack on their identity and customs. For example in the Somali refugee community in Maricopa County, Arizona there is strong matriarchal support for Female Genital Mutilation/C. Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania consider Female Genital Mutilation to be a rite of passage and they only consider women who have been circumcised as adults. For societies where Female Genital Mutilation/C is widely practised, not participating in the practice results in stigmatization, being treated as non-adults or exclusion from the society because they are not part of the norm. “I don’t want her friends to laugh at her. The non-initiated is not respected and she is repelled from gatherings”, says a woman from a village in Sierra Leone with respect to her daughter). Another ridiculous notion driving its continuance is that FGM prepares girls for future childbirths and if the baby touches the clitoris during childbirth, it dies.
The Dawoodi Bohra community which practices this ritual on its daughters is a very progressive community. The women who make these decisions to get their daughters cut are very well-educated. According to Masooma Ranalvi who is an FGM activist, “Among the Muslim community, the Bohra women always stand out, they shine like a beacon because they are super educated. We’re not just graduates, we have post-graduates, we have doctors, we have scientists, researchers, journalists. Name any profession and you’ll find a Bohra woman. And to think of it, every single woman of my generation has been cut. Every single woman of my time has gone through it. This was almost 45 years ago, but the tragic thing is that it still continues till date.”
No health benefits, no scientific explanation, just excruciating harm and pain
Jumana Shah, a journalist recalls her experience with FGM or as they call it khatna- “When I was 7 years old, my mother held my hand and took me to a clinic. She and a gynaecologist held me down on a metal bed in the clinic and then there was just piercing, blinding pain. There was no explanation, there were no answers and I had several questions. It definitely physically and psychologically impacts you and it is there in your memory and you cannot erase it.”
FGM has no health benefits at all while it leaves lifelong emotional scars in the minds of young girl children. It leads to removal of and damaging of healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’ bodies. The immediate complications involve severe pain, excessive bleeding, genital tissue swelling, fever, infections such a tetanus, urinary and wound healing problems, injury to surrounding genital tissue, shock and even death.
What is being done to eradicate it?
“We are running for something that’s worth it,” was Nice Leng’ete’s desperate cry to her older sister when, at 8 years old, she fled her own FGM ceremony organised by the Maasai tribe of Kenya. Both girls spent the night hiding under the tree. The second time they ran away, they were beaten up and promised they would never do it again. The third time, Nice escaped alone. When she returned, her grandfather asked her the reason for the same and she replied “I will never come back even if it means being a street child” she told him. He finally accepted his grand-daughter’s decision. Today Nice is a 27-year-old activist against FGM. She says, “Genital mutilation is the cause of female illiteracy and early marriage”.
Since 2007, UNFPA, UNICEF and the WHO have been calling for the abandonment of the barbaric practice. In December 2012, the UNGA adopted a resolution seeking the elimination of FGM, a practice that hurts, damages, sometimes also maims and kills girls and designated February 6 as International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, with the aim to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of its practice. This year’s theme is “Accelerating Investment to End FGM” - calling for support for programmes to provide services and response for those affected and those at risk; in developing and enforcing laws, and fortifying institutional capacity to eliminate the practice. In 2022, WHO will launch a training manual on Person Centred Communication (PCC), a counselling approach that encourages health care providers to challenge their FGM-related attitudes and build their communication skills to effectively provide FGM prevention counselling.
Conclusion
However, all these efforts are falling short in India. Young girls are still being taken to midwives and doctors in Bohra-run hospitals. It is incomprehensible how this practice which is termed as a human rights violation by the UN and it is a very well-known fact that it has no medical benefits for the woman whatsoever, continues to be practised.
Even though the older generations seem scared to protest, whispers of rebellion can be heard beneath the surface from the younger generation who is padded up for a fight. Many women have started speaking out on what was once considered to be a taboo within the community and are using their voices to spread awareness about the practice and put an end to it. They have taken the trauma and pain they have experienced to ensure that the new generations of girls do not have to undergo the knife ever again. In this day and age, with the progress we as a country have made, we are taking ten steps back by allowing such a practice to still continue. It is high time we put an end to this ritual and ensure that no child’s rights are ever violated again!
--Written by Kashish Kochar (1st Year) and Shweta Nair (5th Year)
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