Killer tradition takes its toll

The terrible practice of killer violence against baby girls and the public scandal involving a self-styled god man who exploited the gullibility of simple-minded folks have dominated news headlines.

IT has been said that there are too many Indias for anyone to be able to understand fully the real India. An India which only the other day test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile and which seeks a place on the global high table on the strength of its rising economic and strategic power.

Or an India which continues to be seeped in blind tradition and obscurantism, where it is routine for baby girls to be killed and for saffron-clad charlatans to become multi-millionaires overnight by exploiting the gullibility of simple-minded folks.

Well, this past week, both the terrible practice of killer violence against baby girls and the public scandal involving a self-styled god man, have dominated news headlines.

Last week, three-month-old Baby Afreen was battered so badly by her father that she died in a Bangalore hospital after struggling for her life for three days. The audio-visual media focused on her fight for survival. Thanks to the relentless media focus, the police arrested her father, charging him with murder. The accused said that he wanted a son, not a daughter.

Almost simultaneously another tale of violent gender discrimination unfolded in the northern State of Haryana. Some hundred kilometers from the national capital, Delhi, in a village in Jhaggar district, a 30-year-old father battered his three little daughters, aged between two and seven.

Apparently, he had first tried to kill them by hanging them from a ceiling fan. When he failed, he hit them with a stick. While the eldest and the youngest recovered in a hospital, the middle child, four-year-old, Jiya, died. The father was arrested and charged with murder.

But why go far to Bangalore or Jhaggar when Delhi, the nation's capital, is replete with such heartless tales. A couple of days ago, it was reported that a man poisoned his 30-year-old wife after she gave birth to a baby girl. He was insistent for his wife to bear him a boy, the police report noted. Following his wife's death, the husband had gone missing. The police were on his trail.

The above crimes are so common that they hardly attract any notice, barring an occasional story on television news channels. Nonetheless, they illustrate the growing threat to girl children up till six years.

Despite various official schemes and incentives to protect the girls, thanks to an old cultural bias baby girls continue to be scorned by their elders, a good number of them being battered to death as well.

Even modern technology has been exploited to indulge the anti-girl bias. Pre-natal testing and ultra sound techniques are now being increasingly used illegally to determine the sex of the foetus. In case it is female, it is aborted in large numbers, especially in the rural hinterland in northern India.

Punjab and Haryana, the most prosperous states are the worst offenders in gender crimes. The lowest sex ratio of 830 per 1,000 male boys (between the age of zero and six) is in Haryana while the figure for the neighbouring Punjab is a shade better at 846: 1,000. Since agriculture dominates the economy in the two States, the fear of precious land passing outside the paternal line of succession is a big factor.

Given the low female ratio in Punjab and Haryana, it is not uncommon for marriageable men to seek brides from outside. Women from the southern-most State of Kerala, which has the highest sex ratio of 1,084 girls per 1,000 male children, despite differences of language, food habits, etc, are known to have married in the two northern States.

Curiously, the goddess of wealth for Indians is Lakshmi. She is specially worshipped during the festival of Diwali ( the festival of lights). Yet, the same people covet Lakshmi but not girls. To remove the traditional bias, several governments have named their incentive schemes for protecting girl children after goddess Lakshmi.

For instance, the Madhya Pradesh Government provides a cash incentive and free schooling to girl children. Education and protection of property rights of girls are the obvious ways to correct the gender bias. However, the centuries-old tradition which privileges boys against girls would take time to die down.

Also, it was hard to fight another pernicious practice, that is, of blindly following modern-day sadhus and sants. Television channels recently exposed a self-styled god man. He would charge a hefty entry fee from those searching an early end to their worldly problems, say, a lack of money, finding a bridegroom for a grown-up daughter, or ill-health.

The god man made a clever use of television channels, warning those desirous of his darshan (audience) to seek prior appointment. Thus, hundreds of unhappy people would pay hefty fees to assemble in an auditorium where the god man would plonk himself in a high chair and provide instant solutions to the woes of his followers.

The god man's prescriptions were simple. To a woman seeking an end to her husband's business troubles, he suggested she air her old woollen clothes. To a young man seeking a rise in income, he asked whether he had recently bought a wallet, and, if he had, for how much? On being told that indeed he had bought a new purse the previous week for about Rs.150 (RM8.70), the god man immediately chided the fellow, who had paid Rs.2,000 (RM115) to be part of the audience: `If you buy a wallet for peanuts, you will earn only peanuts…'

After the exposé by television channels, several people who had sought nirvana from the god man lodged police complaints.

One distraught man claimed he had gone to him seeking an end to his problems and was told to cook kheer, a traditional milk, rice and sugar dessert, every day and eat it and also distribute it to his neighbours. Poor fellow! He did as commanded and a few weeks later found that he had become diabetic. He was now paying doctors' bills, even as his problems continued as before.

The jury is out on whether the god man had violated any provision in the penal code. After all, he did not coerce anyone to part with his money. They believed in him and gave money willingly, hoping to get instant relief, didn't they?

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