Female genital cutting (FGC) is the cutting of women’s external genitalia, ranging from cutting the clitoris to the cutting of the labia for various ritualistic purposes. It is practised widely and majorly among the Dawoodi Bohra community. The clitoris is considered to be an impure knot of skin: Haraam ki Boti, as its sole purpose is to give a woman sexual pleasure. Hence, it is important that it be removed.
I asked a female friend of mine, belonging to the Bohra community about her thoughts on FGC and her words came as a shock.
She said, “It is a natural and necessary ritual to be followed by women of the community as it helps to maintain the purity of womanhood, it prevents women from indulging in premarital sex and extramarital affairs.”
This the exact thought behind female genital mutilation, it is an unwanted procedure which is not of any medical use and on the contrary, it is extremely harmful to women. My friend’s views just go to show how women themselves internalize practices and rituals which are meant to demean them and keep them secondary to men through centuries of cultural conditioning.
The procedure is as painful as one can possibly imagine. It is done on girls when they reach seven years of age, an age at which giving consent is not an option. It is seen in most cases that the mother takes her daughter to an elderly lady in the community who performs Khatna (FGC). What follows is a lot of resistance from the girl, her mother holding her hands down, an old lady with a blade, a sharp, piercing, unbearable pain at the most delicate and private part of the body and lifelong trauma. The procedure is extremely unhygienic and sometimes causes infections which are fatal.
FGC is practised in parts of India, Eastern Africa, Indonesia, Egypt and a few other parts of the world, it is a ritual followed by Dawoodi Bohras, a few Christians and Animists.
FGC is declared as a human rights violation under Article 10 by the UN and yet no action is taken against it in India. According to reports by UNICEF, 200 million girls have been victims of FGC around the world.
The practice of FGC shows to what extent patriarchy has been internalized and how women are subjugated through such heinous procedures in the name of purity, chastity and religion. Even though there is no mention of Khatna in Quran, it is followed under an obligation by the Dawoodi Bohras. It has been banned in the U.S and the U.K by directly getting the practice of Khatna under the purview of the law, however, India still remains a hub for this practice. The government denies the existence of female genital mutilation in India on the grounds of a lack of data and evidence, even though 75% of women of the Bohra community are said to have been through the procedure.
In India, FGC violates Article 21 (Right to life and Personal Liberty) and Article 15 (Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth). The Supreme Court has declared that FGC is covered under the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act under which touching the genitals of a girl below the age of 18 is an offence. However, activists question why FGC is not being addressed directly or banned by the Indian Government.
The Dawoodi Bohras are under tight control of their Syedna, the spiritual head. Thus, not complying to FGM is a blasphemous act and ostracism is the biggest fear of the people in the community. The Bohra community is said to be one of the well educated and wealthy communities of India, at the same time sadly, Khatna is a known fact about them too. Type 1 FGM (clitoridectomy) is practised amongst the Bohra community which involves the partial or complete cutting of the clitoris.
Others types of FGC:-
Type 2 (excision) – Removal of the clitoris, either partly or fully along with cutting of labia minora.
Type 3 (infibulation)- Narrowing the vaginal opening by cutting and re-positioning the labia.
Other than religious purposes, FGC is said to make a woman’s genitals “less offensive to a man” and more “aesthetically pleasing”. It is pretty obvious what value women have in the societies and communities which engage in female genital cutting/mutilation.
FGC has terrible effects on a woman’s body which are irreversible; complications during childbirth, inability to have sex, inability to derive any kind of sexual pleasure, vaginal infections, painful menstruation, psychological problems, and even death.
The women in the community are slowly and gradually beginning to revolt against this practice but in silence. FGC being a religious procedure makes it difficult for the State to interfere in the matter. The protest against the banning of Triple Talaq made it clear that religion still holds a superior position in our country as compared to women, their rights and even their lives. For long, women have been used by various religions to maintain their “uniqueness”, “purity” and so-called superiority above other religions.
In the society that we live in, women have always been the means to achieve power. They are tortured by men, even women themselves, and various social institutions to show power.
But, isn’t it surprising how an entire religion depends on the constituents of a woman’s body?
The lack of activism against FGC in India is a shame, it is a shame that in a country where we boast of economic development and infrastructure, there are seven-year-olds been taken to dingy shacks only to be violated in the most agonizing manner and left traumatized for life.
Does Right to life prevail over Freedom of Religion or is it the other way around?