Voice Of The 50 Million Missing at The SouthHall Black Sisters’ Meeting

We are very pleased to inform you, that in October 2011,  The SouthHall Black Sisters’ Organization in the U.K.   joined The 50 Million Missing Campaign’s ongoing Voice of The Campaign Project to increase public awareness about the ongoing female genocide in India and the issues it involves.  To view the feedback on some of the presentations made at other venues click here.

The SouthHall Black Sister is a U.K. based organization that has been working for more than 30 years to address the issues of violence against women of Asian, African and Caribbean origins in the U.K.  Their website is  www.southallblacksisters.org.uk

The talk based on the materials and the Powerpoint presentation made available by The 50 Million Missing Campaign website was delivered by Pragna Patel, the director of Southall Black Sisters (SBS) to a group of about 30 women, the vast majority of whom are survivors of domestic violence and are immigrants in the U.K. mainly from the Asian subcontinent and some from Africa and the Caribbean.

 Pragna contextualised the situation in India by referring to a recent report which concluded that it was the fourth most dangerous country for women to live in, starting with Afghanistan at the top, followed by Congo, then Pakistan with the fifth being Somalia.

 Many of the women at the talk were familiar with the issues raised and had plenty of anecdotes to share with the group.

What’s Killing India’s Little Girls? It’s Not Love!

photo by Claire Pismont©

Most people think, that India’s skewed gender-ratio is due to millions of female feticide.   However, this is a misconception.  What has been long known, and that is now confirmed by a recently released report from the U.N. is that there are also millions of girls killed after birth — and this abnormally high rate of killing goes on upto the age of 6 years.  Most of these killings are per-meditated.  What’s Killing these girls?  The answer is in this article by Rita Banerji in The Women’s News Network.  Click Here

Two years ago, The 50 Million Missing Campaign got involved in the case of a little girl, called Karishma, whose family did not want a girl, and made numerous attempts to kill her.  We  tried on two occasions to remove Karishma  and her mother, who was also being subjected to lethal forms of violence, from her father and paternal grandparents house, but her mother did not cooperate.  This is often the case in India, because women begin to weigh the price they pay in social rejection (if they leave their husbands) versus the safety of their daughters.  And many women choose to continue to live under unsafe situations and subject their daughters to it, because they cannot tolerate the social rejection they face afterwards, despite all the support of campaigns like ours.  Read Karishma’s story here.

Don’t Kill the Bride! On-line Photo Exhibition

Click On Photos To See The Slide Show

It is the wedding season in India and there are millions of Indian women decking up in beautiful, traditional, bridal costumes, and partaking in long, colorful wedding ceremonies with dreams of a long and happy married life! 

So in celebration of their dreams and hopes, we bring you here an online photo-exhibition of the brides of India created from the photo contributions of the
2400 photographers worldwide who support The 50 Million Missing Campaign’s photo pool on flickr.

However, the purpose of this on-line exhibition is to also remind you of the other, not-so-pretty side of Indian weddings.  Every year there are thousands of newly married women who are blackmailed, abused

What Can Individuals Do? Interview With Campaign Founder

Alam Bains interviews The 50 Million Missing Campaign founder, Rita Banerji, for Youth Ki Awaaz (The Mouthpiece of the Youth in India).   Rita talks about what inspired her to start this campaign and what the campaign ultimately aims to achieve.  She also speaks on on what she thinks individuals can do to make a difference. 

Below are some highlights from the interview.  To read the full interview CLICK HERE.

To read other interviews with Rita, regarding the campaign, CLICK HERE.  Her website is www.ritabanerji.com

I’m an Indian woman, and my country looks me in the eye and says, “You and your kind mean nothing to us.  You are like little flies. We’ve swatted 50 million females like you!”

The 50 Million Missing Campaign is the only campaign [working on the gendercide in India] that is focused on the implementation of existent laws and is demanding official/ government accountability.

A Message from Girendra Singh – Father Of A Dowry Victim

This is a special post, where we bring to you a message from Girendra Singh, the father of Anshu Singh who was murdered only 6 weeks after her wedding.

Anshu, a well educated, professional young woman, deeply in love with the man she married,  was a victim of dowry greed and violence, and was killed by her husband and in-laws.   To read her story click here. The 50 Million Missing Campaign has been supporting Mr. Singh in his fight for justice, and we are happy to inform you that after 2 years of a lengthy battle in court and with the police, Mr. Singh has been able to get Anshu’s husband, and all her in-laws into prison, where they now await trial.

Here is the letter from Mr. Singh:

To All Indian Girls Who Are Going To Get Married and Their Parents,

From December onwards is the Marriage Season in India, and perhaps you are also planning your wedding.  I also got  my beloved daughter Anshu married on 12th December 2009, with the man of her choice.  A man she was in love with and wanted to marry. 

Advice on How To Protect Yourself From Dowry Extortion and Violence

Photo by Vishal Majithia © All Rights Reserved

December/January is wedding season in India.  In light of the fact that there are more than 100,000 women murdered for dowry in India every year, we are making an advisory post for Brides-To-Be and their families.  Please protect yourselves from dowry extortion, violence and murder.

1. Back Out Of Any Wedding Arrangement Where Any Kind of Financial Demand is Made in Cash or Kind:  

• A gift is something given with love; it is never asked for.
• But when grooms and their families start specifying how much money they want for the wedding, what kinds of gifts – houses, cars, etc. they want for the wedding, what other favors such as jobs, promotions etc. they want for the wedding, and they threaten to call the wedding off if these ‘gifts’ are not given to them, then this is not gift-giving.  This is blackmail!  It is illegal! It is extortion!  It is a criminal act.
• Indian women and their families must think about the morals and social values of such families.  If they are criminal extortionists what else are they capable of? 

In My Skin: Moving Past Sexual Abuse

One of the issues effecting children in India, that is rarely addressed, is child sexual abuse.  In a 2007 survey conducted by the Government of  India,  53.22% of children in India said they had experienced some form of sexual abuse, and 22% of them extreme forms of sexual abuse or violence.  However, as horrifying as these statistics are, even this is still assumed to be a conservative estimate.  In 1997, in a research survey of adults across 5 major cities in India, 76% of adult women respondents said that they had been sexually abused as children.  India’s conservative stance on sex and sex-related issues not only creates a permissive environment for child sexual abuse, but it also makes it extremely hard  for survivors to overcome the trauma of their abuse even as adults.

So one can well imagine the courage it took for one Indian woman to share her story with The 50 Million Missing Campaign.  We admire her immensely for doing so and share her story below.  We’ve withheld her name on request.  We hope her sharing her story on this forum will give courage and inspiration to other survivors of childhood sexual abuse in India and elsewhere.

I have a very complicated relationship with my body. It is like this:  I have never truly felt that this skin I walk in is mine. So bear with me as I try to explain.

 For the first few years of my life I don’t remember feeling any special connection to my body. That is to say, I wasn’t conscious of it or its place in anything. In fact, my introduction to it first happened when I was 4 years old. It was the year I was molested.  

photo by Ron Harmon

 My molester would tell me not to tell my parents as they would be very angry with me.  Even when I didn’t really understand what those acts meant, I had a sense that it was forbidden and wrong, and all the more I felt I couldn’t really tell my parents. The episodes would take place in utter secrecy and isolation. And somehow, in my child’s mind, I too had to take on the responsibility

A Report On The State Of India’s Girls

photo courtesy Plan Asia

The 7th billionth baby born on earth, was born in India.  Her name is Nargis, and you see her in this photo here.  What sort of a life awaits Nargis in India?

According to this 2011 report on global gender equality, India is one of the worst countries in the globe for women, ranking at 129 out of the 146 countries in this survey.  In fact in Asia, there is only one country that is worse for women than India – and that is Afghanistan!

So if India is no country for women , what does it mean to be born a girl here?

For Children’s Day (November 14) The 50 Million Missing Campaign brings you the following Report on The State of India’s Little Girls: (click on the links for more information).

• 50% of girls in India don’t want to be girls.  They feel so unloved and unwanted as girls in this society that they wish they were born as boys (according to a government survey)!
•  Hundreds of girls born in India are given names like  ‘Unwanted’ and ‘Undesired’ by their parents.

Rita Banerji’s Interview With MasalaMommas!

Many of the issues such as dowry, dowry violence, “honor” killings and female feticide that effect women in India, also effect women in expatriate Indian communities.  MasalaMommas, a Canada based magazine for South Asian working mothers, recently interviewed The 50 Million Missing Campaign Founder, Rita Banerji.  To read the full interview: Click Here.  Below are some excerpts from the interview.

[On raising strong daughters]: We emphasize reaching for our dreams – which is important. But it is not always an easy path, and we rarely prepare our daughters to learn how to deal with rejection and to still persist… Teach your daughter that abuse in any form is not o.k. from anyone, ever – not even from family.  Walk away.  Confront if it violates you and you have the means and strength for it.  Never let anything negate you..

 

[On marriage and divorce]:  I think the South Asian communities have more than enough fortifications to ensure that divorces don’t happen!!  There is tremendous pressure, particularly on women, from their families and community, even when they are subjected to abuse and even extreme and dangerous

Murder By Fire: 136000 Women A Year (Video)

In 2009 the medical journal The Lancet published a study that made a shocking revelation.  It revealed that in a year at least 136,000 young, married women are killed by fires their homes in India.   These results were acquired by collating records of death by burns from hospitals.   What this indicates is that there is possibly one woman killed by fire, every 5 minutes in India.   As the Lancet study also noted, most dowry murders, including the ones with fire, are often staged as suicides or accidents, and kitchen “accidents” are the easiest to stage or explain away, hence the preference for the “burning” method.   The study further noted that the police does not investigate or even file most of these cases.

Every year thousands of young women in India are brutally killed by their husbands and in-laws in what essentially are cold, premeditated, gang-murders.   They are hanged, stabbed, shot, drowned, poisoned or doused with gasoline and set on fire.  The last method is so prevalent that these murders are sometimes incongruously referred to as “bride-burnings.”

In the following T.V. interview 3 high-profile Indian women express their views on the Lancet report about the exploding phenomenon of dowry murders in India.  The 3 women interviewed here are Shoba De (author), Indira Jaisingh (a high profile supreme court lawyer), and Girija Vyas (the ex-chairperson of the National Commission for Women in India). Watch the video below in 3 parts.