Genocide In India: The Logical Conclusion When Life Is Devalued

16 Nov, 2009 by Melissa Clouthier

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I’ve written about this before [read here] and received this comment today from Rita Banerji:

I lived in the U.S. for many years and I was and am still pro-choice. Yet, when I returned to India as an adult even my pro-choice mind could not comprehend the absolute horror of the fact that in less than a century India has eliminated more than 50 million women from its population. It is targetted elimination and by definition a genocide. That’s when I started the 50 Million Missing Campaign. Our website is www.50millionmissing.in

And you are absolutely right Melissa. There is a big block in the west regarding female genocide in India. It is not an anti-abortion issue. The Soroptimist International just last week took on this cause. And I hope other feminist and human rights groups will.

More so it is not just about female feticide. There is infanticide, dowry murders, under 5 mortality rate and abortion related MMRs (1 woman every 5 minutes in India). I just published an article for the Australian journal Intersections. Here is the link:
http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue22/banerji.htm

At the link [Go read the whole thing]:

The public reservation, however, is with the actual likelihood of such a mass-scale elimination occurring. Occasionally one reads in Indian papers about baby body parts being found in a well in the compound of some clinic, or a young woman dying of burns under suspicious circumstances due to a supposed kitchen accident, but there is nothing in the news that suggests a blood-bath on the scale of a genocide. To drive home the point to my Rotary audience, I put up on the overhead a two columned table relating to the annual rates of female homicide in India. This slide included the means of elimination, and the estimate for the annual rate for each category.

Table 1. Annual Rates of Female Homicide in India

Female foeticide approximately 1 million[5]
Female infanticide approximately 25000 in the State of Kerala alone[6]
Dowry-related murders approximately 25000[7]
Preadolescent mortality 1 in 6 dies before 15 yrs (CRY)[8]
Mortality rate 40% higher for girls under 5 than boys the same age (UNICEF)[9]
Maternal mortality rate (MMR) 136,000
(1 woman dies every 5 minutes due to pregnancy-related causes) (WHO)[10]

# The number one means of elimination I pointed out, is female foetal abortions. An estimated 1 million female foetuses are selectively eliminated in India each year, and that number is expected to rise to 2.5 million within the next few years.[11] Method number two is female infanticide, a practice that has a long history in India. So far there has been no national average estimated for female infanticide, largely because it is difficult to track down with there being no administrative compulsion for citizens to register births. Nevertheless, existent data gives an indication of the scale of the practice. In the state of Kerala, one of India’s most progressive states, with a literacy rate of over 90 per cent, it is estimated that about 25,000 new born girls are killed every year.[12] In other states like Bihar, where the issue of gender bias is plainly discernable, one survey reveals that mid-wives interviewed admitted to being paid to kill almost 50 per cent of the baby girls they delivered.[13] As the number three method of elimination I listed dowry murders, also known as ‘dowry deaths.’ Despite the fact that a majority of dowry-related homicides of young married women in India are never even filed with the police, in the late 1990s it was estimated that at least 25,000 young married women were cold-bloodedly murdered by their husbands and in-laws in dowry extortion cases.[14] That number has continued to rise, as the practice of dowry itself spreads to communities, like tribal groups, that traditionally never had the custom of dowry.

What happens when an evil element of a culture meets up with technology? Genocide.

There is a disconnect for Western women. Because of cultural relativism and their own desire to have the power of life and death over another human, they avert their eyes when the same motivation is used on a grand scale to engage in the most misogynistic of ventures: killing women because men are better (and, in India, cheaper).

But the choice to eliminate a life for gender seems like just one reason among many to have an abortion. 90% of mongoloid children are aborted in America. In America, that child is viewed is dysfunctional, less than, and wrong. In India, women babies are viewed that way. It’s just a different culture. All over the world, people want the “useful”. In India, women aren’t very useful. In America, retarded children aren’t very useful.

At some level, mostly unconscious, Western women know they are little different than their Indian counterparts which is why they stay silent in the face of the biggest female genocide in history.