A few days ago, I wrote a surprisingly controversial post about a baby girl who had been buried alive, in Andhra Pradesh. Stupid me, I thought everyone would find such news abhorrent. But, in a shocking and to some, sickening twist, it would seem that condemning infanticide is wrong because it is more important to engage in the worst sort of cultural relativism.
Disagreeing with a man’s choice to bury his newborn granddaughter alive would be Western and especially Feminist stupidity. Are you perplexed? Wondering what I am going on about? Ah, then enjoy the following amuse bouche of comments from a few lurkers and readers, which that post inspired:
Dont get carried away by sensationalism
Everyone has it bad in India. you’re the only one who choose to single out the plight of women and measure it by YOUR western standards. It MUST be measured by Indian standards, i.e. the plight of Indian men, children, grandpas, grandmas, the whole society. Everyone has it bad in India, not just little girls.
just don’t forget, we live in the West, lets not judge everything by Western standards…If they want to kill their girl babies because girls mean one less hand to till the soil (by hand, of course), that is their buisness.
Poor people will do anything to survive. As long as its their family, and not anyone else’s, no one has a right to interfere.
you, possessing such a craving for attention, would rather start a thread focused on a single baby, a TOTALLY isolated incident, just so you can feel better!
Yes, I felt much better after that depressing thread, especially after I naively attempted to offer a counterpoint to it while proving that feminism can be a desi concept, too. As one of you said via email, after wading through comment-sewage, “I can’t believe there is so much misogyny and so little outrage here.”
::
Isolated. I thought of all those apologist quotes when I read the story which MasterVK was alert enough to submit to our news tab earlier today, about another newborn baby girl, who was also found and rescued:
AHMEDABAD: Her feeble cries help almost drowned in the din of the heavy downpour near Kankaria lake on Monday. Until a fireman found the newborn baby shivering in the rain, abandoned mercilessly without a piece of clothing on her body!
The child’s cries had gone unheard for hours and she had turned pale, lying in the incessant rains, near Kankaria lake. The baby was found by a team of firemen led by Rajesh Goswami who heard the faint cries early in the morning when they embarked on duty to check the oxygen levels in the lake.
Instead of the fish, the firemen found the freshly delivered girl who was dumped from the womb straight into the lake to die. “The girl did not have any clothing on her and had turned completely white. We had become sceptical about her survival,” said Goswami.
The firemen first thought of waiting for the police but were alert enough to realise that any wait may compromise the life of the infant. The fire personnel immediately took the girl to L G Hospital where she was admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit. “The girl was hypothermic as her temperature had dropped due to exposure in the rain. She was also covered in sand,” said Dr Abid Vijapura, assistant professor in the paediatrics department.
Dr Vijapura said that the girl was probably delivered at home as her umbilical cord was cut non-surgically and tied with a thread. “Her condition is stable. We have screened her for infections and will treat her accordingly,” he said.
I’ll close with a different quoted comment from one of you, because I hope someone else declares similar fifteen years from now:
Every time someone (sometimes me) reprimands my 15-year old daughter for her highly “spirited” personality, I can’t help but think that she was born on the streets of Kolkata (one can only guess), spared infanticide, and turned over to an orphanage at the tender age of 5 days.
Just look at her now!
This seems to have reached epidemic proportions and nothing short of an emergency should be declared in India. Adoption laws should be freed up to allow for the quick and efficient adoption for these baby girls by both Indians and foreigners for the swift adoption of these infants. A mass campaign needs to be put in place where parents who wish to abandon their baby girls, or boys for that matter, can just drop them off at some local center and they can easily be adopted out without any red-tape or waiting period whatsoever.
The ordinary screening process that usually takes place for adoptions should be temporarily suspended, in order to give these infants a chance at life.
poverty is no excuse. The sole duty of the parent(s) is to ensure the wellbeing of their offspring–whether you pump water by hand and shovel shit for those above you on the economic ladder or you are in the enviable position of telling others to shovel your own feces. In fact, short of evil djinn occupying this attempted murderer’s head, there are no excuses.
And to those who persist in peddling the poverty excuse, I would enquire as to whether you come from these humble circumstances and whether you or someone you know had to make a similar choice and chose to end the life of a newborn girl.
Also, why aren’t these men getting vasectomies if they don’t want babies? Or the very least they could do is wear condoms (cheap as hell), or pull out before coming. Stupid bastards!
Makes me want to endorse eugenics and Indira Gandhi’s attempts at population control.
I’m sorry (or actually, I’m not): THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS. I am tired of hearing people defend this and other evil acts with messages of cultural/ moral relativism. “Who are we to judge them?” and “Well, that’s how it is in culture.” This is an outrage, and should be treated as such… everything that makes someone’s culture look bad is an “isolated incident”. Honour killings, female infanticide, FGM… they’re all “rare, isolated incidents” and “part of soandso’s culture”.
Enough is enough. I hope I get nothing but girls from this point out so I can bring them up to thrash people like this.
I think all those comments stem from that weird mix of insecurity, nationalism ,false sense of cultural superiority in most Indians while dealing with social issues. This mixture of feelings sometimes manifests as not having the moral courage to call spade a spade or in other words calling something wrong as wrong. They try to rationalize their wrong doings in some way or other. Is this mentality because of the “karma” concept ?
No more bang lassi’s for VK…. he’s a bad man and I don’t think he’s handsome, either.
OMG, no, I am so sorry– Master VK didn’t say any of those things. He submitted the news story about the abandoned baby– he’s not responsible for those awful quotes. Changing post now.
you Go Anna! you’re my super girl!
However i do partially agree with what the email said atleast the first few lines, the poor have it really bad in India, the man is tired of saving up for his daughters and grand-daughters trying to get them married, looking out for them etc etc when he can barely make ends meet. I dont blame him as much as I blame the system. How many of us men getting married (predominantly in an arranged marriage situation) expect our future wife’s family to foot the bill for the wedding expenses?
Priya- fixed. 😉
How many times do we have to say that this is not rooted in economics only!? Where one person’s head banging left of, another’s begins. GAHH.
it is every man woman and child for themself in this cruel, harsh, world……i’m willing to bet–no hyperbole here–that 15-20% of women in india would rather be in the place of that baby girl and no rescuer in sight….india is a nasty [deleted] in every way; this is objective talk from a very proud indian. it is easily the crappiest of the six countries i have visited…i just spent 4 months there and saw everything there is to see…villages, cities, big cities….this place was throroughly raped by foreign devils for hundreds and hundreds of years. they made sure the culture and thought was completely napalmed before they left…what we see is the remnant of that…the worst, most disgusting part of india is that when you walk down the street (north india), you never see any girls; it’s only men….they are all dead, killed at birth or aborted (maybe 6 girls to 10 boys), and the rest are locked in their houses…..i read some moron saying in the original thread, ‘maybe we don;t want to make our country like the rest of the world.’….this is tantamount to the rapee being forced to marry the rapist…ie the rapist should be blown away and the victim should start fresh…..
Oh look, is it our favorite troll from the last post?
Kannan, there is no excuse, and you have no idea how many daughters this person has or what their socioeconomics are. We are assuming that because it was a home-birth they are not affluent. For all you know, they have only 1 child, and it’s the one that was left to die in the water. The problem is that desi society (at large, in aggregate) has no value for women. You DO NOT see the same levels of female infanticide in other poor regions of the world, sans China and SEAsia.
Man, I really hate people today.
Camille, no drink for you!
Ironically, India has kept it’s culture(s)pretty well in tact more than many places on the globe. And not just the bad stuff either, there is STILL alot of good going on India.
Despite invasions, migrations, colonization, etc, India’s religions are thriving, some of them almost untouched since their inceptions (that could be good, bad or both, depending).
I would’nt blame foriegners entirely for India’s plight. Sure, as kids we were influenced by our family, but as adults it’s what we make of ourselves that counts. If we are disfunctional adults because of what our family did to us as kids, well, then we get therapy. Similarly, sure India lost (and gained) due to foreigners’ presence on her soil, yet what is she going to do with that NOW?
If killing babies is the example of adult India, then grown India definetly needs therapy.
Take a seat on the couch… tell me about your mother…
Many of those same men have wives at home 24/7. It’s just another cultural thing, does not neccessarily mean they are gay, although some are.
It’s similar to the practice of not taking their wives out on social visits, to hang out or to weddings. It’s just part of (some) cultures. Not saying I think it’s cool, but it is the way it is.
In the west the wife is like a “girlfriend” whom you hang out with, take on dates, etc. Not so in all regions of the world. The institution of marriage is approached in a much different way, less for companionship, love and romance, and more for familial duty. So then that gets played out in the intimate relations (or lack thereof) between husband and wife.
FGM (female genital mutilation) makes it’s way to Britain.
.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_he_me/britain_female_circumcision
Why, why, why, do they have to bring these ideas with them??? I thought the whole point of moving to a new country was to get rid of the old and ring in the new? The West has already fought and won over these types of beliefs for the past 100 years (thanks to hardcore feminists) and now we have to revisit the middle ages? Why, why, why???
Forward ever Backward never
24-7:
india is a nasty, nasty gutter in every way….this place was throroughly raped by foreign devils for hundreds and hundreds of years. they made sure the culture and thought was completely napalmed before they left…
I’ll say, old egg–they cert. “napalmed” any nuance out of your world view–what, what!
The problem is that desi society (at large, in aggregate) has no value for women.
I understand you qualified the “desi society” with “at large” but I just also want to add that the dominant interpretation in desi society is not to value women…but there are plenty of other desis who interpret their desi culture that does uphold women. Just like the example Anna gave about her father. Just like the amazing men and women all over India who engage in human rights work. I think I mentioned my sis doing research at Sakhi an organization in Kerala, and everytime I read about their work, I’m just really moved…just really moved what amazing working these women do, even though the dominant interpretation of their culture can be viciously misogynist.
So just b/c I’ve been hearing about Sakhi in Kerala so much lately and read some interviews conducted with the women who work there, I just want to stress that there’s much in our desi culture that upholds women…I know this might seem obvious (to most of you) but I just want to clearly say it. And of course it’s not f**king Western to respect women, it’s South Asian – there are plenty of desis like Anna’s father, who interpret and practice their culture in a way that treasures any human life, whether man or women.
I just read through some of that other post’s comments and.. wow, just wow. Look, one may attempt to understand the reasons behind such action (economic, cultural, etc.) but there is no justification for this, period. We cannot allow ourselves to conflate comprehension with justification. The first step with this, is to recognize the profound, profound immorality and injustice inherent in the act. As part of our solution to the perennial existence of this crime, we must, inevitably, look to reasons that could provoke people to do this — without ever, ever forgetting the culpability of these individuals, be they peasants or rich farmers. There may be causes that lead an individual to such actions, but ultimately it is that individual’s choice and their inhumane crime.
Once any attempt at justification is removed, and it is universally recognized as both a moral problem and a social crisis, there may be much greater success at reducing infanticide rates than currently. We may blame the system, but we must never forget that these individuals and their actions are absolutely, horrifyingly wrong and immoral.
No, I wouldn’t think so. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so, if these people understand the karma concept correctly, they know that they will have to suffer a similar or worse fate in the future, as a reaction to what they do to baby girls. Rather, they must be in denial of the karma concept, if anything.
If you read or listen to some of the folklore that many desis grow up around, it can at times be anti-woman and at times be pro-woman, and then of course anything can be interpreted in any way. Generally, as it stands now, I would say the overall cultural ethos is not entirely in favor of women’s rights to the extent that some of those rights might embolden women to live completely independently. Of course if your daughter can bring home a big pay check, you’re not going to refuse it, but it’s the other stuff that that paycheck might embolden her to do — move out, get her own place, get a boyfriend, that you might be afraid of.
There is also a bond between desi moms and sons that I have not seen the equivalent of anywhere else, nor the equivalent of in a desi dad and daughter relationship. Not saying it’s not there, just saying I didn’t see it and it might be harder to come by.
It is also corraborated in literature and folklore.
God, the Internet really brings out the freaks. So on the one hand, we have Indians in India practicing infanticide. Horrible, terrible. It makes me ill.
And now we have you, on the other hand, ready to dismiss the whole country based on your extensive four months in the country. Wow, you must really be an expert on all things Indian, as is clearly evidenced by your neutral and unbiased commentary.
Your style sounds familiar… did your PR firm have the Boxer Rebellion account by any chance?
To be fair Salil, it does look weird to see so many guys holding hands outside of San Francisco. Especially in a country that is not yet out of the closet with it’s homosexuality. One wonders why two guys who are not gay would want to show so much physical affection to one another, if you come from a place where such is not seen, or where it is only seen between gay men. Now maybe those persons just need to get more comfortable with the idea of same sex POD – public displays of affection. But in a country which claims to be so anti POD, one wonders why it is so comfortable with this. It gets one wondering about the state of affairs between the men and women in that country, and, the state of affairs between men and men.
Although we know that cultural relativity must often be applied when we globe-trot, still, there is a difference between theory and reality, and the reality is, some things will appear just downright strange coming from one country to another, or one culture to another.
To be fair you don’t really see English educated metro desis in India showing all that much same sex affection as you do amongst the less educated small town and village guys. One might wonder why.
this is sad! unfortunately, this does not only happen in india, it happens all over the world!! there have been many cases of abandoned babies right here in the usofa. google and see how many you come up with..
Does anyone know if the “ask no questions” newborn dropoff points at police stations in Tamil Nadu have had a positive effect? Has this been tried in A.P. ?
Could you also look at the rest of 24/7’s comments and see if you think they are appropriate? Because I’m not so sure.
Yes and it’s sick.
There are also drop off stations for unwanted babies in USA.
Am I wrong in assuming that most of those cases are ones of either drugged up/alcoholic or downright clinically insane, depressed (bi-polar, etc) parents?
Does the Indian demographic of baby killers show the same? I assumed that they were relatively sane persons, not influenced by drugs or drink, who just wanted to get rid of their babies because they were girls. Am I wrong?
Not the same “ak”, fyi.
Solution, are you PG in yet another disguise? I think this thread is being overtaken by some weird virus. I am disengaging.
Thanks, intern. It was very clear it was not the same ak, I was going to point out that the style did not jive myself. I think the trolls have decided that this is how they want to destroy these threads now.
AK, googling doesn’t do much besides bring up isolated cases of American teenage girls who freakout and do something stupid. While you might point out that abandonment with death as an intended consequence is rare in India, many of us see this,along with the indisputable female deficit, as a sign of a larger issue.
Alerting folks of yet another of those horrible “girl” killings that I just saw on the news tab
Solution:
We can delve into the oddity of heterosexual men who hold hands while walking some other time. Really. I’m just not interested. Please go stand next to someone else. You’re making me uncomfortable.
Solution (i.e. Pardesi Gori) welcome back. It’s hard to get a bead on the mental state of desis because we are all in a state of prolonged infantile ideation and are generally inscrutable, even to old India hands/ashram denizens, and what not. What I can tell you is that in AP & TN farmers will often off themselves and their whole families if they fall in debt after a bad harvest etc. It could be that they view death preferable to the indignities of bonded labor. Or maybe they feel, as many Western enthusiasts of karma/transmigration often do, that this is all a great adventure and at the next roll of the dice they have a 1/10 chance of being born in the US or EU. My theory is that this particular evil is caused by a combination of hopelessness and gender inequity
the crux of the problem–one that is prominent on sepiamutiny too–, as with 90% of desi problems, is severe sexual repression (courtesy of middle eastern and white/christian invaders), that apart from the obvious, manifests itself in a severe pedantic strain……….there was an error in my second post that made it confusing: the girl i was talking about WAS the university professor–and she didn’t find it at all appalling that baby girls get tossed away as litter, and its affects on society as a whole…….to the feeble minded who were sensitive to my previous comments, remember, in india analytical reasoning means nothing. it has no place, no value…..only backwards hearsay and heresy matter…..lying is the national sport. need i say more?
…while on the Internet, blatant bigoted generalizing, and anecdotal hearsay hold sway, apparently.
Go away.
Salil, dealing with the insane is like playing with zombies. One bite, and you’ll become one of them before you even know it.
My guess is some of these are actually the “pro-India” lot, and they are going to create strawman comments so they can bravely demonstrate the blatant den of India bashing hypocrisy that is SM.
“Also, why aren’t these men getting vasectomies if they don’t want babies? Or the very least they could do is wear condoms (cheap as hell), or pull out before coming. Stupid bastards!
Makes me want to endorse eugenics and Indira Gandhi’s attempts at population control.”
I am not saying there is any excuse for killing anyone, but I also have to argue that you have to look at the social context to understand the situation.
1.) It has been shown through studies worldwide that when education and literacy rates rise in a country, the treatment of women improve. If we look at the pitiful literacy rate, especially in North India, one of the first solutions I would suggest is working on the education system, and getting education to everyone, especially woman and girls. And including sex ed.
2.) You do have to look at the cultural context to some degree. Other societies that are patrilocal (when sons marry their new wife moves in with their family) and patrilineal, also often have similar interests. Even though China has extreme population control measures, there are still high rates of female infanticide, abortion of female fetuses (India and China are the only two countries I know that had to make it illegal for doctors to tell mothers-to-be the sex of their child during ultrasound), and abandoning of baby girls. The difference might be that China seems to have implemented more safe drop offs for mothers to abandon their baby daughters, and have creating a huge and popular adoption scheme of baby girls to countries like the US.
And joint families are often seen as the best way for a family to live, -grandparents, sons, their wives and kids all in one house. This is often considered the traditional way, and mom and dad hope their son(s) will take care of them in old age. But I have also read that joint families may have actually been less normal in the past, and are increasing at present, a sort of idealization of the past, making more joint families than the actual past ever had.
Though there are far fewer matrilocal and matrilineal societies, you’ll see just the opposite, everyone wants girls and no one wants to have too many (or any) sons.
Especially when you factor dowry/bride price etc into these things, and you have an even bigger problem. When one family is expected to furnish some large expenses to the bride/groom’s family, that seems to make the problem even greater.
So, going back to India… issues like this are complex- there is education, there is dowry, patrilineal and patrilocal ideals… etc etc… then there is an issue of overpopulation in general. And of course, as this person I quoted so (crassly) mentions, there is also the old-wound of the forced sterilization project of Indira-dahling.
So, my point is, it’s not so simple as “sexist bastards!” or “where a damn condom, will ya?” and I think it will also take some actual planning and follow through to deal with the problem and change the status of daughters.
This acronym is a bit off, Solution. I’m fairly certain that it would be PDoA, not POD, which would stand for “Public Of Displays” and nary an affection in sight.
You could be confusing PDA with POD. I know, I know, all those three-letter acronyms are so confyoosing. But here’s a tip, which you can print out and fold up and keep in your wallet: PODs are either prefixed with “i,” suffixed with “cast,” or deafening you with “BOOM here comes the BOOM ready or not,” etc.
err, “wear a damn condom!” i meant. not tired. not at all. I swear.
Salil, maybe she was talking about this?
Such cases make me think what can cause normal people to do such things. I thought we were evolutionarily wired to love and protect children (which is why we like kittens and plush toys, they remind us of children)
Should sex-identification be not only not banned, but made mandatory, so that people abort right at conception instead of burying and drowning children?
Can you give some examples?
Solution:
Salil, I was just pointing out that same sex public affection is not neccessarily a sign of homosexuality in all cases and cultures, and why some people find it odd.
I Would never be the first to initiate hand-holding, don’t worry.
Manipuri,
all sorts of info here. The Wikipedia article mentions the Minangkabau in West Sumatra, and if I recall my cultural anthropology classes from college, the Iroquois had a matrilineal society. There are matrilineal “tendencies” in most every society, including what would broadly be called American mainstream society.
Of all the issues confronting India this is the type you regularly chose to highlight. Consistently… Must you always? There was another post on this issue. Within a week another. Reading accounts like this will provide an excuse for people who claim that child infanticide in India has reached epidemic proportions and like it is a strictly social evil without any economic influence. And that the national sport in India is lying. Blogs like this are almost a free India bashing invitation, and unfortunately they are maintained by people of ‘supposedly’ Indian heritage who do not feel the necessity to provide any balancing point of view, no matter how feeble.
Manipuri, unfortunately, since I study north indian cultures, I know a lot more about that than matrilineal societies, but I know there are some in South India (though I don’t know how they stand in the modern times) and also there are cultural groups in Vietnam like the Mnog (I think that is how it is spelled?) But, in general there are far more patrilocal/-lineal societes in the world, that matrilocal, and many of the more matri- style cultures I have heard about tend to be smaller cultural/ethnic groups rather than large nation state types. I hope that helps. I wish I had some sources to quote for you, I could find some academic journal articles, I’m sure, if I had a little time.
African Americans tend to be matrilineal and matrilocal. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a young couple just starting out to shack up with the girl’s parents until they can afford a place of their own.
additionally, I want to know why talking about various issues that have to do with India is always “India bashing”. If we read an article about racism in the US, I don’t often hear people suddenly yelling out “STOP BASHING THE US, it’s not always about race, its more balanced, why do we have to focus on the bad?”
When people discuss issues that pertain to a certain cultural group/country etc that doesn’t mean they hate that culture/place. Often it actually means the opposite. They feel a connection and passion about it, and only want to discuss the “bad” points in a way to find solutions. We don’t want to live in a place where everyone forces a smile, and only is allowed to speak positive words, and sweeps all the issues under the rug. What would we get done. In any place, the first step towards changing issues is acknowledging the issues, discussing them, and trying to understand where the issues come from and why they persist.
If I was to talk about the US, or Brazil, or India, or any culture/nation, I would examine issues in the same way. Just because you focus on and discuss certain issues doesn’t mean that is all you see. It just means that this is something you want to think about, debate, and discuss. Something you may find as important to you.
I haven’t read all of the comments in this thread – but I’m a little uncomfortable with the wholesale dismissal of class as a relevant variable, which I particularly noticed in the related thread. Class never explains anything completely – even when people recognize it to be the main variable – but it is usually always a part of the problem some of the time. And so even just from such a theoretical perspective, completely ruling out class as part of the explanation can appear awfully arrogant and smug.
One of the reasons class gets completely dismissed in discussions originating in the US, is of course, the general discomfort with discussing it in any US context. The other is simply that conceiving the full implications of class as it plays out in India is quite difficult, if not altogether impossible, for many people who grew up over here. Therefore, such a wholesale dismissal will rankle even more to those who already have issues and resentments, to put it crudely, along the ‘ABD’-‘DBD’ fault-line.
Even in the US, the number of babies abandoned in dumpsters is striking. And it also happens in South Africa, Canada, the UK, and other countries on a different development locus than the one India finds itself in. But in the US, does it happen more often in Oakland than in Beverly Hills? You bet.
But is class then a complete explanation, by itself? No – for example, rural Mississippi, where people might be poorer in absolute terms, and also share their skin pigmentation, might compare well with Oakland in this respect. But is class at least a possible variable? In some complicated way, I would say yes.
So when we look at India, let us also be similarly nuanced, and allow that class can sometimes, in some places and conditions, be part of, or most of the explanation, or at least is a contributing factor to, the sex-selective infanticides we hear about.
And on the Punjab sex-selective abortions – the per-capita income alone would be too crude an index – a breakdown of attempted female foeticide by income quintile, if not decile, would, I think be necessary. Before anyone does that difficult/impossible study, it might be more realistic to hope that someone breaks down the sex ratio by economic class and income decile if possible – even more important since the Indian government has set itself a goal of improving the sex ratio countrywide.
Growing up in India, and among my own friends and extended family, I never noticed any particular gender deficit – neither in high school, nor in college nor in professional school in India. However, it was the first thing I noticed when I came to graduate school here!