Films, literature devote little attention to female feticide

The actor Aamir Khan opened a significant chapter in gender politics in the first episode of his show, “Satyamev Jayate” (Truth Triumphs), last month when he took on the topic of female feticide. Media coverage of the subject exploded afterward, highlighting India’s shocking record on female feticide — 10 million aborted over two decades, according to a 2006 study by the British medical journal The Lancet. The media attention contrasts with the subject’s marginal treatment in mainstream Indian literature and cinema, even though female feticide is not a new phenomenon. Activists have cried themselves hoarse and reams of newsprint have been devoted to sex selection in India. In the early 1990s, the economist Amartya Sen in an essay elaborated on the high mortality of the girl child due to gender bias, like the denial of adequate nutrition and medical attention to girls. And in his book “The Idea of Justice,” he dwells on the social tendency to see gender disparity as a “normal” phenomenon in India. A sign board at a clinic in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.Subhash Sharma for The New York TimesA sign board at a clinic in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. This disparity is quite the norm in the Indian films and television serials and rarely questioned. Dowry is prevalent in this patriarchal system — the genesis of the female as a burden. In India, a woman leaves her family and lives with her husband’s family, shedding her own identity. In many parts of the country, she is still not addressed by name but as so-and-so’s mother. The “Ma” figure, a revered one in Bollywood films, is a culture-keeper. In reality and in films, she abets violence against her own gender – as she keeps the traditions. “The problem is that in India, parents never feel the girl belongs to them,” said Kishwar Desai, author of “Witness the Night,” a 2010 novel that examines feticide. “As the character of Durga says in my book, daughters are always regarded as paraya dhan — meant to be given away. Obviously, no one wants to invest in something which does not belong to you.” India is moving toward a gender-imbalanced society: the 2011 census shows a skewed child sex ratio (0 to 6 years) of 914 females for every 1,000 males. Meanwhile, the movie and TV industry has been generally silent on this subject, with films exploring female feticide and infanticide being few and far between. “The discourse began in India after the 2001 census,” said Sabu George, who has been campaigning against female infanticide and feticide for the past 26 years. “At that time, there was a flow of foreign correspondents and foreign filmmakers into the country to capture this story. But shortly after we became aware that the government was denying visas to foreign journalists and filmmakers who wanted to cover this issue. The government was more conscious about protecting India’s image abroad than eradicating the problem. If there had been more films and documentaries it could have stemmed this genocide.” A few brilliant short films and documentaries have strived to tell this story. The BBC’s documentary “India’s Missing Girls” in 2007 and Al Jazeera’s report “101 East: Female Infanticide” in 2009 are important studies on sex selection and abortion. In 2005-06, two journalists from Jaipur, Meena Sharma and Shripal Shaktavat, caught on camera over 100 doctors who performed sex-selective abortions, which are illegal in India, but their registrations were never canceled. “Satyamev Jayate” featured the journalists and showed clips of their 2006 documentary. The subject continues to inspire documentary filmmakers, like Nyna Pais Caputi, an Indian native living in San Francisco who is working on “Petals in the Dust: The Endangered Indian Girls.” “I became aware of the intensity of the problem when I was trying to adopt a girl from India,” she said in an e-mail. The few directors who dared to make feature films on this subject in the past have treated it sensitively and evocatively. In 1994, the Tamil film director P. Bharathiraja, whose own Kallar community engaged in female infanticide, made “Karuththamma,” which highlighted the evils of the practice. The musical scores were composed by A.R. Rahman, and the film went on to win a national award for the best film on family welfare in 1995. In 2003, Manish Jha, who was only in his 20s when he read a newspaper report about a village with no girls, directed “Matrubhoomi: a Nation without Women.” The Hindi film begins with the killing of a newborn baby girl in a vessel of boiling milk. Fast forward to 2050, the village has no girls, and men vent their frustration by watching pornography. A father of five boys finds a girl from a remote village and marries her to all five of them. Violence ensues as the men of the village fight over her. “You don’t see many films like that,” said Venu Gopal, the cinematographer for “Matrubhoomi.” “I don’t think the film industry behaves responsibly to social issues. Everyone knows about feticide, but no one wants to deal with it. It is, perhaps, too gory.” The future as seen in “Matrubhoomi” has roots in the present. In parts of Haryana and Punjab, men are finding it difficult to find brides. The state of Punjab has seen some of the worst cases of feticide in India, moving the Punjabi director Mukesh Gautam to make “Akhiyan Udeekdiyan” in 2009. In the movie, a young wife of a rich farmer is forced to abort her female fetuses. She finally finds courage to stand up to her husband and her mother-in-law and leaves her husband’s house but dies while giving birth to a daughter, who grows up to be beautiful and talented. Mr. Gautam cleverly interspersed the music and vibrant culture of rural Punjab with the horrifying brutality of the film’s subject. Perhaps the most heart-rending tale caught on film is that of 12-year-old Anamika, a child in Gujarat who survived an attempted abortion. The documentary “Anamika” aired on an obscure religious channel called Shalom in April. “I was documenting the social work of Kutch Vikas Trust in Gujarat run by Catholic priests,” said Siby Yogyaaveedan from Kerala, director of “Anamika.” “They have a school for multi-disabled. When I saw Anamika, I was curious for she is a beautiful child with no physical deformities. The nuns told me her strange tale, and I felt compelled to film her.” The child’s parents are from Rajasthan — her father is a college lecturer and her mother, a school teacher. She has four older sisters. When the mother was pregnant with Anamika, she learned the fetus was a girl from an ultrasound. Though she was seven months pregnant, the woman opted for an abortion. After labor was induced, the child was believed to be dead and was thrown into a bin. A few hours later, a nurse found her alive, and the doctor handed her over to the Missionaries of Charity, who run an orphanage in Rajkot. For almost a year, Anamika battled for her life. Her hearing is impaired and her vision is damaged, but Anamika’s joy at being alive is evident in the documentary as she merrily skips around. Her very life itself is a plea against feticide.