Female Infanticide in India
Posted by saij20 on December 18, 2010
We Indians have always respected women and worshipped them even, God was not just a male form (HIM) God to us is an union of the male and female forces into one being. From times immemorial women have ruled this nation, there have been great queens, great mothers, great beauties, great saints, great scientists, great artists and dancer and actresses an they continue to do so to this day, and yet today and for some years now we have the scythe of “female infanticide” over the neck of the new born female baby.
Where did it go wrong?? When did the rot set in?? Who started this most horrendous of crimes?? How can there be a nation where the thing and the opposite of it has come to be??
Is this the bitter end product of our vanity of peer pressure?? Let me substantiate my statement. I believe ( I am subject to correction ), that this dangerous trend is the result of the Dowry System.
The Dowry or Dower was, when it actually began a gift of money and articles like gold and various other households things which a newly married girl would need to set up her new household, it was a gift from her doting parents as an expression of their love for her. With the passage of time as the rich gave more and more fabulous dowries to their beloved daughters , there slowly crept in a feeling a envy among those who could not dower their daughters so well and a matter of matching up to those fabulous dowers for peers who felt they need to dower their girl equally well if not better. Hence started the race where peers tried to out do each other and the less fortunate aspired to match up to the rich and in all this things got murkier and more twisted with the Groom and his family thinking the dowry was a symbol of the value given to them and a measure of their own worth. Even worse is they started seeing it as means to make money and as this got more and more deep rooted in our society the killings started. There were fathers and mothers who could never in their entire life time pool up those fabulous amounts for getting their daughter(s) married and a man could only borrow so much amount. To add to this the thing that dealt the final blow was the reluctance of grooms to marry without a dowry and the cruel treatment a heartless society lay in store for an unmarried woman.
Today, even today, we see poor people kill their infant daughters for they can’t think of all the above said things and know that they can’t achieve or ever fulfill those needs of our society. I have seen and known people who start saving from the moment a daughter is born, savings in Gold and Money so that one day more than twenty years later they can marry of that precious girl in pomp and style to the satisfaction some family that feels itself to be superior due to their having the Male child. And truth be told even after all this there is no guarantee the precious princess will be happily ever after for there are demons in our society that can kill a woman, burn a bride, torture an innocent soul all for more dowry, their perceived privilege of being married to them.
Who is to blame for this?? All of us a society everytime we encourage the payment and receiving of dowry. Or else we would be a nation of only men and our population would definitely diminish and a nation of gay men would last as long as they last.
P. S. It’s not been edited
