How 'independent' are we?

The Hindu, August 12, 2007

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA


Just a fortnight before India turns 60 — an
age that is supposed to signify maturity and
respectability — a front page newspaper
headline hammered in another reality.
“Bigamous man tortures spouses for male
offspring,” stated
the headline of a story on page one of The Telegraph
on July 29, 2007. “Six abortions, all for a
son,” read the strap.

Not an auspicious way to mark 60 years of
Independence if our society continues to be a slave
to son preference. Something has to change. But it
hasn’t happened yet. Not by a long shot.

The story referred to above was about two women
married to one man in Padra, near Vadodara in
Gujarat. Bigamy is illegal. And so is sex selective
abortion. In Padra, however, none of this mattered.
Rajesh first married Sunita, who is now 27 years
old. In nine years of marriage, she has been forced
to have six abortions because after the first child,
a girl, Rajesh insisted he wanted a boy. So every
time she became pregnant, she had to find out
whether she was going to have a boy or a girl. If it
was a girl, then she had no choice but to abort.
Except once, when it was too late to abort, and she
delivered another girl. Today, seven months into her
ninth pregnancy, she says she refused to have
another abortion and survived her husband kicking
her to induce an abortion.

The second wife, 22-year-old Kajal, had just given
birth to a baby girl. She says that when her child
was delivered, Rajesh held the infant upside down
and said, “I didn’t marry you to produce
girls”. She had to beg him not to kill the
child.

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