Saturday, May 19, 2012

Female feoticide

May 18, 2012

Dear Mr Aamir Khan


I also happened to watch the first episode of your program: “Satyamev Jayate” and couldn’t resist from sending in my comments, although you wouldn’t expect comment from people like me as I am not an Indian citizen; I am a Nepali.

Your program was so heartrending that I was impelled to write following lines.

Female feticide is also rampant in Nepal and people from Nepal used to travel to India for the purpose earlier and now, I am told, such facilities are available in Nepal itself, including in Kathmandu. You have thrown light on this aspect very touchingly.

However, there is another, subtler side of the same coin. Even highly educated people (people from amongst my contemporaries and friends too) keep on producing a brood of daughters in their endeavor to produce a male offspring. If one is to try to gaze how female offspring of the couple would feel, it will become evident that similar violence is being perpetrated/perpetuated against girls in another form. All along they distinctly could feel that they aren’t what their parents wanted and are being tolerated for lack of option. A female fetus aborted gets killed at one stroke. But a girl child made to feel unwanted in pursuit of a son gets “killed” each moment, every day.

People say that daughters are almost like sons; as if comparing gold and bronze and deducing that both are similar because of the color. The girls can do anything and everything that boys could do; even better in some case. The daughters can do one more thing than the boys; give continuity to the God’s creation – they can become mother. Boys cannot become mothers!

In my considered opinion, if boys are bronze then girls are gold; not the other way around. I am blessed with two daughters (not any son! which is a nagging question that people ask me with “pity”) and have never aspired for a son. Both of my daughters are chartered accountants and are well settled

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