South Asia Counter Information Project 2

Articles

• India: Book ban's ... legal opinion

  25 January, by c-info
  From: Indian Express
  
  Banning a book: when, why and what thereafter
  
  Krishnadas Rajagopal : New Delhi, Wed Jan 25 2012, 00:11 hrs
  
  Legal experts agree that the 1988 ban on The Satanic Verses does not mean that “you cannot quote from it”. They have questioned what purpose a ban serves when a book can be read online. And the Supreme Court has made observations on when a book can be banned in the first place.
  
  A 2010 judgment from the Supreme Court, lifting the ban on James W Laine’s Shivaji - The Hindu King in Muslim India, says the words in a book must be judged by the “standards of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in every hostile point of view”.
  
  “The effect of the words used in the offending material must be judged from the standards of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in every hostile point of view,” the court had observed. “The class of for whom the book is primarily meant would also be relevant for judging the probable consequences of the writing.”
  
  Four writers were threatened with criminal prosecution for reading out passages from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literary Festival, sparking debate on the very necessity of continuing with the ban under Section 11 of the Indian Customs Act, 1962. The provision proscribes the import of the book to India.
  
  “Merely banning the book does not mean you cannot quote from it. It is different from a hate speech,” said senior advocate Anil B Divan, who also questioned the point of banning a book.
  
  “What is the meaning of a ban on the import of the book (classified as ‘goods’ under the section) when you can read it on the internet? If I got a copy of the book, you cannot prevent me reading or communicating it. The ban on the book does not mean you can’t discuss it.”
  
  Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan said, “What is wrong with the process of a ban under the Customs Act is that there is no prior notice to the people affected, so it has not really been contested. In this case most of the people responsible for bringing out the book are outside. If there was notice, they would come to defend the book.”
  
  Asked if the ban can now be challenged in a court of law, he said, “Theoretically it can be contested. Somebody can come and challenge the ban as a violation of free speech. They can contest the ban on the ground that it is available on the Net, but nobody wants to mention that. It is silly.”
  
  For prosecuting the four writers, the state government would have to prove that the very act of “reading out” has offended the people, Dhavan said. He pointed out: “Prosecution can be under Section S 153 A or 295 A of the IPC. But sanction has to be got from the Central government under 196 CrPC.” Section 153 A deals with promoting enmity between different groups on several grounds, including religion. Offence includes expression through words “spoken or written”. Under Section 295 A, commission of “deliberate and malicious” acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting their religion or religious beliefs is an offence. This too can be committed by words “spoken or written”, but here, the prosecution has to prove malice and deliberate intent on the part of the accused.
  
  Referring to the circumstances when the ban was imposed in 1988, Dhavan said it came when the Shah Bano case was decided. “But this ban was very serious as it dealt with free speech of a book which is globally available. This was the strictest kind of ban available,” he said. Referring to the Jaipur Litfest controversy, he said, “The use of this ban now as a communal balance wheel is simply absurd.”
  
  Director-in-charge of the premier Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, and media laws expert Professor S Sivakumar said the Jaipur Litfest controversy is about how “mere reading was seen as propagation”. But Professor C Rajkumar, Vice-Chancellor with O P Jindal Global University, said the current controversy can be used as an opportunity to evolve the ban laws.
  
  “The law is evolutionary and should move the way society is moving. This controversy should be used to revisit the whole area of banning books and put in perspective with contemporary understanding in a liberal and democratic society,” he said.

  

  
  

• India: Some Questions for the Maharashtra ATS Chief

  25 January, by c-info
  Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association
  
  Some Questions for the Maharashtra ATS Chief
  
  The Maharashtra ATS claims to have cracked the 13/7 blasts case. Its chief has revealed in a press conference that Indian Mujahideen was behind the Mumbai blasts. And yet, the Ministry of Home Affairs remains far from impressed—indeed, it appears rather irritated. And the press, also unusually, has been circumspect about his revelations. The ATS Chief says that he did not want to call a press conference. But the rumours about Naquee’s IB links were threatening the credibility of the ATS. Such were his compulsions when he launched into a monologue about the ‘breakthrough’ his team—under his guidance of course—had achieved. Despite his loud proclamations however, there are few who are willing to buy the ATS' arguments.
  
  Here are some issues for the ATS Chief to mull over:
  
  Cracking the Case:
  
  The case was cracked within a day of Naquee being brought to Mumbai by the Special Cell. Did the Maharashtra ATS ever visit Delhi to pick up/question Naquee? It simply pounced upon him within moments of the Special Cell 'abandoning' Naquee in Mumbai after completing their own investigation work.
  
  The Arrest of Naquee Ahmed
  
  The ATS Chief in his press conference clearly said that the arrest was made on 12th January 2012. His family alleges that he was picked up on the night of 9th January. Not only this, his brothers Rafi and Razi were also detained by the ATS. Nadeem was also arrested the same night.
  
  Did Naquee just walk into the ATS office and offer himself up, or was the ATS tailing him? If they had him on surveillance, surely they knew how closely he was working with the Special Cell; his numerous trips to the Special Cell and their regular phone calls to him?
  
  Naquee’s Mumbai Trips:
  
  The ATS boss says that Naquee had been visiting Mumbai’s Madanpura area since September-October 2010. Would he explain why the last two of those trips were made in the company of Delhi Police Special Cell? And may it be said that Naquee was not brought to Mumbai under detention or arrest.
  
  Evidence Galore:
  
  Clothes of Naquee and Nadeem have been recovered from the house where the main suspects lived, claimed the Chief. Is the Chief familiar with their wardrobe and sartorial preferences—in the absence of any forensics tests—to claim that clothes belonging to Naquee and Nadeem have been recovered?
  
  Stolen Bikes: The ATS says that these bikes would have been used in future terror acts. Implicating people in future conspiracies, where evidence need not be produced because the act hasn’t taken place at all is the oldest trick in the police armour. If indeed those bikes are stolen (the family disputes it), then book Naquee and Nadeem for theft, Chief, not under UAPA.
  
  Money Trail: The Chief was emphatic that Rs 1.5 Lakhs had passed through Naquee’s hands but could not explain when asked where the monies had come from. “Hawala”, he mumbled, and insisted that the investigations were still on. So, if the investigations were still on and nothing conclusive had been arrived at, why make grandiose claims in a press conference?
  
  Harassment of Naquee’s family
  
  While the ATS Chief grandly declared that over 12000 witnesses were questioned, we have no way of knowing how many of them were questioned in illegal detention. Will the ATS Chief kindly explain why Naquee Ahmed’s elder brothers were detained? Why has his brother’s workshop of trolley bags been turned into a fortress, and reporters and outsiders denied access to them?
  
  ATS-Special Cell: Healthy Competition!
  
  Yes, there is competition, but no rivalry. The chief of ATS made a brave attempt at presenting a picture of blissful bonhomie between the ATS and Special Cell (“The head of Special Cell is my batch mate!”) But we saw the ATS team in Delhi grilling Naquee’s brother about what the Special Cell knew—about what he heard Naquee telling the Special Cell. If the two agencies are so friendly, should not they be sharing information rather than harassing and hounding family members? Why has the ATS been after Naquee's brother?
  
  Too often we have seen these agencies turning into predators, consuming those very men it seeks out for help and cooperation. The Special Cell may be crying buckets now, but they have implicated IB informers as dreaded terrorists (remember Qamar and Irshad) earlier. The cut-throat grey world of unaccounted powers and funds ‘to tackle terror’ has veered out of control.
  
  One last thing, does the Commissioner of Delhi Police feel no moral and ethical compulsion to officially and formally state the simple truth that Naquee was helping his department in their investigation?
  
  Released by JTSA (24th January 2012)

  

  
  

• Difficult times for professional journalists in Pakistan (Najam Sethi)

  7 January, by c-info
  From: The Friday Times, 6-12 January 2012
  
  CIA agents in Pakistan
  
  by Najam Sethi
  
  These are difficult times for professional journalists in Pakistan. Eleven were killed last year in the line of duty. They were either caught in the crossfire of ethnic or extremist violence or targeted and eliminated by state and non-state groups for their political views.
  
  Saleem Shehzad, for example, was abducted, tortured and killed last year and a commission of inquiry is still floundering in murky waters. He had exposed the infiltration of the armed forces by elements affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Several journalists from Balochistan have been killed by non-state vigilantes sponsored by state agencies, others have fled to Europe or USA because they had sympathies with the nationalist cause in the province. Some from Karachi have taken refuge abroad because they were threatened by ethnic or sectarian groups or parties.
  
  Now an insidious campaign is afoot to target senior journalists who question the wisdom of the security establishment on a host of thorny issues. They are being labeled as "American-CIA agents". This is an incitement to violence against them in the highly charged anti-American environment in Pakistan today. Consider.
  
  If you say the military's notion of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan is misplaced, outdated or counter-productive, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say the military was either complicit or incompetent in the OBL-Abbottabad case, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the civilians should have control over the military as stipulated in the constitution, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the military shouldn't enter into peace deals with the Taliban that enable them to reorganize and seize Pakistani territory, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the drones have taken a welcome toll of extremist Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the military's annual defense budget, which amounts to nearly half of all tax revenues, should be scrutinized by parliament or the Auditor General of Pakistan, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the one and same resignation criterion should be applied to both Ambassador Husain Haqqani and DG-ISI Ahmed Shuja Pasha - the former is accused of trying to influence the American government to back up the civilian government of Pakistan in its attempt to establish civilian control over its army and the latter is accused of seeking the support of Arab regimes for the overthrow of the civilian regime ( both accusations come from one and the same individual) - you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say we should construct a social welfare state in place of a national security state, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that fundamental citizens rights enshrined in the constitution cannot be violated at the altar of a narrow definition of national security defined exclusively by the security state, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that human rights violations in Balochistan carried out by the security agencies are as condemnable as the ethnic cleansing of Punjabi settlers by Baloch insurgents, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that Pakistan's foreign policy should not be the exclusive domain of the military establishment, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the Pakistan military's conventional and nuclear weapons doctrine amounts to a crippling arms race with India rather than a minimal optimal defensive deterrence, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the ISI is an unaccountable state within a state, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that belt-tightening measures to control budgetary deficits and inflation should apply to wasteful aspects of defense expenditures no less than to wasteful aspects of civilian government expenditures, you are a CIA agent.
  
  If you say that the Supreme Court should pull out Air Marshal Asghar Khan's ISI-Mehrangate 1991 case from cold storage and adjudge it along with the Memogate 2011 case, you are a CIA agent.
  
  The irony is that the Pakistan military remains the single largest recipient of American aid in the last sixty five years. The irony is that all military coups in Pakistan have drawn legal and political sustenance from America. The irony is that the Pakistani military has signed more defense pacts and agreements with America than all civilian governments to date. The irony is the Pakistan military has partnered America in Afghanistan in the 1980s, fought its war on terror and leased out Pakistani air bases and Pakistan air space corridors to America in the 2000s, and sent hundreds of officers for training and education to America in the last six decades.
  
  The greater irony is that all those liberal, progressive, anti-imperialist Pakistani citizens who have opposed US hegemony and protested American military interventions in the Third World all their lives are today branded as CIA agents by the very state security agencies and non state religious parties and jehadi groups who have taken American money and weapons and done America's bidding all their lives.

  

  
  

• Interview with Yasmin Saikia on her book 'Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh'

  2 January, by c-info
  From: Metro Plus - The Hindu, January 2, 2012
  
  Prey of history
  SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
  
  Through “Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh”, Yasmin Saikia records the voices drowned in the euphoria of forming a nation 40 years ago, notes SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
  
  Yasmin Saikia says that women and children are the first casualty of violence that war brings
  
  We all know war spills blood, kills innocents, leaves lifelong scars. We also know that lessons from history are barely learnt. So, every century has spilled blood, men have killed men, and, as it often happens during wars, men have criminally assaulted women simply because they are bodily less powerful.
  
  In the Bangladesh War of 1971, the last full-scale war fought in the Subcontinent, many women were caught in the crossfire between the Pakistani army and Bangladeshi militia and sexually abused. Sadly, in the euphoria of winning a war and forming a new country thereafter, these victims of violence were pushed to the background in Bangladesh. Only tales of gallantry were fêted, officially rewarded. So, many such victims of war, even after four decades, have kept their stories buried within them, without any hope of being heard ever.
  
  U.S.-based historian Yasmin Saikia's book, “Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh” (Women Unlimited), launched in Karachi this past week – days after its launch in New Delhi – makes a bold attempt at bringing the stories of these women to the fore. Thus giving readers a rare window to how their bodies were used by the enemy to wound the opposition. Yasmin, professor of History and Hardt-Nickachos Chain in Peace Studies at Arizona State University, however, looks at these narratives as a learning curve for the people of the region. She says in an e-mail interview, “Their memories educate us and enable us to focus on human issues that are part of war but are overlooked. Both telling and listening to this human story is a site for developing our own humanity beyond violence.”
  
  Alongside focussing on the silent sufferings of Bengali Bangladeshi women, she draws attention to the ‘Bihari' women languishing in camps, stateless, abused, for four decades in Bangladesh. With Bengali Bangadeshis considering them the enemy and they not being the priority for the Pakistan Government either, the Biharis are in a pathetic situation. Underlines Yasmin, “It is high time that both Bangladesh and Pakistan address this issue. Without solving their issue, I, as a historian and a South Asian person (the author belongs to Assam), cannot accept that liberation and freedom have been achieved for the people of the Subcontinent. Liberation must be a shared experience, not a selective gift. Our leaders and politicians must show the courage to address it because otherwise we cannot say we are free, de-colonised people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” Edited excerpts:
  
  Many women suffered during the Bangladesh War, but the official narrative focused on bravery. Even then, only a few women's bravery got recognised. What was the psyche behind it?
  
  Men have always assumed they are the defenders of nation, home and family, while women are seen as the ones to be protected. But when war happens, women and children are the first casualty of violence that war brings. In the Bangladesh War, there were many women who joined the forces and showed an incredible desire to fight. They, like the men, were responding to the call of nationalism and patriotism. However, the women were not given equal opportunity to serve. Generally speaking, women who received training to fight were placed in secondary roles to serve the men as nurses, first-aid workers and helpers to assist the wounded men who returned from the battlefield. They were thus, once again, reduced into the service of men. If you see worldwide, only recently women have been inducted into the armed forces. Men approach the institution of the military as a site of performance of masculinity and women's femininity is seen as undermining that ethos and display of bravado.
  
  How important is it to record our oral history than just banking on institutional history?
  
  When institutional history denies voice to the people and cannot explain how an event has impacted the people who experienced the power and process of history making, we have to turn to other methods like oral history to memorialise an event and its impact. This does not mean oral history debunks the existing written record, but the purpose is to add to the information and reveal the hidden, invisible and inchoate that is deleted, suppressed and submerged within institutional and nationalist history. By engaging the human voices, it helped me understand the 1971 war not in the language of theoreticians and commentators, but in the lived experiences of the people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. When we privilege military history as official history, we privilege male voices, men's experiences, and masculine violence. We need to find alternative voices for an inclusive, human understanding of who we are.
  
  What can the world learn from this gender war?
  
  The 1971 war is one of the worst cases of violence against women in the 20th Century. It is also one of the most hidden and invisible stories. But once we scratch the surface, we know the heinous reach of violence against women that is used as a tool during an armed struggle. We have to ask why men assault women in peacetimes and wartimes. What is the purpose behind this violence and what can be done to address them to transform men's attitude toward women?
  
  In what condition are the less heard ‘Bihari' Bangladeshis living in the camps since the war?
  
  ‘Bihari' are multiple groups of people, basically Urdu-speaking, who were from different parts of India originally and migrated to East Pakistan after 1947. The native Bangla speakers viewed them as anti-Liberation and by extension pro-Pakistan. This is a problematic assumption because a vast number of Biharis in East Pakistan (before Bangladesh was formed) had nothing to do with politics. Of course, some were actively supporting the Pakistan Army. They give different reasons for this. Some said, ‘We fought because we could not be involved in destroying the nation that we had built together.' Others said, ‘We supported the Pakistan Army because Muslim League ka bhut sawar tha . We did not think of our support as violence, we were trying to save Pakistan.' However, this sentiment is not understood by the Bengalis of Bangladesh in general. They have been reduced to enemy and as enemy they are seen as deserving punishment. So Biharis have been pushed into internment camps — there are 63 of them. There, they live in inhuman conditions. In Camp Geneva, one of the largest camps, people are stuck in small containers, which they call home. There is a lot of violence against women there, drug abuse and crimes are common. Bangladeshi society points fingers at them, once again, and claim that the camps are havens for criminals. But they do not take into account the dehumanisation that they, the free citizens of Bangladesh, are subjecting them to. When we exclude people from society and do not accord them basic human respect we cannot expect them to respond to us humanely.
  
  How emotionally taxing was your research considering you had to hear so many narratives of violence?
  
  I have been emotionally and psychologically injured many times throughout the research. But the most heartening part was that beyond the deep, dark memories of violence, I found that people in the Subcontinent have an incredible capacity to highlight human issues and emotions. If you ask me if I would do this kind of research again, my answer is yes because I have learned the power of history. The power of history is in humanising us.

  

  
  

• India: Bohra muslim women speak out against circumcision

  November 2011, by c-info
  (From: Outlook Magazine, Dec 05, 2011)
  
  The Yin, Wounded
  A primitive rite for Bohra women sees its first murmurs of protest
  
  by Debarshi Dasgupta
  
  A Cutting Tradition
  
  Female circumcision, now widely referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM)
  Dawoodi Bohra Muslims are Ismaili Shias and trace their origins to the region in and around Egypt, from where they might have adopted the practice besides other local customs. Now intrinsic to their identity.
  Most of the community lives in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Population: 10 lakh. Are prosperous traders and well educated.
  Most Bohras are under the control of the clergy, headed by the Syedna. Those who question the clergy’s authority find themselves excommunicated.
  Bohra girls undergo genital mutilation when they are seven years old. It is a clandestine ritual unlike male circumcision that is publicly celebrated. No other Muslim sect in India observes this ritual.
  The hood of the clitoris is cut off. This is followed by application of an antiseptic and an indigenous medicine called abeer that cools.
  The crude mutilation of the clitoris exposes the nerve endings and is meant to discourage
  masturbation and limit possibility of sexual pleasure from clitoral stimulation
  The procedure is called khatna, it is carried out by select elderly women of the community and often without medical supervision, using just a razor
  Little details are available of the extent of this practice, given the secrecy. There are claims, though, that some choose to go to hospitals to get it done.
  Justified in the name of community traditions and religious sanction. Critics, however, say there is no mention of it in the Quran.
  Online forums like Rage of Bohri Women are encouraging women of the community to speak up.
  
  ***
  
  It has been 53 years since she was subjected to the agony. But as Zenab Bano, a retired political science professor in Udaipur, recounts the horror of that day, the wound is laid bare all over again—still raw, still unhealed. Barely seven years old then, she was told to go with her friend and her grandmother to a function for children at the end of which she would get a gift. “Before I realised what was happening, there was this woman pulling down my undergarment,” she says. “I had no idea what she was doing. It hurt a lot and I cried.” What Bano describes is the female circumcision ritual called khatna that most Bohra Muslim girls in India had to go through then. And which is still a rite of passage for many even today.
  
  
  “One may perhaps cite health benefits to male circumcision. But for women, there’s nothing but pain,” says Tasleem.
  
  
  What happened to Bano was never openly talked about within her household. “Whenever I asked my mother about it, she would say it’s nothing and that it’s done to all,” she says. The efforts of a 42-year-old Bohra woman from Mumbai, however, may finally bring the taboo subject to light, despite the cold indifference of orthodox members. Tasleem (who doesn’t want to reveal her surname), the mother of a 19-year-old girl, launched an online petition this October to try and get Bohra high priest Mohammed Burhanuddin to put an end to this archaic ritual. She sent her campaign material, including a large cardboard blade embossed with a photograph of a wailing girl being circumcised, to Burhanuddin’s office, but got no response. This campaign has now been picked up by Indian Muslim Observer, a website dedicated to Muslim affairs, for broader dissemination amongst other Muslims. According to Tasleem, khatna is still widely practised. “It still happens among rich, poor, the middle class,” she says. “I’d say 90 per cent still practise it.” Bohra reformist and scholar Asghar Ali Engineer too acknowledges that female circumcision is still very much prevalent. “But it would be difficult to ascertain the scale as it is a very hush-hush affair. In big cities like Bombay, it is done is hospitals right after birth and in smaller towns it is done around the age of six.”
  
  Khatna is a tradition the Bohras trace back to their origins in Africa, one they continue with because they see this as an attempt to stay true to their faith. However, most Bohra women and men even today would rather keep this practice a secret rather than question a custom that is now universally seen as a gross violation of a woman’s body.
  
  “There has to be zero tolerance for something downright degrading like this,” says Tasleem. “One can argue that there are certain health benefits to male circumcision, but for women there is nothing but pain. In fact, it’s pure gender bias because it’s meant to suppress a girl’s sexual desire (see info box). You don’t really castrate a man, do you? He can go on raping, that’s fine, but a woman must be under control.”
  
  Tasleem herself was lucky to have had parents who spared her the pain and indignity, something her daughter can also thank Tasleem for. Very few Bohras have signed up so far for Tasleem’s campaign; most who have are non-Bohra Muslims and Hindus. It is an uphill task, for it’s not just conservative women who force circumcision on their daughters but, in at least one instance according to Tasleem, even a liberal woman based in Dubai, who even as she sends her daughter to an international school chose to bring her to Mumbai to be circumcised.
  
  When contacted by Outlook, Quresh Ragib, who handles public relations at the high priest’s office, flatly refused to discuss Tasleem’s petition. “I am not interested in discussing this non-issue. The real reason behind this petition is propaganda. They are just using you like tissue paper,” he said.
  
  But even as some within the community may find the ritual abhorrent, they continue to perpetuate khatna because it guarantees support from the Bohra clergy and members. As one Bohra father put it to Outlook, many parents who choose not to circumcise their girls fear being excommunicated from a community that is closely knit under the influence of its clergy, which supports the practice but doesn’t enforce it directly. Not following traditions, like female circumcision, can also preclude important milestones in the life of a Bohra girl, like misaaq (initiation ceremony into adulthood) and exclusion even after death by not being allowed burial at a communal graveyard. “Who wants to take up a fight with the community?” he asks. “We just lie each time somebody asks us if we have got our two daughters circumcised.”
  
  There seems to be no religious sanction for khatna. “It has nothing to do with Islam,” says Asghar Ali Engineer, “as the Quran doesn’t mention it. There may be some controversy about its mention in the Hadith but the fact is that it is an attempt to suppress sexuality so that women do not go astray.” One invalidated theory supports the idea that the Bohras, who are essentially a trading community and would travel often on long voyages, adopted this practice to prevent their women from having extra-marital affairs in their absence. Another prominent Bohra Muslim and a noted social activist, J.S. Bandukwala, tells Outlook that the practice stopped in his family with his mother. “The family felt it was not needed at all. It’s not mentioned in the Quran and even leads to unhealthy consequences.”
  
  Indeed, more than just an abuse of women’s rights, khatna can also cause medical complications if executed in unhygienic conditions or by an untrained pair of hands wielding the blade. Bano, who is researching abuse of women in south Rajasthan for a project sanctioned by the University Grants Commission, is documenting actual instances where female circumcision did go horribly wrong. This includes a case where a Bohra girl had to be hospitalised in Udaipur a few years back because she had bled excessively after suffering a cut deeper than what was intended. It reminded Bano of the time her childhood friend went through the same trauma.
  
  Because it still tends to get done secretly, even Bano has little idea if conditions have improved at all. “One does not really know if the dais use the same kind of razor blade as in my time, if the blade is new or is it sterilised,” she says. In a paper titled ‘All for Izzat’ that she wrote in 1991, Rehana Ghadially, a retired professor from IIT-Bombay and who suffered the indignity herself, profiled a 75-year-old woman who used a “rusted barber’s razor duly blessed by the clergy” and a small stone to sharpen her razor. But even if it is medically supervised and hygienic these days, it doesn’t make the rationale for female circumcision any more acceptable.
  
  The practice finds mention in a 2009 cable on the Bohra community from the US consulate in Mumbai. Detailing an interaction between six Bohra women and consulate representatives, the women reportedly “affirmed that female circumcision was practised in their community, ordained and supported by the Syedna’s decrees”. Terming the practice “medieval”, the cable (among those made public by Wikileaks) adds that they “acknowledged that for males, the circumcision is for health reasons and that for women the procedure is to curb sexual desire and prevent wives from straying from their husbands”. Neelam Gorhe, a women’s rights advocate and member of the Maharashtra legislative council, is cited in the cable as someone who has come across such cases.
  
  When contacted, Gorhe, also a gynaecologist, did affirm she knew women from “certain western states and a certain section of the society whose clitorises—and not just their tips—had been completely removed.” According to her, the first step in trying to deal with this practice is to acknowledge that it actually happens. “Rather than ban this with force, this has to go along with social transformation and be carried out in a manner that’s participatory and democratic,” she says. Tasleem’s petition, whether successful or not at this stage, may just provide the chance to begin a conversation on the subject.
  
  =========
  
  “It Was Very Scary. I Was Mortified.”
  Three Bohra sisters recount the horror of having to go through the community’s rite of passage
  
  The three Ranalvi sisters—Ummul (50), Tasleema (49) and Masooma (45)—are among the courageous few who speak openly about the morbidity of being forced into circumcision when they were children. “You can’t imagine how it felt to have a part of your body violated, one that is so private, so gentle, so tender,” says Ummul. “It was very traumatic, very painful.”
  
  Like other Bohra girls, they too weren’t told what exactly was going to happen to them. “It was a time when parents did not even know how to prepare their daughters. They just took you to somebody’s house and had it done,” Ummul tells us.
  
  Recalling the horror, youngest sister Masooma too says the first sense of foreboding came when—like her sisters before—she too found herself in a dark, little room in central Mumbai. “It was a very scary experience. I was mortified,” she recollects.
  
  It didn’t help that the sisters had a very progressive father. “My father was a rebel who had no fear of being excommunicated. Had he known about this, he would have completely stopped it. My mother was pressured into it by her in-laws,” says Masooma.
  
  In a paper on the subject, retired IIT-Bombay professor Rehana Ghadially says that Bohra girls are circumcised around age seven as they are considered innocent enough not to understand what is happening to them but at the same time mature enough to continue the tradition if they have a daughter. “Being a child, they just coaxed you into it and by the time you understood, you had lost the opportunity,” says Ummul.
  
  Looking back, the Ranalvi sisters also recall how the circumcision happened in a crude and unhygienic manner with just a blade and no medical supervision. “I’m told the practice has evolved somewhat, that the women are more trained and professional,” says Ummul. The three sisters themselves have gone on to marry non-Bohras. They have also spared their daughters the nightmare they themselves went through.
  
  The sisters are also determined to lend their support to any campaign against female circumcision. They wonder why something so cruel should persist today. “It curtails a woman’s response,” says Tasleema. “Why subjugate her? There is no advantage for women. It has to be banned. But it won’t help if only those cut off from the community, who do not have to any more live in Bohra ghettos, speak up.”

  

  
  

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