On October 17, 2022, the Supreme Court of India in a matter related to the custody of a baby girl child living with her foster parents for close to a decade, simply dismissed a Special Leave Petition filed by her foster parents (017765/2022) by simply observing that “We see no reason to interfere”. The dismissal of the SLP by the highest court of the land, that too in a sensitive matter where a nine-year-long custody of a baby girl has been unsettled by the Allahabad High Court, who was living with her foster parents since she was three and a half months old, appears strange. It has upended the normative universe of the minor child. It is therefore worthwhile to scrutinise it.

Considering the fact that, unlike any other custody dispute between estranged parents where the child in question knows who his/her biological parents are, in this case, the High Court itself acknowledges that “We are conscious of the fact that ….. the respondents whom she-lives with- [the child baby girl] knows as her real parents”. The High Court ruled that the ‘paramount welfare’ of the minor child lies in changing her custody.

Essential facts of the Story

A three-and-a-half-month-old baby girl (born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the biological father works), was given away by adoption to a professor and his wife in April 2014, who are issueless.  The biological mother, with three more children, is the sister of the foster father. The biological mother and the foster mother are first cousins. To get the adoption legally sanctified, a notarised deed of adoption was made, wherein both parties duly signed the document along with other witnesses. [The High Court verdict (Para 14) acknowledges this as an “arrangement between the parties”]. Besides this, another document (enclosed by the biological parents in their petitions), a long email to the Consulate General of India in Jeddah, dated 25 June 2019, also admits two things: (a) that they gave away the baby with mutual consent, (b) they didn’t intend to take back the baby girl.

Records and judgment of the trial court testify that within weeks of having given away the baby girl, they asked for money through email and the payment was made through cheques.   They kept spending their almost three months-long summer vacations with the baby girl at the foster parent’s home, except for the year 2019, when the biological parents filed a case of habeas corpus in the Delhi High Court. Having ‘ordered’ to meet the baby (which they chose not to meet), the case was dismissed on the ground of territorial jurisdiction. At the end of that very month, i.e., August 2019, they filed another case, under the relevant sections of the Guardian and Wards Act, 1890, at the Family Court for the custody of their daughter. By this time, August 2019, the baby girl was over five years of age and was leading a happy, good quality, and comfortable life with the foster parents, as per the records, including the records of cross-questioning (jirah) of the biological father in the trial court.

Studying this case, I am reminded of an essay (1986), Violence and the World by Robert M. Cover, which I read recently. Showing the relationship between legal interpretations and violence, Cover says, “Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death” and that, “Legal interpretive acts signal and occasion the imposition of violence upon others: A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, and even his life”.

The strangeness, which I have mentioned above, further gets accentuated when one closely reads and compares the Allahabad High Court judgment dated September 21, 2022 with the finding of the Family Court (May 30, 2022), which was set aside by the High Court. The Family Court verdict, inter alia, categorically stated that unsettling the custody of the minor child would have a devastating effect on her physical, emotional, intellectual and psychological health.

There is not just internal inconsistency, unsubstantiated assumptions and, importantly, the wrong application of facts by the authorities in the instant case before the High Court judgment. The argument also has a major design flaw (a methodological problem in selecting the interpretative tools). To offset –and reject–all the child-centric and pro-welfare reasoning of the Family Court judgement, the High Court invoked the judicial discretion of parens patriae

Before examining the justification of invoking the judicially imposed discretionary power of parens patriae, it is important and necessary to share one more aspect of this narrative in the close to three years-long legal battle. This would perhaps shed some light on the case, of assistance in future, to couples without children looking forward to adopting a baby. In the midst of the proceedings of the Family Court, since August 2019, the biological parents initiated a criminal case of abduction against the foster parents at the executive magistrate’s court, in October 2021, concealing the civil case initiated by themselves in the Family Court. This throws an interesting question: Does the executive Magistrate have the power to take cognisance of a case when the Family Court is already seized with the matter? The High Court, in this specific separate case, granted a stay in December 2021 which came to be disposed of in December 2022. This case had already become infructuous, as it came to be disposed of only after the civil case was already decided, and complied with, in October 2022, and the baby’s custody had been unsettled.

A hasty verdict delivered on factually wrong assumptions

To begin with, the case was decided by the High Court with a lot of haste. In just two, effectively maiden hearings, the High Court closed the arguments. Such was the hurry that the High Court they did not even think it appropriate to interview the child, unlike the Family Court which interviewed the minor child in May 2022 to ascertain her wish. During this interview, the girl child, inter alia, stated that she wants to live with her foster parents and also that she cannot sleep without her foster mother. She was clear about this choosing her foster parents over going back to her biological parents, who had, by then, been meeting the baby each week in the mediation centre of the Family Court during the trial. It seems clear that if such procedural haste was not shown by the High Court, the infirmities that exist in the judgment, to which I will come shortly, could have been avoided.

While denying the plea by the foster parents’ counsel to interview the minor child, the High Court observed that “the child was denied access to her [biological] parents” and thus  “as the child is living with the respondents since she was three and a half months old and barely got the chance to know her parents, interviewing her or knowing her wishes would have served no useful purpose as the child would want to remain in the custody of the person with whom she is residing who she knows as her own parents”. This observation not just reeks of assumption, but is even factually wrong and in absolute contradiction with the findings of the Family Court. According to the Family Court judgment and records, from 2014 to 2018, the foster father’s sister with her children spent every summer vacation at the professor’s (foster father) residence, where, needless to say, the baby girl too was living. It is also noted by the Family Court that for the first time, they got a visa issued in the name of the girl in July 2018, more than four years after giving away the baby girl. This specific observation of the High Court that the baby child was denied access is factually wrong.

The list of infirmities does not end here. To buttress the point of denying the interview of the baby child, the High Court cited Thrity Hoshie Dolikuka Vs. Hoshiam Shavaksha Dolikuka and Nil Ratan Kundu and Ors. vs Abhijit Kundu. Strangely, the facts of both cases are very different from the instant case and thus have been wrongly relied upon. In Thrity Hoshie Dolikuka, the estranged parents were litigating the custody of the daughter in which the Bombay High Court, categorically observed that “The report of the Social Welfare Expert records that the interviews, the minor girl faced before the several judges cast a gloom on the sensitive mind of the tender girl and caused a lot of strain and depression on her”. Whereas, in Nil Ratan, the maternal grandparents were seeking custody of the grandson, fearing for his life, as there was an allegation of murder of his daughter by his son-in-law. However, in Lekha vs P. Anil Kumar, the Supreme Court has observed that “The High Court committed a grave error in not ascertaining the wishes of the minor, which has consistently been held by the Courts to be of relevance in deciding the grant of custody of minor children.”

In a series of judgments such as Gaurav Nagpal vs Sumedha Nagpal by the Supreme Court, it has been held that the paramount welfare of the child includes, inter alia, mental (intellectual) and emotional well-being. Rather than appreciating the finding of the Family Court which are in line with the principles laid down by the SC, the High Court curtly observes, “The family court was swayed away by the fact that the detachment of the child from her maternal uncle and aunt who have brought her up as her own child, would have perilous effect on the physiology of the child.” (Para 31) The High Court doesn’t provide a cogent reason for making the claim that why the Family Court would have got swayed away except assuming that the child never got an opportunity to meet her parents. This point, as stated above, is factually incorrect, as per the records and the trial court verdict.

Another major flaw of the High Court judgment is the inverse inference that the High Court draws, without providing any reason when the foster parent exercised the right to appeal against a part of the Family Court judgment. The High Court notes that “The vehemence of the respondents in not allowing the child to meet her birth [biological] parents are evident from their resistance in even allowing the child to see her birth parents once in a year for 15 days”(para 31).  This observation, however, is in sharp contrast with the findings of the Family Court, which has looked into the evidence, and noted that till 2018, every year, during summer vacation, the petitioners used to stay with the respondents.

It is astonishing to note that the High Court instead of taking stock of the internal inconsistency in its judgment, comes to hold the foster parents responsible. The High Court observes that the foster parents may “… have fostered the child as their own but should have allowed the child to know as to who her birth parents are, to meet them, to spend time with them….”  (Para 34).

Concealing the identity of, and denying access to, the biological parents by the foster parents are the two prongs on which the High Court judgment rests. Making the case stand on these prongs, however, is factually wrong and internally inconsistent. This gets testified from the interview of the baby girl taken by the Family Court. It is not that the baby does not recognise the biological mother or know who she is. On being asked by the Family Court judge, the baby testifies that the mother who gave birth to her is her foster father’s sister (abba ki behen). 

Thus, the assumption of the High Court that the identity of the biological mother was concealed from the baby girl is absolutely wrong. It comes out clearly from the baby’s testimony, which has been referred to by the High Court. That the baby girl calls her biological mother phuphi (paternal aunt) is obvious. For the baby girl has grown up over the last eight years calling her phuphi. This is how things were supposed to be if one refers to the content of the notarised deed of adoption. Also, after the Family Court verdict dated May 30, 2022, and the High Court’s interim order of June 2022, the baby girl had already lived with her biological parents for a fortnight from June 23 to July 9, 2022. This additional crucial fact also seems to have been missed by the High Court verdict of September 21, 2022, while observing that the biological identity of the baby has been concealed.

This series of internal contradictions in the judgment also suggest that the High Court has taken the words of the petitioners at face value without subjecting them to corroboration from the records as well as subjecting them to any judicial scrutiny. This may have happened due to the inordinate haste shown in the proceedings. One wonders how many such cases of baby girls have really been decided by High Courts so hastily.

The curious logic of invoking the doctrine of parens patriae

That said, now comes the most tenuous (perhaps absurd too), legal interpretative act of the High Court in this judgment. After neutralising all the child-centric and pro-welfare arguments proffered by the learned Family Court by way of the reasons stated above, the High Court invoked the doctrine of parens patriae. This doctrine gives, “… the power of the State to intervene against an abusive or negligent parent, legal guardian or informal caretaker, and to act as the parent of any child or individual who is in need of protection.”  The High Court cites Kamala Devi vs the State of Himachal Pradesh as a precedent to invoke the doctrine of parens patriae. However, the facts of this case also, like most of the cases cited by the High Court, are not just distinct but contrary to the facts of the case in hand. In this case, the father was contesting the custody of the child, against whom the allegation was that he is a habitual drunkard, and resorted to domestic violence. In the present case, the foster parents (father, a distinguished academic, and mother a homemaker pursuing a doctoral degree), have got no such proven blemishes. 

As a caveat against the unwarranted misuse of the doctrine of parens patriae, the Supreme Court while setting aside the Kerala High Court judgment in Shaheen Jahan vs Ashokan K.M. (2018) held “… the Constitutional Courts may also act as Parens Patriae so as to meet the ends of justice.  But the said exercise of power is not without limitation.  The courts cannot in every and any case invoke the Parens Patriae doctrine… “I would like to briefly state the brief facts of this case. Doing will allows us to understand the potential danger of the parens patriae doctrine and how it is predicated on a subjective understanding of actors invoking it as there is neither definition nor an understanding as to what it entails.

The question before the Kerala High Court was to ascertain the validity of the marriage of a Hindu major girl, who had converted to Islam and married Shafeen Jahan. The Kerala High Court, instead of taking the choice of the girl into account, invoking the doctrine of parens patriae, not just annulled the marriage, but observed “As per Indian tradition, the custody of an unmarried daughter is with the parents until she is properly married.”

This High Court judgment, like the Kerala High Court judgment, unjustifiably invokes the said doctrine. Doing so, afforded the chance to come up with its own understanding of the paramount welfare of this child, which, however, sharply contradicts the existing precedents on the subject. The invocation of the said doctrine in such a sensitive case even further demonstrates that legal interpretation has the potential to perpetuate violence in that a minor girl who was raised like their own daughter by issueless foster parents was uprooted from her natural environment. Importantly, the submissions of the biological parents barely put emphasis on the word, welfare, of the child. This is something pointed out clearly in the Family Court judgment, and apparently ignored by the High Court.

The reasoning of the High Court leaves one with a few of the following important questions, besides the infirmities already highlighted:

1.  If at all, not letting the biological parents meet the baby is the greatest concern of the High Court, then, why didn’t it uphold the Family Court decision of the 15-day annual custody to the biological parents, rather than unsettling custody itself?

2. Once the notarised Deed of Adoption is acknowledged by the High Court, why didn’t it go on to validate the adoption? Could Hindu Law have provided this scope of not validating adoption/custody, despite having acknowledged the notarised deed?

3. The content of the Deed has also been misquoted by the High Court. The content of the Deed doesn’t provide for the right (of meeting) to the biological parents. Yet, they were spending each summer vacation at the foster parent’s home, with the baby girl. This misquoting is a further testimony of the haste involved in the High Court judgment, despite having written it two months after closing the arguments. (Para 10 and 11)

4. The High Court judgment appears to be un-imaginative when it provides for the foster parents to go to Jeddah to meet the baby. One wonders, if they won’t be allowed to meet the baby there, will the jurisdiction of the Allahabad High Court reach beyond the borders of India?

There has been a clear case of miscarriage of justice against the baby girl.  This story deserves to be shared in the public domain with the additional purpose of letting it be known to all those people, without children, looking forward to adopting a baby. This heart-wrenching story also throws much light on the specific characteristics of the institution of family, besides the workings of the institution of both the judiciary and executive. This story, therefore, therefore becomes a story with a larger human interest. 

The order of the High Court may be read here

The order of the Family Court may be read here

(The author is currently pursuing Masters in Law at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)

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The post How the 9-year-old custody of a girl child is unsettled after a bitter legal battle appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
In Pratapgarh, a village that could be anywhere in the Hindi belt, a young man, Ravi, gets to know that his wife, Seema, is pregnant with a girl child, third time in a row. He wants her to get an abortion because he wants a male child. He forces Seema to accompany him to a doctor who agrees to conduct the abortion though the foetus is past the 20-week deadline for a medical termination of pregnancy. Seema undergoes the abortion but is critical, having lost a lot of blood. She is rescued by her sister Sneha, an idealistic young doctor who rushes her to the hospital and threatens to call the police.
 
This is the plot of the fourth and fifth episode of Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (I, a woman, can achieve anything’), a soap produced by Population Foundation of India (PFI), a Delhi-based population research and advocacy organisation.
 
What marked this soap apart was its use of education-entertainment, or ‘edutainment’, to talk about women’s reproductive health and gender rights. Through its protagonist Sneha Mathur, the series dealt with topics such as child marriage, age at first pregnancy, spacing, family planning, sex selection, quality of healthcare and domestic violence.
 
The serial ran for two seasons on the national channel, Doordarshan, from 2014 to 2016 and was watched by 58 million viewers in its first season, according to television audience measurement and Indian readership survey. The two seasons and their reruns together reached over 400 million people, according to Doordarshan.
 
The project, funded by United Kingdom’s department of international development, Gates Foundation and supported by United Nations Population Fund, managed to change attitudes, according to a 2015 PFI study.
 
While 73% women knew about the legal age of marriage before the show, their numbers increased to 83% after the first season, the study found. Before the serial, 57% men cited the fear of side-effects for not using modern methods of contraception. This number fell to 32% after the first season.
 
How popular entertainment became a tool for social messaging
 
Why is popular entertainment being used to deliver critical social messages on gender rights? Because it can reach and convince the target audience fast, according to activists.
 
Here are some discouraging trends in women’s empowerment: In 2015-16, only 53.5% women in the reproductive age-group used modern methods of contraception, a decline from 56.3% in 2005-06, according to National Family Health Survey-4 data. In 2015-16, 28.8% of married women faced spousal violence, the figure is 31.1% in rural areas.
 
Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the PFI and a 40-year veteran of the development sector, said she was disappointed and frustrated at how little organisations such as hers had impacted social norms and attitudes. Most information education communication initiatives had shown little impact, she said.
 
 Then, on a visit to a Gates Foundation conference on behaviour change communication, she became aware of the impact of entertainment education, or edutainment as it is called. In South Africa, Soul City, a television series in the 1990s, talked about a range of health and development issues such as HIV/AIDS, rape, disability and alcoholism and created positive impact on people’s behaviour.
 
 Could such an approach work in India? With this thought, Muttreja sought the expertise of Arvind Singhal, a US-based communication and social change expert.
 
Singhal used the concept of “positive deviance” in the show. This meant nudging communities to re-discover traditional wisdom and act on it. Singhal and Muttreja documented 60 cases of those who had defied regressive social norms but stayed rooted in their communities.
 
“We made sure that the serial had great aesthetics like a Hindi film because we wanted to be aspirational,” said Muttreja.  The team approached theatre and film director Feroz Abbas Khan, who made films such as Gandhi, My Father, to direct the series. The script took a year and a team of 12 experts, ranging from sociologists to gynaecologists and theatre artists, contributed.
 
The plot stayed real but pushed for social change
 
The series used characters who reflected rural reality–Sneha’s brother, Purab, is an unemployed alcoholic who beats his wife and doesn’t think about contraception. Despite this, Sneha’s aunt prefers him over his sisters. Purab’s wife, Ratna, has three children, is pregnant again and has little decision-making power.
 
But the serial shows Purab reforming into a responsible and positive character.
 
“People are tired of showing evil mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law plotting against each other,” said Muttreja. “They are ready for positive content that talks about real-life issues.”
 
The makers used multiple tools to increase the series impact–TV, radio, social media and celebrity spots.
 
Each episode ended with a message and a quiz and a number on which to give a missed call. When called back, respondents could either answer the quiz or participate in a discussion. The serial received 1.4 million calls from across the country over two years.  Men and women called and shared their opinions, poems and vowed to change. The calls were recorded and analysed.
 
‘Sneha Clubs’, where viewers discussed issues raised, were formed with the help of 10 nonprofits in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. The show was also converted to radio, with readings from Sneha’s diaries, and broadcast on 230 All India Radio stations. It was also translated into 12 languages for regional telecast.
 
To reach ‘media-dark’ regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh–areas with little TV–a radio adaption was broadcast using six community radios.
 
Impact: Disapproval of early marriage for girls rose from 23% to 43%
 
To assess the impact of the serial after the first season, the PFI undertook an evaluation of 30,000 households in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. These two states account for 15% of India’s population and are in need of greater awareness about family planning.
 
It was found that the programme reached 36% of TV-owning and 72% of radio-owning population in these two states. Of its viewership, 52% were women.
 
As we said earlier, the show helped boost awareness about critical gender issues. Among women with married children, awareness about the legal age of marriage was 59% before the start of the series, rising to 80% after the show was screened. Around 23% of these women felt that early marriage leads to loss of opportunity before the show; after the first season, the numbers rose to 43%.
 
Only 2% men felt that marriage meant loss of opportunity before the show; the numbers grew to 31% after the first season.
 
There was also a shift in beliefs about the age at a woman should have her first child–before the start of the show, 57% of mothers-in-law voted in favour of 21-25 years. After the first season, 86% agreed that this age bracket was ideal for motherhood.
 
The show also appears to have reduced the number of women who believed that a girl shouldn’t return to her parental home once she marries–from 45% at the start of the season to 28% after it ended. The series also convinced many female viewers that it was not okay for men to hit their wives on the suspicion of infidelity–66% supported the ‘punishment’ before the show, and it came down to 44% afterwards.
 
There are other instances of how the show’s protagonist inspired communities. In Nayagaon village in Madhya Pradesh, where no girl had ever gone to college, Ladkuwar Khushwaha, a 16-year-old girl decided to continue her studies after school. While her parents supported her, the village objected. It is alleged that those who opposed her even rammed a car against her legs. But Khushwaha persisted and today, ten girls from her village go to college.
 

 
In Chhattarpur village in Bihar, a few men formed a group and vowed to stop domestic abuse, plan their families and help their wives with housework. “Ghar mein haath bataeinge, hum khana bhi banaenge (We will help our wives in chores, we will also cook),” was their slogan.

 
 
The show expands, but funding has now run out
 
When the makers of the serial found that 40% of their viewers were between 15 to 24,  the ministry of health and family welfare requested them to include the government’s adolescent programme, Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK), National Adolescent Health Programme, in the second season.
 
The second-season’s focus was on teen problems. It talked about Prita, Sneha’s sister, and the challenges she faced running a girl’s football team in the village.
 
Farhan Akhtar, Bollywood actor and director, volunteered to be a sutradhar or narrator in the second season and talked about gender equality after each episode.
 
“We, then made eight films around the six themes of the [RKSK] programme of nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, mental health, preventing injuries and substance abuse,” said Muttreja.
 
PFI researchers created the name ‘Saathiya’, meaning friend, for peer educators who run the programme. CDs of the films were made part of the kit distributed to peer educators.
 
After the last episode ended in 2016, the makers found it difficult to find funders for a third season, despite the show’s popularity. There is little corporate funding available for projects that revolve around behaviour change, said Muttreja.
 
The makers calculated the cost of production, outreach, promotion and interactive voice response service and the reach (400 million as per Doordarshan), at Rs 1.08 per capita for both seasons or Rs 0.72 per capita per year.

(Yadavar is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
 
We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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The World Health Organization (WHO) defines intimate partner violence as “… any behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological or sexual harm to those in the relationship, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.” This is the most common form of violence faced by women worldwide. According to a 2013 study titled The Global Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women by K.M Devries, 30 per cent of women globally aged 15 and older have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence.

The study includes data on a variety of parameters and ranks countries based on how well or poorly women are treated there. India ranks 131, which may be higher than perceived arch rival Pakistan’s lowly 150^th rank, but is way lower than Ghana, Tunisia and Uganda… even Iran scored higher at 116^th!

But it doesn’t stop at just domestic abuse. India’s record is marred by poor scores on several other key parameters. The average Indian girl gets 5 years of schooling, while the average Iranian girl gets 8. India also scores poorly on the financial inclusion front with a meagre 43 per cent which pales in comparison to even Iran where the corresponding figure is 87 per cent. Women’s share of seats in the Indian Parliament is at an abysmal 12 per cent, well below even Nepal that has 30 per cent. At 81 per cent, Nepal also trumps India’s 29 per cent in women’s employment figures.

The post India’s daughters: Battered, Unlettered and Penniless appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo credit: Nesclick

The post Window to Real Gujarat #4: How Modi’s ‘Model’ State Govt. Dealt With Gujarat’s Shocking Child Sex Ratio appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Thakur Das belonged to a respectable family. His father Mehta Gurmukh Singh and the grandfather of Mehta Mast Ram, one of the Lambardar of the village. Thakur Das received his early education at his village school. Later, he had to leave his home for English education. He first went to Jammu and then to Lahore.

Photo Credit- Soumya Abidi

Hardly anyone had the faint idea that Thakur Das’s journey to Lahore will create history in the lives of Muslim women. He will have to face the bitter acrimony of many Muslim stalwarts, many of them who were reformist, educationist when he raked up the issue of educating Muslim women.

While in Lahore, the fifteen-year-old Thakur Das attended an episode of Mohammadan Educational Conference in the company of his beloved teacher and mentor Maulana Nooruddin. In 1891, Thakur Das passed his matriculation examination and was renamed Shaikh Abdullah after he embraced Islam, possibly under the influence of his teacher Maulana Nooruddin.

Thakur Das was now Shaikh Abdullah as he proceeded to Aligarh for higher education where life was going to be tough for him. His dream to educate Muslim women met with stiff resistance. A disgruntled section of agitators who objected to the very idea of a school for Muslim girls always existed. Bulged partly by envy for Shaikh Abdullah and partly by misplaced religious zeal, they expressed their outrage in ingenious and dishonourable ways. In fact, the venerable Sir Syed himself was vehemently opposed to the education of women on purely moral grounds. Shaikh Abdullah, moreover, was convinced that the old educationist Sir Syed Ahmad was adamant to his belief that education would bring waywardness and cause women to break purdah and compete with men.

Soon after coming to Aligarh, he joined the Anjuman al-Farz or Duty Society set up by Sahibzada Aftab Ahmad to foster a sense of voluntary service among students. Under the influence of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, he began to take interest in social resurgence of Muslims. He attended the meetings of All India Mohammadan Educational Conference. In these meetings, the traditionalists and Muslim clerics were bitterly opposed to the idea of a Western-style education for boys being propagated by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. No one, in these meetings talked about the education of women.

As children were raised largely in zenana (women’s quarters), women’s role as a teacher of her children was especially important. Soon with Shaikh Abdullah’s continuous efforts, the crusade for women’s education acquired a momentum of its own.

In 1902, Shaikh Abdullah was made the secretary of the women’s section of Muslim Educational Conference because of his interest in women’s welfare. In a couple of years, he started a monthly educational journal for women under the name Khatoon, which aimed at creating a suitable environment for women education. The magazine continued to be published for ten years until Shaikh Abdullah was convinced that the cause of women for which he had fought had been taken up by others in different parts of the country.

Efforts by Shaikh Abdullah resulted in growing acceptance of the idea of school education of women. He wrote a proposal to promote women’s education to Begum Sultan Jahan, the ruler of Bhopal. Begum Sultan Jahan accepted the proposal and one hundred rupees per month grant were allocated to him for women’s education. In 1906, he along with his wife Waheed Jahan Begum managed to start a girl school in a rented building under the name Aligarh Zenana Madarsa with seventeen students on roll. Waheed Jahan Begum’s family helped the reformer couple to find an Ustani (a lady teacher) from Delhi. Classes were held in strictest purdah under the personal supervision of Waheed Jahan Begum. Since she had studied elementary Persian and also knew to write, she herself taught these two subjects.

With classes underway, Shaikh Abdullah wrote a letter to Lt. Governor and an inspectress were sent who gave a favourable report about the school. The Aligarh Zenana Madarsa then received a grant of Rs 17,000 with an additional monthly allowance of Rs 250. There was no looking back since then.

While funds were no longer a problem, the school was not without its share of critics and incendiaries. Sheikh Abdullah dealt with each of these situations with forceful dignity.

Finally, after long struggles, the couple succeeded and bought a plot of land called Nanak Rai Ka Bagh which contained not only a mango orchard but several other tall and dense trees for building a boarding school for girls. However, the idea of building a girl boarding school at a small distance from MAO College led to a chorus of protests from a cross-section of Muslim elites, both from Aligarh and outside, including some such as Dr Ziauddin and Viqar ul Mulq who had initially supported Shaikh Abdullah’s cause.

Unshakeable, Shaikh Abdullah went ahead with his plans for constructing a house that included classrooms, dormitories, dining halls as well as living quarters for teachers –all settled behind high walls. On November 7, 1911, the foundation stone of first girl’s hostel was laid in presence of Lady Porter, wife of the acting Lt. Governor of the United Province. The construction was completed in 1913. Later on, the Begum of Bhopal inaugurated new buildings.

Gradually the number of students grew in strength; by 1926 it had become an intermediate college under the name of Aligarh Women’s College and by 1937 it was offering graduate courses with over 250 students in various classes. The year 1937 also marked an important turn in Shaikh Abdullah’s mission. The Aligarh Women’s College became a part of the Aligarh Muslim University.

All these while, Waheed Jahan Begum served as the backbone of the movement. She herself served as the superintendent of the boarding house for 25 years, from 1914 to 1939. She spent most of her daytime with the students, nursing and caring them. The couple was fondly called as ‘Papa Mian’ and ‘Ala Bi’ by these students, the words resembling father and mother. It was through their joint supervision that a Madarsa run in a rented building would expand into a degree college.

While working tirelessly for women’s education, amidst repetitive denunciation from the university folks, Shaikh Abdullah continued serving his alma mater in various capacities. He was a member of AMU court from 1920 till his death, and also served as Honorary Treasurer for many terms. He was also a leading advocate at Aligarh civil court. His prime interest was in the field of education and social reform but he didn’t keep himself aloof from politics.

He pleaded for modernizing the system of government so as to suit the changing needs of the time. He also served as the member of United Province Legislative Council. He also supported the Khilafat movement. In the late thirties and early forties, he was tortured by the growing differences between Hindus and Muslims. He urged the leaders of the two communities to work for political understanding and communal harmony.

Shaikh Abdullah was a man of action, humanitarian and social reform. He fought all his life for providing education of Muslim women –a task that bristled with great difficulties because of the conservatism of Muslims. He was a man ahead of his time, for he could see that women could do much better and bigger than becoming ‘able’ house-women.

(The Author is a student of Political Science at the Aligarh Muslim University)

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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The bias against having girls may be declining in Bangladesh as parents are showing an increasing indifference to the sex of their first child, experts say.

“Women’s dependence on men for protection and provision at different stages of their lives gave them a strong stake in producing sons – both to ensure their own place within their husband’s kinship group and as a form of security for their old age,” said Simeen Mahmud, coordinator of the Centre for Gender and Social Transformation (CGST) at Brac University’s Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), who has conducted research on this issue.

“But with growing number of girls going to schools and increased employment opportunities for women, these stakes have been lowered.”

The Brac Development Institute (BDI) found that a much larger portion of parents reported being indifferent to the sex of the child compared to neighbouring countries, while families already having a son were expressing an outright preference for a daughter. The findings were laid out in a study published in 2012, one of the latest reports on parents’ traditional preference for male children.

The study ‘Diverging Stories of Son Preference in South Asia: A comparison of India and Bangladesh’ was carried out in eight villages of eight districts. The BDI found that parents were less likely to discriminate between sons and daughters than in the past with respect to survival and investments in human capital.

According to a comparison of surveys of one village in Faridpur, in 1979 around 44% of women aged under 34 and 59% of women aged over 34 wanted sons, but this fell to 20% and 22% among the same age groups in 2009.

Similar studies also found 62% to 75% people preferred to have a boy during the 1970s and the 1980s. But the Brac study found around 47% people were indifferent to the sex of the child.

According to this study, Bangladesh is in a better position than neighbouring India, which is struggling with its sex ratio because of the widespread use of sex-selective abortion. Many Indian parents use ultrasound technology to find the sex of the child and abort it if it happens to be a girl.

“I am too happy with my first child- a girl – and I hope my daughter will be like me,” said Shamanta Rahman, a banker, who recently gave birth to the child.

“Both girls and boys are doing equally well. If the next child is a boy, then it would be nice for the family.

“In our society families now want a combination between girl and boy children. Mostly families ideally want a boy and a girl. Those who are happy with only daughters, they want to educate them. The discrimination is seen in low-income families mostly,” said Shamanta.

The population sex ratio in the country now stands at 93 males to 100 females while the sex ratio at birth came down from 108:100 in 1975 to 104:100 in 2009.

Simeen Mahmud of Brac University said families used to prefer sons as boys were considered to be more beneficial, but the situation has changed as girls are becoming highly educated and women’s empowerment is on rise.

Educationist and social activist Rasheda K Choudhury thinks the increased economic participation of women has enabled the change in social attitudes.

“Women’s participation in rural economies, labour force, foreign economy, and all aspects of the society is on the rise. Because of this, now they are being sent to get primary education, secondary education and even higher education,” she said.

Dr Syed Md Saikh Imtiaz, chairman at the department of women and gender studies at Dhaka University, said the rate of girls’ enrolment in education has increased and that various schemes undertaken by the government is gradually changing society.

However, although women are becoming financially independent, Dr Syed said they still face a disproportionate threat of violence.

“Incidents of rape are on the rise. The government needs to strengthen the legal system to protect girls from violence. The government’s steps can reduce discrimination against women,” he said.

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune
 

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Image: Menaka Rao

In the morning of March 10, the government school teachers of Ghata village in Haryana’s Mewat district went from door to door to urge parents to send their children to school. They came back with just 20 children, most of whom were girls.“When we go to their houses, children run out of the house and up the hill in barely two minutes,” said Zakir Hussain, the government school principal, pointing to the Aravalli ranges behind the village.

Officially, 185 children are registered in the primary grades of the school and 60 children in the middle grades. But ever since rumours began to circulate in the local Muslim Meo community in early March that schoolchildren were being administered injections that would make them sterile, parents had stopped sending them to school. Attendance had fallen to as low as 5%, claimed officials.

Government officials have clarified no injections are being administered to children.

The first rumour was triggered by a truncated video taken from the Hindi news channel ABP News. The channel runs a programme called “Viral Sach”, which deconstructs and disproves rumours. The programme’s edition, which ran on February 11, focused on rumours in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that school children were being injected with a substance that causes sterility.

In February, the Union health ministry had launched a campaign to administer the measles-rubella vaccine to children between the ages of nine months and 15 years. The campaign started with the states of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Goa, and Lakshadweep. The campaign was yet to reach Haryana.

The first half of the ABP News programme summarised the rumours that had spread in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, while the second half featured experts, including doctors, debunking them. Only the first half of the programme circulated on WhatsApp in Mewat.

Soon, another video that had been shot locally surfaced. On March 4, an eight-year-old child from Meoli village was brought to Mewat’s government medical college with symptoms of breathlessness. The child complained that he was injected on his scrotum while he was playing in the jungle by an unknown person.

Dr Sansar Chand, the director of the college said that the child was kept under observation for a day and discharged. “He was breathing fast. His systems were perfectly all right,” said Chand. “We suspect the child had an emotional outburst in public. Perhaps it was just hyperventilation.”

But it wasn’t just viral videos – some people who had relatives working in South India, particularly Bengaluru and Chennai, heard about the rumours on phone.

In Autha village, Rashida Khatoon said her son, Rehan, who works as an air conditioning mechanic in Bengaluru, told her about the rumours which he had read about online. Since then, Khatoon stopped sending her seven grandchildren to school.

Harooni Khatoon’s son Khalid called her from Chennai and told her not send his children to school. “Duniya keh rahi hai,” said Harooni, a resident of Alipore Tigra. The whole world is talking about it, not just us.
 

Looking for reason

Outside the school at Ghata village government health official Dr BS Singhal tried to reason with some men.

Singhal started by saying, “On the road, I saw an animal whose face was that of a lion and the body was that of a pig,” said Singhal. “Would you believe me if I said that?”

He waited for a moment people to react. Some of the men said “No” but did not seem to understand the point of this story. Singhal then added, “Rumours are always false. Please do not believe them.”

This hypothetical exercise to separate truth from rumours was repeated in the next school at Alipore Thirda village.

“There is no injection made in the world which can make a person sterile in just one shot,” he said.

Still, residents of the area were not convinced of and proceeded to ask him about whether their children might die from these injections.

“Ailaan nahi kiya, pakki nahi hui, tasalli nahi hui,” said Mohammed Hanif, a resident of Alipore Tigra. Hanif was adamant that only a declaration by the maulvi over the community loudspeaker stating would convince him that the rumours were false.

In three villages that Scroll.in visited, government officials had not held any public meetings regarding this issue till last week. Singhal visited two villages on Friday. Only teachers, Accredited Health Social Workers or ASHAs and other local workers were talking to people in the villages about the rumours. But without answers to worried parents’ questions about children falling sick or dying, they could do little to keep children in school. For instance, they did not know enough about what happened to the child from Meoli village to counter the claim.

But, most children went back to school during the week after Holi to write their exams, said Dinesh Shastri of the district education department. The principals of two schools confirmed the situation had improved but added that some children were still staying away.

Mehboob Khan, father of two girls who were in school that day, lingered outside the school gate just in case. “I am guarding my children,” he said.
 

Other health programmes suffer

Lack of school attendance had already caused some damage in early March. “For two weeks we could not run any government programme,” said Dr SK Kaushik of the district health department.

Every Monday, school children are given doses of iron and folic acid supplements in the form of tablets. Twice a year, children are given a dose of Albendazole as part of the deworming programme. The first dose of 2017 was due in March.
 

But data collected by the district health department indicate that over the first two weeks of March, only a small fraction of all school-going children between the ages of 10 and 19 received the dose. Of the 1.35 lakh children in this age group, only 14,000 had taken the iron and folic acid supplement, 6,500 had taken the vitamin A syrup, and 5,000 had taken the deworming tablet, said Dr SK Kaushik.

Said Dr Krishan Kumar, senior medical officer at the community health centre of Firozpur Zhirka block: “We can only give the children these supplements if they turn up in school.”

This is the first part in a series on the spread of rumours in Haryana’s Mewat district.

This reporting project has been made possible partly by funding from New Venture Fund for Communications.

This article was first published on Scroll.in
 

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Image: PTI

One complaint of child sexual abuse at a Bengaluru playschool has opened a can of worms, with several parents now coming forward to reveal the horrors that their children have faced.

On Tuesday, parents of children attending the play school and child rights activists gathered outside the playschool and alleged that it was not the first time the accused, Manju had abused children at the playschool.

Parents say that many of the other children at the playschool have now come forward and informed their parents that they have also faced abuse at the hands of the accused.

“We went to the Marathahalli police station yesterday (Tuesday) at around 8pm and were there till 4 in the morning. Five more FIRs were filed against Manju, who has been accused of sexually assaulting the child. More parents have gone to the police station this morning to file more complaints,” one of the parents told TNM.

He said that his child revealed to him that Manju had tried to assault her, and that she complained to a teacher. But the teacher allegedly dismissed the issue and only gave a ‘warning’ to Manju to not repeat such actions.

The first complaint against Manju was filed on Friday, when a cild complained to a parent about stomach in the tummy. The parent then asked the kids questions, leading to the kid revealing that Manju had sexually abused him. 

Some parents alleged that Manju was also in the washroom when the children went in.

“Sexual assault is not the first thing parents think of when children say they have belly-ache. After the incident came to light, I asked my child if Manju had done the same with them as well. The response was shocking. My child said that’s what I have been telling you – that my belly is aching. When I asked my child to describe what happened, that’s when I realised that it was sexual assault,” said the parent of a four-year-old, who goes to the same playschool.

Some parents alleged that after speaking to their children, it was revealed that Manju was present in the room when the ayya would change their clothes before nap time and that he would volunteer to take the children to the washroom.

As the protests gather steam and more parents speak out, the Marathahalli police have arrested the principal and two other officials of the playschool. According to the police, the playschool’s zonal head, Kingston D’souza, principal Veena and a senior official named Praveen were arrested on Tuesday. The police say they have slapped Section 188 of IPC on the trio and have also booked them under various sections of POCSO.

But parents allege that the three officials were taken in for questioning, and were let out on bail in the evening.

The police meanwhile have said that they will record all the statements of parents who come forward. “We are still going through the CCTV footage to see if any of the cameras have captured suspicious activities,” said a police official.

Courtesy: The News Minute

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The selective abortion of female foetuses is a social ill of huge dimensions and the pervasive prenatal sex determination tests a means used for this selective action. A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh have issued directions in a PIL filed by the Voluntary Health Association of Punjab. In its judgment, the Bench takes strong offence to the practice of female foeticide, noting,

“When a female foetus is destroyed through artificial means which is legally impermissible, the dignity of life of a woman to be born is extinguished. It corrodes the human values. The Legislature has brought a complete code and it subserves the constitutional purpose.”

The Supreme Court had previously issued several directions in March of 2013 in the case of Voluntary Health Association of Punjab v. Union of India & Ors., expressing its concern about female foeticide and the reduction of sex ratio. In fact, way back in 2001 as well, the apex court had passed a number of directions for the effective implementation of the PNDT Act. 

In a country notorious for following law more in breach, the plummeting child sex ratio should come as no surprise. The Supreme Court’s move is a welcome one. Key takeaways from the judgment delivered yesterday include recommendations that the courts which deal with the complaints under the Act be fast tracked, and requested the concerned High Courts to issue directions in that regard.

The Bench also directed the Chief Justices of each of the High Courts in the country to constitute a committee of three judges to periodically oversee the progress of the cases.

These fresh directions come barely weeks after a Bench headed by Justice Misra rebuked Google, Microsoft and Yahoo’s search engines for showing content on sex determination on its websites. The observations were made in a PIL filed by a member of the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee, Sabu Mathew George.

Interestingly, George had also sought intervention in the present matter, and was represented by Anitha Shenoy. Colin Gonsalves appeared for the petitioner, and Sanjay Parikh for the Union of India.

Click here to read full judgment.

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