Six-member group claims to give voice to mainstream women from community

Mumbai: At a time when two doctors are in the dock in Detroit for genital mutilation of minor girls, a Mumbai-based gynaecologist and a homeopath from the Dawoodi Bohra community have come out in support of khatna.

The religious practice involves cutting part of the clitoral hood, or the prepuce, of girls as young as seven years old.

The two doctors, Alefiya Bapai and Fatema Jetpurwala, both practising at Saifee Hospital, are part of a six-member group that has launched an initiative called the Dawoodi Bohra Women for Religious Freedom (DBWRF). It is the first time that women who support genital cutting as a religious practice have come out from behind the shield of anonymity.

‘Unwarranted criticism’

Their voices come at a time when there is tremendous pressure building on the community to stop the practice, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines as a human rights and child rights violation. Most recently, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi had made a strong statement on the government’s intention to bring a law to ban the practice if the community did not stop it voluntarily.

“We, the Dawoodi Bohra women, are extremely affected with all the articles that have been written and the Public Interest Litigation filed in the Supreme Court by a lawyer. We have been labelled as [someone who is] committing crimes,” said homeopath Dr. Jetpurwala, adding that the practice is followed because of the trust and belief in Shariat.

“But the kind of attention and criticism that it has garnered is unwarranted for,” she said.

While Dr. Jetpurwala said she did not conduct the procedure, she said it was harmless and equivalent to male circumcision. Calls and messages to Dr. Bapai went unanswered.

The newly launched DBWRF website says the group has been formed to “give voice to mainstream Dawoodi Bohra women who have been taken for granted as a community of whom anything could be said, and who would, in turn, do nothing”.

While the main trigger was the PIL in the Supreme Court filed by lawyer Sunita Tiwari, their social media campaigns target the two anti-khatna groups: Speak Out On FGM and Sahiyo. One of the hashtags they have been circulating says, “I am a Dawoodi Bohra woman and Sahiyo is not my voice”.

Anti-khatna activists say that open support from doctors for the practice is questionable. The WHO’s guidelines on management of health complications from female genital mutilation (FGM) state that “involvement of health-care providers in performing FGM is likely to confer a sense of legitimacy on the practice and could give the impression that the procedure is good for women’s health, or at least that it is harmless”.

Against global norms

“Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening in India. It is difficult to rationalise how a medical professional who has taken a Hippocratic Oath to ‘… abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free’ can promote khatna in India,” said Shaheeda Tavawalla-Kirtane, co-founder of Sahiyo.

She added that in one part of the world, doctors from the community are being tried for violating the laws of their country, and in India, doctors are using the argument of religious freedom to advocate a practice that is performed for non-medical reasons on a non-consenting minor girl.

She said Sahiyo was saddened to be the target of deliberate slander, especially when messages being circulated on WhatsApp and other social media platforms are blatantly untrue. “To clarify a few doubts: Sahiyo has not started a petition addressed to the Syedna and we have not filed the PIL to ban khatna in India, either. We are only trying to engage with the community to break the silence around a practice we see as a gross violation of child rights and human rights,” she said.

‘Act of desperation’

Delhi-based Masooma Ranalvi, who was the first one to start the Speak Out On FGM campaign, looks at the countering voices as an “act of desperation”.

“Two big things happened in the last one month. The topmost court of the country admitted a PIL against the practice, and the Women and Child Development Minister, without mincing any words, expressed the thought of banning it. They obviously realised that the policy of silence was not working any more,” said Ms. Ranalvi, adding that resistance to the practice is much more, but women don’t come out openly due to immense fear.