‘Don’t kill babies, abandon them’

That’s what the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandak Committee, Sikhism’s highest temporal body, is telling the people of Punjab whose record in killing female babies —born and unborn — is the worst in India. The SGPC is now asking gurdwaras to keep cradles where parents can deposit their unwanted female babies instead of killing them

CHANDIGARH: Known for its chivalry and valour, good food and good-looking women, Punjab is currently grappling with the dreadful problem of India’s lowest sex ratio which is attributed to rampant female foeticide and infanticide. The sex ratio has dipped to as low as 761 females for 1,000 males.

While the government might be doing its bit to stop the obsession with the male child and reverse this trend, it is the premier Sikh body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandak Committee (SGPC), that is now trying to don the role of a saviour of the disappearing daughters.

First, it was the highest religio-temporal seat, the Akal Takht, that issued an edict in 2003 banning female foeticide among the Sikhs. The Akal Takht’s jathedar (head priest) had proclaimed that any Sikh indulging in female foeticide would be ostracised from the community. The commandment failed to elicit the desired response and female foeticide continues unabated though largely in rural Punjab.

The SGPC’s latest move to install cradles follows the abandoning of a rising number of babies outside gurdwaras, public places and even garbage dumps. “We shall bear the expenses for bringing up these children,” SGPC’s president Avtar Singh Makkar has vowed.

“The efforts (in the past) seemed to be wanting,” says Makkar. He says the SGPC will launch a campaign, by invoking religious fear, to educate the Sikhs on the perils of baby-killing and about the importance of having girls in the family in the changed social context.

It is a well-known fact that the abysmal sex ratio is forcing the men of Punjab to buy and import wives from places as far as Kerala, Orissa, West Bengal and the north-east. Admitting that this is leading to illegal trafficking of women, Makkar deplores this trend. “It is so unfortunate that we are not bearing girls for ourselves and in turn are trying to pick them up from other states at a heavy cost.”

“Isn’t it reprehensible that a state as beautiful as Punjab that has given so much to the country has such a dismal sex ratio?” asks Bhatinda-based social activist Raj Gupta. Welcoming the SGPC’s initiative,  she insists on a  “zero-tolerance” approach to female foeticide. “Women are achieving so much and yet they are not being allowed to be born,” she says. She finds it “unacceptable.”

Gupta puts a large part of the blame at the government’s doorstep. She says cine star Shabana Azmi’s campaign against foeticide last year “fell through” because of lack of consistency on the part of the government.

On his part, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has called upon the judiciary and legal fraternity to recommend to the National Law Commission amendments to Indian Panel Code (IPC) to equate female foeticide at par with murder in terms of punishment.