SikhSpectrum.com Quarterly Issue No.26, November 2006
Daughters- Let’s Give Them a Chance
Sona Katial
I am proud say that I am a mother. I am even prouder to say that I am a mother of two girls. To all the people of our society who sympathize at my plight at not having a son, who will one day carry on my lineage and take care of me in my old age, I say “ Wake up and look around you. The world around is changing.”
We are living in the 21st century. Today, there is nothing that a man can do that a woman cannot. Then why do we as a society of Indians still have this disparity between a boy and a girl child?
The majority of people in India lives in poverty and is uneducated. For them the birth of a girl signifies more debt for her marriage and dowry. However, statistics prove that it’s not just the poor but the middle-class and the rich too that do not want daughters. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis (India), in the age group of 0-6yrs, in the recent decades there has been a steady decline of girl infants compared to boy infants. In 1981 there were 962 girls to every 1000 boys. In 2001 there were 927 girls to every 1000 boys. In 2001, in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat there were fewer than 800 girls for every 1000 boys. Doesn’t it make you wonder what is happening?
If you compare these statistics to those of developed countries like the U.S.A, Canada, Netherlands, you’ll find that the ratio of boys to girls has pretty much been even. In fact the ratio of boys has been coming down.
We Non Resident Indians, pride ourselves on being so much more educated, sophisticated and successful than our Indian counterparts. But we are chained by the same prejudices. Do we even take a moment to reflect on why we celebrate a boy’s birth with Ladoos (the king of all sweets) and Champagne, while we greet a girl’s birth with tears and hope for better luck next time?
Why in our homes mothers of daughters are told over and over again to give child-birth another chance in the hope that she might get lucky enough to have a son?
Why do our elders bless us to have many sons and never daughters?
Why is that a great-grandmother is said to climb a gold ladder to heaven when she has a great-grandson?
In my pregnancy, an Aunt of mine once wished that God would bless me with “Changi Cheej (good thing)”. And he did. Considering, nearly 8 million infants around the world are born with birth defects. I had a healthy baby girl.
Women have been proving themselves over and over again right from the times of Sita, I think it’s time we said “Enough, let’s give our daughters a chance.”
