Catholic World News News Feature

India: another grim indication of gender bias September 12, 2008

In yet another shocking incident of deep-rooted cultural prejudice against girl children in India, the parents of twin babies who died due to premature delivery have left behind the dead body of their baby girl child in a Mumbai hospital, taking the dead body of the baby boy for burial.

The dean of Sion hospital in Mumbai told reporters that a week after the dead body of the baby girl was moved to the mortuary, no one had came forward to claim the body. Subsequent inquiries found that the parents had taken away the remains of their baby boy on September 3.

India has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world, with fewer than 925 young women for 1,000 young men, due to a deep-rooted gender bias against girls. In the Hindu tradition, a father cannot attain moksha (salvation) unless he has a son to perform his last rites. This religious sanction makes girls unwanted in a culture that now puts heavy pressure dowry demands that make girls an economic liability for families of limited means.

According to the federal government, more than 10 million girls have gone "missing" in India during last two decades because of clandestine sex-determination tests that are often followed by abortions if the unborn child is female. Despite a legal ban on sex-determination tests, many private hospitals and clinics quietly provide the service, camouflaging the tests as routine pre-natal procedures.

Federal president Pratibha Patil - India's first woman president - earlier this week sought an urgent report from the Maharashtra state government on the sex ratio in her home town of Jalagaon, after media reports indicated that the president's own home is a hotbed of sex-selection abortions.