www.timesofindia.com LONDON: British Indian women are as prone to the secretive, outlawed practice of female foeticide as their counterparts in the mother country and they generally travel to India to do the dastardly deed.
The alarming revelation by the BBC's Asian Network radio station on Monday comes as Oxford University population experts declared they had found at least 1,500 Indian girl children "missing" from birth statistics in England and Wales in the last 17 years. The Oxford study, which looked at birth rates of different ethnic groups here, concluded that there had been an abnormal increase in the proportion of boys over girls in the Indian community from 1990. Dr Sylvie Dubuc, a human geography and population expert at Oxford, said that the most likely explanation was sex-selective abortion by Indian-born British women. This represents one in 10 girls "missing" from the birth statistics for Indian-born women having their third or fourth child. But the BBC radio investigation, which is targeted at Asian listeners, said that it is not just Indian-born British women who are resorting to the culturally-specific practice of female foeticide. Using first-hand evidence from interviews with British-born-and-bred Indian women, it said the practice appears to be quietly accepted among this strand of the 1.3-million-strong community as well. The revelation received ballast on Monday when a Punjabi local councillor from the Indian-dominant city of Leicester admitted the practice was rife among British Indians. The BBC investigation used an actor to recount the story of one of its interviewees, who used the false name 'Meena'. The British-born office-worker in her 30s described the pressures of being an Indian wife in the UK who disappointingly produced a string of three daughters only to find scorn and derision from her Punjabi family. She devastatingly said that Indian culture can still exert a huge pressure on women to have boys - to carry on the family name and because girls are expensive - and that the pressure exists on Indian women living in Britain too. "It is all up to the husband and it's usually the husband's side of the family who - you know - are putting the pressure on." Commentators said the revelation that British Indians were prone to female foeticide discounts the notion that living in the West confers "emancipation" on immigrant communities. Interestingly, the BBC's investigation, Oxford research and resulting media coverage sparked an immediate Muslim response on the internet with bloggers sending in United Nations statistics listing India having "killed 50 million + girls in the last 50 years; China killed 50 million + girls in the last 50 years; the US has killed 44 million girl and boys from 1974 till today, yet who is considered oppressive to women and children - Islam and Muslim countries." 'Meena', who travelled to Delhi last year to find out the sex of her unborn fourth child, said it was easy to find a doctor in India to conduct the scan and subsequent abortion. Describing her deep personal sadness at being forced to abort the baby, 'Meena' said "Unfortunately it was another girl. My husband and I thought the burden would probably be too much and the pressure when I got back home. So we decided to terminate". She added, "Personally it was very upsetting for me. I didn't really want my other children to know, and I don't mean it in a bad way, but my husband seemed rather blasé about it. I think I felt bad because I knew I shouldn't be doing this - for the reasons I was doing it - it wasn't nice." The BBC also sensationally revealed that it had used an undercover British Indian couple to find out just how easy or hard it is to persuade an Indian doctor to determine the sex of a foetus and terminate the pregnancy. It said its undercover couple went to one of Delhi's leading gynaecologists, Dr Mangala Telang, who is actually recommended by the British High Commission and has publicly campaigned against the "evil" crime of female foeticide. The BBC said that its secret filming showing Telang agreeing to perform the ultrasound scan, warning the couple not to tell anyone about what they were doing as it is illegal and agreeing to recommend a doctor to carry out an abortion if the foetus were a girl. The doctor has refused to admit she did anything wrong though the BBC insists its film shows this to be the case.
