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Devi Cult And The Girl Child By - Rina Mukherji Rina Mukherji has spent more than one a half decades (17 years to be precise) in the Indian print media. She has written on practically every topic under the sun- business, politics, science, gender issues, child rights, the environment, films, literature, public health and human rights so far. She has worked for several national newspapers in Mumbai and Kolkata, and freelanced for nearly all major newspapers and magazines in the country. She also holds a doctorate in African Studies, and has several academic articles to her credit

Durga Puja © Partha S. Dutta

With Mahalaya and Devi paksh ushering in Durga Puja, the South Asian subcontinent moves into top gear for the festive season which lasts up to mid-winter the following year.

This is when the worship of Shakti manifests itself in Kumari Puja (worship of the girl child) and wife-worship (among the Vaishya-Bania communities during Lakshmi Puja).

The irony and hypocrisy does not cease to rankle the thinking mind, when seen against the backdrop of India’s missing female population, and the predominance of Kumari Puja in Punjab and Rajasthan-two states infamous for female foeticide and female infanticide respectively.

Even as women in these states enthusiastically worship little girls as manifestations of the mother goddess, the juvenile sex ratio in many districts in Punjab threatens to drop from an already precarious 600:1000. The situation is no different in Rajasthan, Haryana or western UP.

In the west and south, this time of the year marks Haldi Kumkum ceremonies where the woman’s role in the home and family is celebrated. And yet, it took the Cradle Baby scheme instituted by a female CM in Tamil Nadu to rein in the practice of rampant female infanticide all over the state. Maharashtra , on its part, had to clamp down on female foeticide by being the first state to ban amniocentesis.

You could dismiss this as the dichotomy in the Indian mentality. We worship the girl child and the mother goddess; yet gender justice is too remote an idea to digest.

Kumari Puja

The issue has been a subject of a brilliantly-researched book by activist –academician Prof Jasodhara Bagchi, Loved and Unloved-The Girl Child in the Family (Stree, 2001), where she has pointed out how a girl child in Bengal has always been expected to live up to the ideal of a Lakkhi meye (a girl modeled on the quiet feminine attributes of Lakshmi). She is loved, and cared for, as long as she does not dare to assert herself. She is expected to do what her parents decide for her. The moment she thinks of carving a niche for herself in keeping with her desire for a separate identity, she is a pariah. And this, in a state where women have generally been better off –with no reports of infanticide or rampant foeticide and far fewer cases of violence against women, as compared to the rest of the country!

Has one sometimes stopped to wonder at the considerably better sex ratios among Parsis and Christians who do not ritually worship the girl child?

The answer, my friends, lies in the hypocrisy of practised religion, which, while stressing on Kumari Puja as a harbinger of good fortune to the worshipper, has people pray for a male issue to perform one’s last rites and carry on the family line.

It is the imperative of one’s last rites and the journey to the other world which is the single-most important factor dictating the cruelty one sees meted out to female infants and surviving girl-children. If not killed in the womb or throttled as infants, girls are deprived of health care and necessary nutrition, as studies show.

It also accounts for the cruel biases in favour of male siblings, which leave their indelible impact on the psyche of girl-children for life.

As women who actually preside over the nitty-gritties of Kumari Puja, isn’t it time to examine and appreciate the philosophy that had our ancestors start a practice meant to appreciate and cherish the girl-child, rather than blindly perform it as a mere ritual?

Photo source: Kumari Puja photo by Banglamediasearch.com

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