50 MILLION MISSING

[julie gosling]

50 Million Missing

50 million Indian women have been reported missing in just three generations. In 20 years, 20 per cent of women in India will have been exterminated through gendercide, female foeticide and infanticide, dowry killings, murder for giving birth to girl infants, and the outcomes of repeated pregnancies and abortions. A history of collective shame, these crimes are just some of the many gender-related travesties that are impacting upon the mental well-being and human rights of Asian women worldwide. For more information and awareness raising, visit the following links:

www.genderbytes.info -hosted by The 50 Million Missing Campaign - www.50millionmissing.info


The following is an excerpt from an interview that The 50 Million Missing founder, Rita Banerji, gave to One World South Asia.

http://genderbytes.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/to-stop-the-female-geno...

To answer your question about whether we can bring about a change in the misogynist attitude that underlies this female genocide, consider this….The reason this massive human rights violation has gone unnoticed for so long is that as a nation state we’ve responded to it the way most of us as individuals do at home. So when laws are violated, the human rights of individuals are violated in our homes – women are forced to abort their girls or kill their baby girls, or women are beaten, blackmailed or killed for dowry, we tolerate it. We support the violators. We hush it up. We hide it from others. We all do it.
When we learn to do that as members of a family, we then move into society, into jobs – in the government, police, courts, hospitals, or just ordinary citizens, and we do the same for the nation as a family.

Our country mirrors the way our family units work. As citizens of a nation we function the same way we do as members of our families. We deny it, hide it. We get defensive when it is exposed internationally. We are doing what our families do – closing ranks and being complicit directly or indirectly in the perpetuation of this violence.

“I have a story to tell” by Soraya Nulliah - extracts

http://genderbytes.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/artist-soraya-nulliah-o...

" SORAYA: It would be very difficult to describe the violence I experiences in my “family” of origin. Not only the physical violence but also the constant assault on my mind, heart and spirit. It left me shattered, broken and carrying the heavy burden of shame that was not mine to carry. I made a solemn vow to mySELF very early on that, once I was able, I would not live my life that way.

My “mother” is a woman with a collapsed psyche…weak and hypocritical. Early on, I made a conscious decision to never be like her. Because I had no mentors or role models in my life, I actively sought them out beyond my family and community. Early on I came across women like Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Their writings showed me a different, braver path and another way to live.

Rita: Your art exhibition initially came up against immense resistance both from the expatriate Indian community and western counterparts. Can you talk a little about that?

SORAYA: The Indian communities reacted to it with complete and utter denial!! I was somewhat prepared for this response but even I was shocked at the depth and breadth of it. Two incidents stand out to me after all this time. A few older Indian women in the “feminist” field in Canada, who while listening, were in abject denial about the whole situation. Some had multiple doctoral degrees in the field of women’s studies. There was this one, very educated lady who headed an Indo-Canadian Women’s association. She became very angry when I asked for her support and said that, while she agreed with me, she would not do so publicly and would not support the message of my art exhibition!!

The second incident regarded a “journalist” for the Wildrose Times of Alberta (an Indo-Canadian newspaper). He interviewed me for over two hours. I spoke about female infanticide, dowry deaths, sati, sex selective abortions etc. I gave him facts and statistics. Yet when the article was published there was absolutely no reference to what I had said!! Instead, he wrote a vacuous article that had little to no grounding in truth.

Rita: I can see why the Indian community would respond this way, but why the resistance in the western response?

SORAYA: Some of the western media, such as the Edmonton Sun newspaper and Shaw T.V., covered my exhibition accurately and spoke passionately about the issues I was addressing. But in regards to the western response in general I think there are a few factors at work.

1. Indians in the west, even the feminists and scholars, don’t speak out about the violence in their families and communities. There is such deep denial. That is why perhaps most people in the west aren’t even aware of it!!

2.I also think that Western feminists don’t really grasp the issue, because the Indian female genocide is subversive, invisible and cloaked in the most insane form of denial. I think it’s almost impossible to grasp the numbers, the inhumanity and the insanity of it all. Those from the west who know of it are perhaps hoping for some magical way to stop this because to accept the reality is too frightening.

3. I think there is also an element of racism and colonialism when it comes to viewing violence against women in other cultures. The western view of the female gendercide in India is that it is a “cultural’ issue and not a human rights one. For some reason we can all agree that Auschwitz and Rwanda are a human rights violation but when genocide is gender base, people seem to think otherwise. This points to the fact that, regardless of what we may say in the west, female lives simply aren’t as valuable as males’. And when those female lives are not white then they are perhaps of even less value – so misogyny gets compounded with racism.

Rita: In some of your paintings the women have their eyes downcast and their heads veiled and bowed. But in others they are looking up, eyes open, heads unveiled. Is there an explanation for this?

SORAYA: The eyes closed and heads bowed refer to how we, in Indian communities worldwide, are in complete and utter denial of the ways we inflict violence on women! The women with eyes bold and open, sometimes angry, express how we have to see the violence, acknowledge it, challenge it and find ways to empower ourSELVES."

"Rita: Do you feel that female artists and even writers face a certain public resistance to the open expressions of anger against violence on women in their creative works?

SORAYA: Yes I feel that cross culturally, women are generally not supported in expressing their anger. Especially by other women!!"

"SORAYA: I think it doesn’t matter what mothers tell their daughters about violence if they tolerate, deny and make excuses for it in their own lives. Children pay closer attention to our actions than they do to our words. Rather than holding up the sanctity of marriage at all costs, our goal should be to create a safe and nurturing environment for ourselves and our children.

I also think it is imperative that women have lives and identities separate from that of mother and wife. I think it’s crucial to building up our self esteem and sense of purpose which will, in turn, carry over to our families in general and daughters specifically. So in fact while I would like to think that being educated would make a difference to how women respond to violence, I don’t think it does. Because I think the real problem stems from being dissociated from the true SELF.

Rita: Your work is very important Soraya. The violence on Indian women, their gendercide, surpasses the violence that any other human group has been subjected to. And you as an artist, a human being and member of this group are a living witness to this violence in your lifetime. Your art is how you bear testimony to it – for now and for generations later. Your anger is an entitlement. If you express it, and it alienates the world, what would you say to the world in respons

SORAYA: If my anger (or pain or empowerment) alienates the world, so be it. The important thing is this: that I am not alienated from mySELF. My art is not about gendercide or about violence against women, but what I hope it bears testimony to is our shared human experience. If my work is to be remembered at all, this is what it is about. Our journeys are all at once deeply personal as well as universal in nature. We all suffer through experiences that leave us broken and vulnerable yet through it all we are resilient and hopeful. There is real beauty in laying claim to our journey."


The story is not a million miles from the UK. Communities bring their cultures and customs with them when they move across the world. And young Uk Asian girls may in school holidays face journeys 'home' to forced marriage and fear.

Domestic violence has been linked with many mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders and psychosis.

A study published in the BJP Feb 2013:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/202/2/94
suggests that psychiatric patients experience a high prevalence of domestic violence but there is limited information on family (non-partner) domestic violence, the prevalence of emotional abuse and the extent of risk compared with non-psychiatric controls.

Please support '50 Million Missing' within mental health teaching and learning

[julie gosling]

NB:
1. the higher the social strata, the more the prevalence of gendercide - the poorest classes in India are the 'safest' for women in this particular respect.
2. 'Dowry' is the most profitable and increasingly used method of wealth expansion in India today
3. Another method of wealth expansion is the murder or forcible eviction of single women or widows (husband eaters) in order to appropriate their land and inheritances.