“I was told to lie down, my legs were held and I was cut with a razor. It was a sharp piercing pain. It was so scary and I couldn’t stop crying.”
–Masooma Ranalvi, acitivist, to Al Jazeera
42 years ago, Masooma was lured into the Bohri Mohalla of Mumbai by her grandmother for some chocolates. Little did she know that a shady untrained woman there would instruct her to lie down and pull her pants down.
“It would just take a minute and there will be just a little pain”, said the lady, while Masooma clutched onto her grandma’s arms and felt seething pain down there. A cut that would hurt for days whenever she peed.
This is not just Masooma’s story, but the story of hundreds of girls from the Shia sub-sect community of Bohra, who go through a process called Khatna, which translates to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
An African custom dating back before Christ, this ritual believes that in order to control sexual urges of a human being, it is necessary to slice a small portion of their genitals. As gory as it sounds, it is not native to Africa alone. The Bohra community, a Muslim sect in India, and Pakistan, follows it too.
Little girls, not even in their teens, are forced by their own mothers to get their clitoris pierced, incised, scraped and pricked under dim lights.
Followed religiously behind the sheets, the tradition is now out in the open, and the credit goes to activists like Tasleem, who’s never revealed her true identity for the fear of penalty by her community, and Masooma. In 2011, Tasleem launched a massive online campaign on change.org, openly calling the custom barbaric and un-Islamic.
I realised that Khatna is not in the Quran. Why put girls through torture in the name of religion? If something is advocated in the name of religion, it doesn’t mean that it’s right.”
The sad part is that this barbaric ritual is happening right here, right now.
But who are these Bohra people?
You might know that Islam is broadly divided into two categories, the Sunnis and the Shias, due to their differences after Prophet Mohammad died. Further disputes that traveled across the Shias, split them into minor sects. One such lineage is called the Bohra community.
Their arrival in India can be dated back to post 11th century A.D. They are further minorities under the Muslim minority, residing mainly in Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar district.
The sad part is that despite several angry protests and painful cries, this heinous act of cutting a woman’s private part, continues to go on.
This is mainly because the higher clerics of the community (mostly men), find it to be God’s ‘will’.
“It must be done. If it is a man, it can be done openly and if it is a woman it must be discreet. But the act must be done. Do you understand what I am saying? Let people say what they want. What do they say?…that this is harmful? Let them say it, we are not scared of anyone.”
-Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, Bohra Leader, Favoring Female Genital Mutilation
This barbaric custom in the name of religion to prevent a woman from being ‘promiscuous’ has not been abolished yet. Apart from India,
It also happens in Indonesia under the guideline of “not to cut too much”.
Over 2000 cases have also been reported in the United Kingdom, but many stories remain untold.