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Female infanticide in India has a history spanning centuries. Poverty, dowry system, births to unmarried women, deformed infants, lack of support services and maternal illnesses such as postpartum depression have been cited as reasons for female infanticide in India.

A total of 111 male and female infanticides were reported in India in 2010. This corresponds to a rate of less than 1 infanticide per million people. Scholars note that infanticide is an underreported crime, and objective reliable data is unavailable.

In 1991 the census figures showed there were 25 million more men in India than women. The 2001 Indian census reported the gender difference had increased to 35 million, and by 2005 it was estimated at 50 million by some. The numbers involved have led commentators to compare the situation to genocide. However, these estimates vary widely by source. In 2011, a different estimate put India's gender gap in 0-19 age group to be about 13.2 million, and gender gap across all ages for the total population to be 43.3 million. The Indian census 2011 reported the gender difference across all ages to be even lower, at 37.3 million. During the British colonial rule, the data from 1881 through 1941 shows India, at least since 1881, always had excess males overall. The gender difference from 1881 to 1941 was particularly high in north and western parts of India, with female deficit among Muslims markedly higher, followed by Sikhs. South India region was an exception reporting excess females overall, which scholars attribute partly to selective emigration of males and the cultural practice of matriarchy.

In 2013, the relative infant mortality rates in India for male infants was 41 per 1,000 birth, while the female mortality rate was 42 per 1,000. The worldwide average infant mortality rate was 43 per 1,000 in 2011. Female children in India are not only at risk at the time of birth, but are also at risk during infancy, with one author noting that there is a significant decrease in the sex ratio between birth, and up to the age of four. According to Balakrishna, between 1978 and 1983 "of the twelve million girls born each year, only nine million will live to be fifteen". A more recent estimate by UNICEF, for 2013, reports that under-five child mortality rate was 55 per 1,000 female births in India, and 51 per 1,000 male births. At a regional level, there is a parity in survival and health, between male and female infants, in its states of Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Colonial period

In 1789, during British colonial rule in India, the British discovered that female infanticide in the state of Uttar Pradesh was openly acknowledged. A letter from a magistrate who was stationed in the North West of India during this period spoke of the fact that for several hundred years no daughter had ever been raised in the strongholds of the Rajahs of Mynpoorie. According to Marvin Harris, the reason for these deaths lay in the male desire to keep both land and wealth from having to be split between to many heirs. And that the male desire to retain their luxurious lifestyle was the primary reason for the killing of female children. In 1845 however the ruler at that time did keep a daughter alive after a district collector, named Unwin, intervened. A review of scholarship has shown that the majority of female infanticides in India during the colonial period occurred for the most part in the North West, and that although not all groups carried out this practice it was widespread. In 1870, the practice was made illegal in the provinces of Oudh, Punjab, and North-Western Province of the British Raj, with the passing of the Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870. The Act did not apply to western, central, southern or eastern parts of British India, but it authorized the Governor General of India to expand it to other regions, when appropriate, at his discretion.

Controversy about colonial reports on infanticide

In 1857, John Cave-Brown speculated that the practice of female infanticide among the Jats in the Punjab region originated from "Malthusian motives". In the Gujarat region, the first cited examples of discrepancies in the sex ratio among Lewa Patidars and Kanbis dates from 1847. These historical records have been questioned by modern scholars. The British who never mixed with their Indian subjects to understand their poverty, frustrations, life or culture at close, made their observations from a distance. Cave-Brown documented his speculations on female infanticide using "they tell" hearsay. Bernard Cohn states that the colonial British residents in India would not accuse an individual or family of infanticide as the crime was difficult to prove in a British court, nevertheless accused an entire clan or social group of female infanticide. Nicholas Dirk states, "female infanticide thus became a statistical crime", during the colonial rule of India.

The colonial reports about infanticide, particularly of females, were primarily from Christian missionaries proselytizing in India who sent letters back to Britain characterizing the culture as "savage, ignorant, depraved" followed by statements of their missionary accomplishments. Scholars have questioned this distorted construction of Indian culture during the colonial era, stating that infanticide practice was as common in England during the 18th and 19th century, as in India. Some Christian missionaries of Britain, in late 19th century, states Daniel Grey, wrongly believed that female infanticide was sanctioned by scriptures of Hinduism and Islam, and against which Christianity had "centuries after centuries come into victorious conflict".

Impact of economic policies on infanticide

According to Mara Hvistendahl, documents left behind by the colonial administration following independence showed a direct correlation between the taxation policies of the British East India Company and the rise in female infanticide.

Impact of famines on infanticide

Famines were very common during the British colonial rule of India, with a frequency rate of one major famine every five to eight years, in the 19th and early 20th century. Millions starved to death in each of these famines. Infanticide was one of the famine crimes in India, much like China. Desperate starving parents in India, during the British Raj famines, would either kill a suffering infant, sell a child to buy food for the rest, or beg people to take them away for nothing and feed them. Gupta and Shuzhou state that massive famines and poverty-related historical events had influenced historical sex ratios, and they have had deep cultural ramifications on girls and regional attitudes towards female infant mortality.

Regional and religious demographics

From 1881 through 1941, demographic data shows India had excess males overall in all those years. The gender difference was particularly high in north and western regions of India, with an overall sex ratio – males per 100 females – of between 110.2 to 113.7 in the north over the 60 year period, and 105.8 to 109.8 males for every 100 female in western India for all ages. Visaria states that female deficit among Muslims was markedly higher, next only to Sikhs. South India region was an exception reporting excess females overall, which scholars attribute partly to selective emigration of males and the regional practice of matriarchy.

The overall sex ratios, and excess males, in various regions were highest among the Muslim population of India from 1881 to 1941, and the sex ratio of each region correlated with the proportion of its Muslim population, with the exception of eastern region of India where the overall sex ratio was relatively low while it had a high percentage of Muslims in the population. If regions that are now part of modern Pakistan are excluded (Baluchistan, North West Frontier, Sind for example), Visaria states that the regional and overall sex ratios for the rest of India over the 1881-1941 period improve in favor of females, with a lesser gap between male and female population.

Post colonial period

This section may contain material not related to the topic of the article and should be moved to Sex-selective abortion instead. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In India, since 1974 amniocentesis has been used to determine the gender of a child before birth, and should the child be female then an abortion can be carried out. According to women's rights activist Donna Fernandes, some practices are so deeply embedded within Indian culture it is "almost impossible to do away with them", and she has said that India is undergoing a type of "female genocide". The United Nations has declared that India is the most deadly country for female children, and that in 2012 female children aged between 1 and 5 were 75 percent more likely to die as opposed to boys. The children's rights group CRY has estimated that of 12 million females born yearly in India 1 million will have died within their first year of life. In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu during British rule, the practice of female infanticide in Tamil Nadu among the Kallars and the Todas was reported. More recently in a June 1986 cover story, Born to Die, it was reported by India Today that female infanticide was still in use in Usilampatti in southern Tamil Nadu. The practice was mostly prevalent among the dominant caste of the region, Kallars.

Female foeticide in India accounts for a large part of the discrepancy in the sex ratio. The Indian Association for Women’s Studies reported in 1998 that 10,000 female fetuses are aborted yearly. An editorial in the Times of India gave a figure of 50,000 abortions of female fetuses yearly, while another study gave a figure of 78,000 killed between 1978 and 1983. The decline of the sex ratio is another indication of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. The 1901 census showed a sex ratio of 972 females per 1,000 males. Following partition the ratio drops to 935 females per 1,000 males. As of 2005 it is estimated that 22 million women are missing in India, which had been estimated at 3 million while under colonial rule.

Data and comparisons

Infanticide in India, and elsewhere in the world, is a difficult issue to objectively access because reliable data is unavailable. Scrimshaw states that not only accurate frequency of female infanticide is unknown, differential care between male and female infants is even more elusive data.

Unnithan reports that the total male and female infanticide reported cases in India were 139 in 1995, 86 in 2005 and 111 in 2010. This corresponds to a reported rate of less than one infant homicide per million people in 2010. The global average homicide rate, for all ages, was 10.7 per 100,000 people worldwide in 1990. In the age group 0-4 years, the global average homicide rate was higher for female than male, at 8.5 and 7.5 per 100,000 respectively. Scholars state that infanticide is an underreported crime.

Scholars note that infants die from natural causes, malnutrition, lack of clinical services, diseases as well as because of homicide, and a better picture emerges from differential rate of deaths between female and male infants. Panagriya et al state that the total infant mortality rates (IMR) in India has fallen from 129 per 1,000 births in 1971, to 66 per 1,000 births in 2001, and 44 per 1,000 births in 2011. Further, the infant mortality rates in India for male infants was 43 per 1,000, while the female infant mortality rate was 46 per 1,000 in 2011. They note that the overall and the gender-selective difference in infant mortalities in India has fallen significantly between 1971 and 2011. The worldwide average infant mortality rate was 43 per 1,000 in 2011.

Reasons

Extreme poverty with an inability to afford raising a child is one of the reasons given for female infanticide in India. Scholars state that extreme poverty has been a major reason for high infanticide rates in various cultures, throughout history, including England, France and India.

The dowry system in India is another reason that is given for female infanticide. Although India has taken steps to abolish the dowry system, the practice persists, and for poorer families in rural regions female infanticide and gender selective abortion is attributed to the fear of being unable to raise a suitable dowry and then being socially ostracized.

Other major reasons given for female infanticide, as well as male infanticide, include unwanted child such as those conceived after rape, deformed child in impoverished family, and those born to unmarried mothers lacking reliable, safe and affordable birth control. Relationship difficulties, low income, lack of support coupled with mental illness such as postpartum depression have also been reported as reasons for female infanticide in India.

Ian Darnton-Hill et al state that the effect of malnutrition, particularly micronutrient and vitamin deficiency, depends on sex, and it adversely impacts female infant mortality.

State response

In 1992 the Indian government started the baby cradle scheme. The plan was to allow families to give their child up for adoption without having to go through the adoption procedure, no names are taken. The scheme has been given praise for possibly saving the lives of thousands of baby girls, but has also been criticized by human rights groups, who say that the scheme encourages child abandonment and also reinforces the low status in which women are held. The scheme which was piloted in Tamil Nadu, saw cradles placed outside state run health facilities. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, added another incentive, which was to give money to families who had more than one daughter. In the four years following the programme's inception 136 baby girls were given over, but in 2000, 1,218 cases of female infanticide were reported, the scheme was deemed a failure and abandoned but the following year was reinstated.

In 1991 the Girl Child Protection Scheme was launched. It operates as a long term financial incentive, with rural families having to meet certain obligations, such as sterilization for the woman. Once the obligations are met the state puts aside ₨ 2000 in a state run fund, and upon reaching twenty the girl may use the money, which now should stand at ₨ 10,000, to either marry, or go into higher education.

International reactions

The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) wrote in their 2005 report, Women in an Insecure World, that at a time when the number of casualties in war had fallen, a "secret genocide" was being carried out against women. According to DCAF the demographic shortfall of women who have died for gender related issues is in the same range as the 191 million estimated dead from all conflicts in the twentieth century. In 2012 the documentary It's a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World was released. The documentary focused on female infanticide in China and in India. Cultural anthropologist Barbara D. Miller, working in Northern India, noted that over a five-day period, only male children were being brought in for treatment, while not a single girl was brought to the hospital. She also wrote that on a home visit to check on a girl who had TB that the mother, after being told that it would be costly to treat her daughter as she had left it so long said, "Then let her die, I have another daughter", while her two daughters sat nearby, one of whom was crying having heard her mother's words.

A report by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2012 stated that India was the "most dangerous place in world to be born a girl". According to the report which studied mortality rates on children aged one to five over a forty-year period revealed that in the ten years between 2000 and 2010 for every 56 deaths of male children, there were one hundred female deaths.

In 1991 Elisabeth Bumiller wrote May You be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India, in which she describes vividly the practice of female infanticide, with one woman interviewed equating infanticide with abortion, saying "instead of killing the child in the womb, I killed the child when it was born, if that is accepted, why can't I do this?". Bumiller says in the chapter on female infanticide titled, No More Little Girls that the prevailing reason for the practice is "not as the act of monsters in a barbarian society but as the last resort of impoverished, uneducated women driven to do what they thought was best for themselves and their families."

Gift of A Girl Female Infanticide is a documentary by Mayyasa Al-Malazi which was released in 1998. It explores the prevalence of female infanticide in southern India, as well as steps which have been taken to help eradicate the practice. The documentary won an award from the Association for Asian Studies.

Footnotes

References

1. Visaria 1983, p. 484.
2. ^ Daniel Grey (Fall 2011), Gender, Religion, and Infanticide in Colonial India, 1870—1906, Victorian Review, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 107-120
3. ^ Oberman 2005, pp. 5–6.
4. ^ R. Giriraj, Changing Attitude to Female Infanticide in Salem, Journal of Social Welfare, Vol. 50, No. 11, February 2004, pp.13-14 & 34-35
5. ^ Chandran et al (2002), Post-partum depression in a cohort of women from a rural area of Tamil Nadu, India: Incidence and risk factors, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 181(6), pp. 499-504
6. ^ N Prabha Unnithan, Crime and Justice in India (2013), SAGE Publications, p. 257, ISBN 978-81-321-09778
7. ^ Crime in India NCRB, Government of India, Tables - Crimes against Children, Table 6.2 at p. 405
8. ^ M Spinelli (2002), Infanticide: contrasting views, Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 8(1), pp. 15-24
9. ^ Susan Scrimshaw, Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives, edited by Glenn Hausfater and Sarah Hrdy (2008), pp. 445-450, ISBN 978-02-023-62212
10. Bunting 2011.
11. Agnivesh 2005.
12. Hundal 2013.
13. ^ Bhatnagar 2005, p. 2.
14. Christophe Z Guilmoto, Sex imbalances at birth Trends, consequences and policy implications] United Nations Population Fund, Hanoi (October 2011), ISBN 978-974-680-338-0, p. 49
15. H Sadhak, Pension Reform in India: The Unfinished Agenda, p. 154, SAGE Publishing, ISBN 978-81-321-09792
16. ^ Visaria 1983, pp. 496–499.
17. ^ Visaria 1983, p. 499. Cite error: The named reference "FOOTNOTEVisaria1983499" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
18. Child Survival - Sex-specific infant mortality rate UNICEF (2014)
19. ^ D Bloom (2011), 7 billion and counting, Science, 333(6042), pp. 562-569
20. Dube et al 1999, p. 74.
21. Child Survival - Sex-specific under-five mortality rate UNICEF (2014)
22. Nira Ramachandran, Persisting Undernutrition in India: Causes, Consequences and Possible Solutions, p. 51, Springer (2014), ISBN 978-81-322-18319
23. Scott 2013, p. 6.
24. Miller 1987, pp. 97–98.
25. Miller 1987, p. 99.
26. ^ The Unrepealed General Acts of the Governor General in Council, p. PA165, at Google Books
27. ^ Cave-Browne 1857, pp. 121–122.
28. Vishwanath 2006, p. 278.
29. ^ Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, p. 10, Princeton University Press (1996)
30. Nicholas Dirk, in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, pp. 10-11, Princeton University Press (1996)
31. Brian K. Pennington (2005), Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction, pp. 72-79, Oxford University Press
32. Nicholas Dirk (2001), Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, p. 173-174, Princeton University Press
33. Padma Anagol, The Emergence of the Female Criminal in India: Infanticide and Survival under the Raj, History Workshop Journal, No. 53 (Spring, 2002), pp. 73-93
34. GA Oddie (1994), Orientalism and British protestant missionary constructions of India in the nineteenth century, Journal of South Asian Studies, 17(2), pp. 27-42
35. Hvistendahl 2011, p. 67.
36. B Murton (2000), Famine, in The Cambridge World History of Food 2, pp. 1411–1427, Cambridge University Press
37. Mike Davis (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, pp. 7-8, Verso
38. Mike Davis (2004), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development and Social Movements, pp. 44–49, Routledge
39. A Sen (1983), Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford University Press
40. ^ Cormac Ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History, pp. 61-67, Princeton University Press
41. ^ Gupta and Shuzhuo, Gender Bias in China, South Korea and India 1920–1990: Effects of War, Famine and Fertility Decline, Development and Change, Volume 30, Issue 3, pp. 619–652, July 1999
42. William Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India (Madras and Bombay): 1876-1878, pp. 458-459, Longmans London
43. Visaria 1983, p. 499 with footnote 2.
44. Visaria 1983, p. 499 with footnote 1.
45. Jeffery 1984.
46. ^ Krishnan 2012.
47. George 1997, pp. 124–132.
48. John Cole, Geography of the World’s major regions (1996), Routledge, p. 14, ISBN 978-04-151-17425
49. Crime against Children NCRB, Government of India (2010), p. 95
50. Dwayne Smith and Margaret Zahn (1998), SAGE Publications, Homicide: A Sourcebook of Social Research, p. 299-302, ISBN 978-07-619-07657
51. Levene & Bacon (2004), Sudden unexpected death and covert homicide in infancy, Archives of disease in childhood, 89(5), pp. 443-447
52. Elaine Rose (1999), Consumption smoothing and excess female mortality in rural India, Review of Economics and statistics, 81(1), pp. 41-49
53. ^ A Panagariya, P Chakraborty and M Rao, State Level Reforms, Growth, and Development in Indian States, Oxford University Press (2014), pp. 188-192
54. Sl Tandon and R Sharma, Female Foeticide and Infanticide in India: An Analysis of Crimes against Girl Children, International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 1(1), pp. 1-7, January 2006
55. R Sauer (1978), Infanticide and abortion in nineteenth-century Britain, Population Studies, 32(1), pp. 81-93
56. B.A. Kellum (1974), Infanticide in England in the later Middle Ages, History of Childhood Quarterly, 1(3), pp. 367-88
57. P. Anagol (Jan 2002), The emergence of the female criminal in India: Infanticide and survival under the Raj, History Workshop Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 73-93, Oxford University Press
58. Parrot 2006, p. 160.
59. Christine Alder and Ken Polk, Child Victims of Homicide, Cambridge University Press, p. 4-5, ISBN 978-0521002516
60. Chandra et al, Infanticidal ideas and infanticidal behavior in Indian women with severe postpartum psychiatric disorders, J Nerv Ment Dis. 2002 Jul, 190(7), pp. 457-61
61. Friedman and Resnick, Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention, World Psychiatry, 2007 Oct; 6(3), pp. 137–141, PMCID: PMC2174580
62. Ian Darnton-Hill, Patrick Webb, Philip WJ Harvey, Joseph M Hunt, Nita Dalmiya, Mickey Chopra, Madeleine J Ball, Martin W Bloem and Bruno de Benoist, Micronutrient deficiencies and gender: social and economic costs, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, May 2005, vol. 81, no. 5, pp. 1198S-1205S
63. Bhalla 2012.
64. Parrot 2006, pp. 64–65.
65. Perwez 2011, p. 250-251.
66. Mashru 2012.
67. Winkler 2005, p. 7.
68. DeLugan 2013, pp. 649–650.
69. Miller 1987, p. 95.
70. Nelson 2012.
71. Bumiller 1998, p. 1.
72. Meyer & Oberman 2001, p. 180.
73. Barlow & Clayton 1998, p. 212.
74. Dehejia 1990.
75. Al-Malazi 1998.
76. Engle Merry 2008.

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• Female foeticide and infanticide in India
• Child abandonment
• Child murder