Female Genital Cutting (FGC) or Female Genital Mutation (FGM), also known as female circumcision in the common parlance, is an open secret among the people of the Bohra community in India. The procedure, locally known as khafz, is evidentially performed on the girl children of the community between the age of 7 and 8 years.
Masooma Ranalvi was born and brought up in Mumbai in a Bohra family. Even at 53 now, her vivid recollection of the day when it was performed on her as a child is nothing short of a chilling account of the procedure.
It was a regular day when a 7-year-old Ranalvi was all dressed up by her mother and was excited anticipating the chocolates and candies her grandmother would have bought her while taking her out. But to her bewilderment, she was taken to this small room of an old building where there were seating arrangements on the floor and the curtains were pulled by an old lady.
“Just a few minutes after sitting there, I was literally pushed down on the floor. And suddenly, this unfamiliar old woman started removing my panty. I was panicked and got extremely scared because it was a total stranger touching my private parts. I was already sobbing by then, lying horizontally on the floor,” Ranalvi said with a heavy breath.
And then she continues to share the full ordeal, “My grandmother pinned me down by my shoulder and this woman held my legs with one of her hands. Eventually, I was cut and for me as a child, it was a deeply humiliating feeling of someone touching my private parts and cutting it down there. It was enormously painful. After it was performed, she applied some black powder on the wound. Consequently, my memory of the process was blurred and I was totally subsumed by the feelings of anger and fear. Afterward, I remember coming home and holding my mother and crying. She used to give me warm water to wash it after I pee as there was a burning sensation.”
She brushed aside and buried this part of her memory deep down and has always pushed it back until she decided to publicly come out with her story.
The pioneering face behind India’s fight against FGC and the founder of WeSpeakOut, Ranalvi, finally mustered the courage to speak out in 2015 as she came out with her story as a survivor. When the need was felt to organize for ending this practice, she along with a group of women of the Bohra community started collectively strategizing, creating campaigns and therefore, organically paved the way for the formation of WeSpeakOut.
WeSpeakOut works primarily at three levels: first, creating awareness among the members of the community; second, creating awareness outside the community; third, taking legal and policy actions.
“Initially, it was called ‘Speak out on FGM’ and we started in the form of a WhatsApp group as a safe space to share our personal experiences, stories, and narratives. Within the first 10 days of starting the group, we had over 60 members from both within and outside India. These were women who were subjected to the practice and also those who wanted to do something about it. The change.org petition calling for an end to the practice was one of the first things that we did collectively. It was one of our first steps of campaigning calling for an end to FGM,” she said.
Consequently, they have led campaigns like ‘Not My Daughter’ to pledge women of the community not to get FGC done on their daughters, ‘Men against FGM’ to encourage men taking a stand on the issue and to not let their daughters cut, and ‘Each One Reach One’ with Sahiyo working alongside. They have also worked closely with several ministries of the government of India and bodies like the National Commission for Women and have pledged to the UNHRC for declaring India as a country with FGC prevalence.
When asked about her take on the continuing tradition of FGC among her community people, she unapologetically calls out the power relations manifested through the practice. She vehemently nullifies the compulsory and binding nature of the practice for Bohras, despite multiple such claims being made by the supporters of the practice. She also repudiates the claims of the practice being Islamic in nature.
“There is no mention of the practice in the holy Quran. It is not even one of the primary Muslim practices because most of the Indian Muslims do not practice this. Most importantly, we are progressing in the path of humanity. Certain practices that may have been valid 1400 years ago may not necessarily be justifiable in today’s day and age. Both globally and nationally it is unacceptable as a practice. Research has been conducted worldwide to point out about its harmful effects. Even constitutionally, it is indeed a discriminatory practice,” she said with all her conviction, and this why she stands against it.
Ranalvi believes that conversational engagement with the community in order to spread awareness regarding its harmful effects may make people understand. After all, parents do not necessarily intend to harm their children. In the same breath, she does not shy away from raising her voice against the religious authority of the community.
She explains, “It all stems from the demands of one individual, the Syedna. There is no rational basis to it and the whole religious theory has been debunked. FGC predates both Islam and Christianity and is nothing but a form of patriarchal control over women. It is a matter of convincing people and telling them that we are not abandoning religion by speaking against it. In no way discarding the practice makes one less Muslim. The Syedna has maintained a double standard for it as they advised in favor of following the laws of the land in the Western countries where the practice has been banned. Had this been an integral part of religion, they would have fought for it.”
For the overarching elimination of the practice, she is hopeful about receiving institutional and governmental support, though expresses her concerns regarding the existing governmental approach in dealing with it. She reiterates, “There is enough information out there to say that it exists in India. It is up to the government to bring up a national estimate through its institutional mechanisms.”
Despite facing backlashes from the religious establishment of the community, she places her faith in people as she says, “I have had plenty of positive experiences and have spoken to hundreds of people. It is not that I have not been resisted or been challenged but an overwhelming majority has supported me. The people closest to the religious authority seemed minority to me in this context.”
Life, when equivalent to struggle, sparks the fire of change in varied ways and degrees. Thus, Ranalvi herself, along with her commitment to the cause of the struggle, becomes the ‘change’ she wants to usher in the lives of the girl children of her community.