Is there female genital mutilation in India? Delhi says no, survivors say yes.

Masooma Ranalvi was in her thirties when she came across an article on female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice is most prevalent in Africa, but as Ms. Ranalvi read about it, a painful memory resurfaced from her own childhood in Mumbai, India. 

When she was barely 7, her grandmother, on the pretext of taking her out for a sweet treat, brought her to a dingy building. A woman there asked the young Ms. Ranalvi to lie down, took off her pants, and proceeded to cut her. 

“I felt the resemblance so stark – what happens [in Africa] and what had happened to me,” says Ms. Ranalvi, now in her 50s. “It made me feel angry and frustrated.”

Ms. Ranalvi is part of the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Muslim sect with roots in the Middle East which migrated to the Indian subcontinent several centuries ago. Today, there are about 1 million Dawoodi Bohras worldwide, with half residing in India. It is the only community in India known to widely practice a form of female genital cutting, which Bohras generally refer to as female circumcision or khafz, though the practice often falls under the general public’s radar.

Anti-FGM campaigners say that efforts to ban the custom in India have been stalled due to lack of recognition from the government, as well as issues regarding freedom of religion. Indeed, there is debate among Bohra women about the importance of khafz to their faith, or whether it should be considered FGM at all. However, many agree that an ongoing lawsuit to install a new spiritual leader – with more lenient attitudes toward khafz – could pave the way for greater freedom and safety. 

Having a more liberal syedna, or spiritual head, would be a “very big deal” for the fight against FGM in India, says Ms. Ranalvi, who runs an anti-FGM advocacy group called We Speak Out. “If you remove the social and religious compulsion … the elimination of the practice would happen faster.”

What Bohra leaders say about khafz

In a sermon in Mumbai in 2016, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the current spiritual leader of the Dawoodi Bohras, told a congregation that circumcision “must be done” and that for women it must be done discreetly. His words, which were widely criticized by anti-FGM campaigners, hold considerable weight over his followers. 

But so could the words of challenger Taher Fakhruddin. 

Mr. Fakhruddin, who happens to be Mr. Saifuddin’s half-cousin, wants to make khafz optional. “It should be a woman’s individual decision” and carried out “once she reaches adulthood,” Mr. Fakhruddin told the Monitor in an email.

The Bombay high court is hearing final arguments to decide who will be the rightful leader of the global Bohra community. Mr. Saifuddin assumed the role in 2014 after his father’s death, but Mr. Fakhruddin says his own father – who passed away in 2016 and was the former syedna’s second-in-command – had been secretly named heir back in 1965. A verdict is expected in a few months.

A decision favoring Mr. Fakhruddin won’t be the end of khafz. Some in the community, including Mr. Fakhruddin, say khafz has been “erroneously equated” with FGM. “The purpose,” he says, “is to improve a woman’s sexual health.” 

The World Health Organization defines FGM as the partial or total removal of girls' external genitalia, and deems any form of FGM a violation of human rights with no health benefits. Gynecologists who’ve examined Bohra women report that khafz can lead to medical complications later in life. 

A 2017 study by Sahiyo, another anti-FGM advocacy group led by Bohra women, found that decreasing sexual arousal to discourage promiscuity was the second most common explanation for khafz after religion, and in a similar study by We Speak Out, the vast majority of the women surveyed remembered the procedure as a painful experience. We Speak Out also found that India is becoming a hub for the procedure, attracting Bohra expats from countries like the United States and Australia which have been tightening their laws against FGM. 

Religious freedom or human rights violation?

Still, not all Bohra women are in favor of ending khafz or see it as problematic. 

The Dawoodi Bohra Women’s association for Religious Freedom, which claims to have nearly 75,000 supporters, insists that khafz is an essential part of their faith and hence protected under the Indian constitution. A petition to ban FGM in India has been lumped together with cases about women’s entry into temples and mosques and is waiting to be heard by a special bench of the supreme court. 

Sakina, a 28-year-old psychology professor in Mumbai who wished to be identified only by her first name out of fear of backlash, remembers khafz as being no more painful than an injection. She had the procedure in a clinic when she was seven and says it has not harmed her emotionally or physically, though she realizes that that may not be true for other Bohra women. 

“What happened with them was wrong and I completely sympathize,” she says about those who’ve been traumatized by the experience. But banning the practice altogether, she adds, would also take away women’s agency, and could have unintended consequences when it comes to women’s safety. 

“There is a very high possibility that it will be done at houses where the conditions might not be very sanitary and the people might not be as skilled,” she says.

If she has a daughter in the future, she plans to wait until the girl reaches adulthood and only do it with her consent. 

Many anti-FGM activists decry attempts to reframe khafz as a religious freedom issue, and believe that banning the practice should be straightforward. “There is no need to alter the genitals of a child,” says Ms. Ranalvi. “Full stop.”

Awareness-raising campaigns have been instrumental in reducing at FGM in Africa and the Middle East, but India has seen little progress. Activists say that’s largely because the Indian government fails to acknowledge that FGM exists in the country.

In a 2018 press release defending its record on women’s safety, the Indian government said that “female genital mutilation … is not practiced in India.” These sorts of statements frustrate activists like Ms. Ranalvi, who meets often with government officials and hands them studies and surveys containing victim testimonies.

“We are stuck at stage one where there is no recognition,” she says. 

While FGM may only affect a fraction of India’s women, Ms. Ranalvi says it echoes the broader struggle for gender equality in India.

“Why are girls not allowed mobile phones in some places? Why are girls not allowed to wear the clothes they want to wear?” she says. “All these are reflections of how you control a woman.”