By Ashish Ganda
Dr Harshinder Kaur author of Female feticide – A Curse (Bharoon Hatya – Ek Sarap) made an impassioned speech against Female feticide at a gathering organized by Punjabi Council of Australia in Blacktown on November 22, 2009. The Punjabi Council of Australia is a participating association for “United India Associations” a leading organization representing Indian’s in Australia. Speaking in her mother tongue – Punjabi, Dr Kaur also spoke against the evil of alcohol consumption and campaigned for promotion of Punjabi usage amongst the younger generation. She made a case that in order to ensure preservation of Punjabi heritage and culture amongst the youth, use and promotion of Punjabi language is necessary.
Dr Kaur highlighted that Punjab leads India on the size of female feticide. She mentioned that female feticide is aided by advancement in ultrasound diagnostics. Female fetuses are identified by Ultrasound diagnostics and pregnancies are terminated. Female feticide is largely undertaken by families to avoid payment of dowry in a girl’s marriage. Female members of the family seem to be as keen to take up female feticide as the male.
Dr Kaur mentioned that due to high percentage of female feticide the ‘female to male ratio’ is reducing rapidly in the state of Punjab. As a result it is creating a great imbalance in society and causing many other evils to manifest. There is now a paucity of women to pair with men of marriageable age in many villages. Women / girls are therefore being bought and shared among men. Many such evils are springing up due to female feticide and affecting the fabric of our society. Dr Kaur perceives that the reduction in female population may even result in reverse dowry that is men may have to give money to get married with women. Dr Kaur solicited the help of NRIs in fighting this growing evil in Punjab by influencing and educating their family members in India about the effects of female feticide.
Dr Kaur was recently honoured at Parliament of New South Wales (NSW) by Leader of the House John Aquilina with ‘Pride of Punjabi’ award for her social service towards humanity, creating awareness about female feticide at the world level and promoting her mother tongue. Dr Kaur comes from an illustrious family of scholars and academicians - being the grand daughter of Prof. Sahib Singh, who was awarded a D. Litt by Punjab University and was the first one ever to carry out an exposition of Guru Granth Sahib, the daughter of Prof. Pritam Singh, a renowned Punjabi writer and Honorary Professor of San Jose University, California who was awarded D. Litt by Punjab University, and sister of Dr. Jairup Singh, former Vice Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University – Amritsar and present Vice Chancellor of the Central University, Bathinda in Punjab.
The function lasted for over 2 hours and was attended by Mayor of Blacktown – Councillor Charlie Lowles. Many other luminaries from Punjabi backgrounds were present at the occasion including Mr Moninder Singh, Secretary of United India Association.
