Navratri: Are these the only days to bestow your love on a girl child?

Chaitra Navratri, also known as Chait Navratras, is observed during the Chaitra month (March – April) in a traditional Hindu calendar followed in North India. The festival is dedicated to Goddess Shakti and three of her most popular forms– Goddess Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati – are worshipped during this period.

Chaitra Navratri begins on the first day of the Chaitra month and ends with Ram Navami. It is known by different names like Ram Navaratri, Vasant Navratri, Basant Navrathri and some people also refer it as Spring Navaratras.

Chaitra Navratri is observed when Mother Nature undergoes an important climate change. It also marks the beginning of the summer season. There is a popular belief that the fasting during Chaitra Navrati is to prepare the body for the ensuing summer season.

The festival of Navratri culminates in Mahanavami. On this day Kanya Puja is performed. Nine young girls representing the nine forms of Goddess Durga are worshiped. The little girls who are invited to be worshipped are known as ‘kanjaks.’

This ritual is held mostly in Punjab and Haryana – two states famous for female foeticide. Since last few years, many household in these states are finding it difficult to get girl children to worship as Goddess Durga.

Is is not an ironical situation where girls are treated as Goddess on one hand and killed on the other?
And it is not the uneducated class that is practicing female foeticide. The act of female foeticide prevails more in the educated and affluent society.

It is a disgrace for the Indian society which considers the birth of a girl child as a bad investment in future. This narrow viewpoint of the Indian patriarchal society has led to horrid practices like female infanticide and female foeticide. A present study reveals that Punjab has one of the lowest sex ratios in the country.

Escalating demands of dowry are cited as the main reason for this heinous crime. And what are we doing in return, instead of removing the root of the problem – the dowry--, we are killing innocent girls for no fault of their's.

I need you to answer some questions. Do we now have a right to celebrate Navratri? Do girls hold importance for just nine days in a year? What is the use of worshipping a Goddess when you cannot protect her children? Do you think Goddess Durga will forgive you for such an act and accept your prayers?

I feel it's high time to curb the practices of female foeticide. The government has already declared January 24, 2009 as the national girl child day that focuses on targeting the scourges of female foeticide, domestic violence, and malnutrition.

Men without women are not human. This transformation of the male into animal if the world were to become womanless is the theme of "Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women". The movie is not imaginative (fact: over 35 million girls have gone missing in our country in the last decade; killed while still foetuses, executed soon after they were born, or murdered because of sheer neglect) but depicts what our future will be if we do not curb the practices of female infanticide and female foeticide.

The movie shows that in a village without women, confused and sex-starved men hanker for release, through pornography, bestiality, homosexuality, and violence. And when they find a girl then begin exercising their physical rights over her, turn by turn by turn! It's time we take some action.