THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For years, the conversation around female genital mutilation (FGM) in India has centred on one community, the Dawoodi Bohras.A first-of-its-kind exploratory study by survivor-led anti-FGM organisation WeSpeakOut suggests that picture may have been incomplete.Based on interviews with nine Sunni Muslim women aged 33 to 65 from Nedumangad in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district, it documents survivor accounts suggesting FGM may also exist among sections of the state’s Sunni Muslims, who refer to it as sunnath or pen sunnath (female circumcision in Malayalam), and sometimes as markkam.Among Bohras, girls are generally cut around the age of seven. In Kerala, the women interviewed described it as a ritual, carried out around the 40th day after birth as part of ceremonies to mark a baby’s arrival and organised by older women in the family.Several respondents said a woman from the traditional barber community, known as ‘Ossathi’, would come to shave the infant’s head and perform the cut. “Only a few people in the family and the ossathi will know about it,” said one respondent.“In the old days, they used to pay Rs 100-200, which became Rs 500-Rs 1,000.” That also explains why several women said they grew up without knowing they had undergone the procedure.Some learnt about it after marriage, others only when they had daughters of their own.The women spoke about what they were told or remembered hearing from relatives. They described “a small layer” being removed, “a tiny prick” and slight bleeding before the baby was bathed.Researchers say the descriptions resemble WHO Type I and Type IV FGM, which involve removal of part of clitoral hood or pricking.The consequences usually surfaced years later, and the study records these as survivors’ experiences and perceptions of how many women themselves made sense of their bodies and relationships rather than a direct medical link.“We could walk, jump and play,” one survivor recalled. It was only after marriage, she said, that she began wondering why she was “disinterested in sex,” while another said she had seen marriages strained because husbands blamed wives for a lack of sexual interest.One woman said older women initially laughed off her questions. “Then they would explain that it has been stopped in many districts because women lose interest in sex after childbirth. Women will often go numb after that. Their husbands will tell them…they are useless. It has destroyed many lives, and many men left and married other women because of this,” she said.Conversations about sexual health were so taboo, several women said, adding they never asked what had happened to them. Some only pieced together the connection after reading about FGM as adults.At the same time, the study hints at generational change. One respondent felt younger people were unlikely to accept the practice unquestioningly.Another recalled blurting out “Eww, when I heard it and asked what the need was…I did not try to know about it further or what happened in the process,” when her mother finally told her she had undergone it.“The first evidence of FGM in Kerala surfaced in 2017, when NGO Sahiyo’s investigation found it being practised at a Kozhikode clinic. Govt intervened and shut the clinic down. This study builds on that. We have shared the report with Kerala’s WCD minister Bindhu Krishna and chairperson of state women’s commission. Both promised to look into it,” says Masooma Ranalvi, founder of WeSpeakOut.The report comes as the SC resumes hearing the long-pending FGM case, with judges describing it less as religious freedom and more as bodily harm, and child rights and public health issues.
