When Amartya Sen, Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, first raised the issue of the missing 100 million women some 20 years ago, I must admit I found it all rather hard to comprehend. I paid it little regard until last year when I found myself at the UNFPA offices in India, mesmerized by sex-selection posters adorning the walls. Before then it seemed all quite abstract, facts and figures and definitively hard to contextualise. More recently, a study conducted in India by Prabhat Jha et al. shows that the practice of selective abortions of girls is still prevalent and furthermore that these abortions are more common in wealthy families. It is with this in mind that Kishwar Desai's novel ‘Witness the night' seems so timely. Indian author Desai has crafted a fiction based on fact and tells the story of the 14 year old Durga from Punjab. Durga is found barely alive surrounded by 13 dead bodies and is instantly deemed to be the culprit. The protagonist Simran Singh, an iconoclastic social worker is seconded to try and communicate with the accused girl to clarify the events of that fateful night. However, she soon realises that the events are not in isolation and discovers a world where generations' of female infanticide is not only tolerated but often de rigueur. Set in Jullunder, Punjab which is noted to have one of the lowest female to male child sex ratios in India, Less than 850 girls per 1000 men. The introductory flippant remark from the local policeman: “We should have killed her when she was born” is indicative of the state of women in society. “Not so long ago, the midwives used to take away newborns from their mothers, seal them in earthen pots and roll the pot around till the baby stopped crying” Simran retorts. Only to discover that decades later all that has changed is that the practice is more sophisticated, now not after birth but before birth. “A great tradition of culling out girl children that we maintain till today, where tests are conducted and babies are aborted” Even though sex selection tests are illegal the obsession with male progeny continues. Although in days of yesteryear poverty could be deemed the major driving force relating to issues of dowry this is now superseded by issues of social status and inheritance affecting the more affluent. Through this very intriguing story of distrust and suspicion, Desai provides a seldom seen insight into the culture and tradition of prejudice towards women that perpetuates the practice of sex selection, through a human perspective. Narrated with honesty and humour through the eyes of Simran, it brings to the fore an important social issue to the mainstream Western World. It is a talent for an author to be able to fictionalise a social issue; intertwined with fact whilst all the time rendering the reader captivated and moved; Desai does just this – splendidly. Kishwar Desai, winner of the 2010 Costa First Novel Award, is speaking this week in London at the South Asian Literature festival. ** Republished with permission of the author. BM
