Mithravindha.R, School of Excellence in Law, Tamilnadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Chennai
ABSTRACT
“unfledged child, not even forgotten her childhood dolls, never knew she herself was a doll in other’s hands, got her life ruined in a sharp end of knife with lot of unbearable pain and unsaid stories”, there are many such unsaid stories where more than 200 million girls from 31 different countries including Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Egypt, Oman, United Arab Emirates (UAE) are still alive being victims of Female Genital Mutilation(FGM) .Female Genital Mutilation is partial or total removal of female genitalia or injury to female genital organs for any cultural or non medical reasons .Especially, this FGM is carried out on young girls below 15 years of age who doesn’t even know what is happening in their body. This is a major form of Gender discrimination and Human Rights violation. The saddest thing of all is that FGM still prevails in India and there is still now no proper legislation to combat it making it to become the India’s Darkest secret. In this Article we will focus how this practise has emerged and how much it is prevalent in India, the supporters of this practise, its constitutionality, the provisions available in India to combat the same,the legal actions taken so far in India to fight against this practise and their current status.
Keywords: Female genital mutilation, circumcision, Dawoodi Bohra, religious freedom, human rights violation, unconstitutional
