Nefarious Nation: India's Most Gruesome Practices

It's far too easy to shove barbaric practices into an ancestral corner of our minds but it's no secret that some of the most savage, gruesome practices are still heavily ingrained in our culture. While we're quick to call medieval generations savage and uncivilised, perhaps it's time to explore whether we've really evolved at all or perhaps we've just become better at covering our tracks?

As we list out some of the most gruesome practices that are still not just existent but actually commonplace in India, we're fairly certain you might begin to agree with the latter.

I. BRIDE BUYING

An old practice in India, bride buying is the ruthless commodification of brides where women are “bought, sold, trafficked, raped and married off without consent.”

India’s National Crime Records Bureau says that half of the nearly 45,000 kidnapping cases reported in 2012 were for the purpose of marriage. But that doesn’t include unreported cases, or girls who are sold or persuaded to leave home. Human rights groups estimate that as many as 100,000 women are trafficked as part of the bride buying trade every year.

 However, the rescuing of brides isn’t an easy feat.

“If we get to know someone has been trafficked, we don’t approach it directly, because if we do, there might be some action taken against the girl,” says Empower founder Shafiq Khan. “So we approach it through neighbors and distant relatives. And once we make sure this is actually happening in this house, then we go directly.”

HONOUR KILLINGS

Honour killings is another dreadful practice that is observed in parts of rural India, where people are killed for bringing shame to a community, in order to restore the familys “ The repugnant act has been reported in parts of Nothern India, mainly in the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The homicide is rooted in reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, having sex outside marriage, or even engaging in homosexual relations.

A recent case included the murder of young couple who were planning to marry in Garnauthi village, Haryana on grounds of having a “love affair”. The woman, Nidhi, was beaten to death and the man, Dharmender was dismembered alive. What serves to be even more alarming is that the people in the village approved of these.

According to statistics from the United Nations, one in five cases of honour killing internationally every year comes from India. Of the 5000 cases reported internationally, 1000 are from India. Non-governmental organisations put the number at four times this figure. They claim it is around 20,000 cases globally every year.

SEX TRAFFICKING

The sex trafficking trade in India is rife- hundreds of young women and girls are trafficked for sex, who have been either been enticed, deceived or kidnapped.

Forced to have sex with clients- a wide range between ten and twenty-five a day-the girls are obligated to conform to these callous standards, or else they are beaten mercilessly with belts, sticks or iron rods until they submit. Alternatively, they are also doused with alcohol until senseless

Most of the women trafficked for sex are Dalits or Tribals, much of it being interstate (usually from rural West Bengal trafficked into Kolkata). These women are stripped of any shred of humility and dignity, leaving them vulnerable to the increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS as well as PTSD and depression. 

With a teeming number of 3 million prostitutes in India, 1.2 million are merely children. Some NGO’S believe that there are as many as 15million sex workers in India.Although most sex-trafficking is to supply girls for brothels and escort agencies, increasingly trafficking is taking place for pornography, including filming and live feeds for the internet, and to feed the growing appetite for sex-tourism. There is also a trade in boys for sexual exploitation.

BLACK MARKETING OF ORGANS

Indias illegal organ trade is driven in part by the vast discrepancy between supply and demand of organs. The Indian government banned the sale of kidneys for commercial gain in 1994; lawbreakers can be jailed up to five years. However this hasn’t stopped trafficking for body parts, which continues to thrive in this country.

The people that are targeted are poor and desperate patients, who living in extreme conditions of poverty and are lured by the lump sum of money in exchange for on of their kidneys, especially when this is accompanied by promises of lifetime care.

Extensive amount of people continue to be exploited, and shortchanged. In one of the biggest rackets involving the illegal transplant of 500 kidneys, many of the victims were day laborers, who would be offered work, only to find themselves taken to a clinic and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations.

"India is not such a literate population," says a spokeswoman from the National Human Rights Commission. "That's the main thing. There are a lot of people who are easy to take advantage of."

DOWRY DEATHS

The issue of dowry deaths affects a considerable amount of young women in India, who are either murder or driven to commit suicide by continuous harassment and torture in an effort to extort an increased dowry. 

Today, in spite of all the stringent laws and campaigns against dowry, statistics of the dowry-related deaths in the country show that they have only increased over the years.

The NCRB statistics show that 91,202 dowry deaths were reported in the country from January 1, 2001 to December 31 2012. Out of that 84,013 were charged and sent for trial and the rest were either withdrawn by the government during the course of investigation or not investigated.

Suman Nalwa, of the Delhi Police unit responsible for crimes against women and children, told the Press Trust of India that violence by those in pursuit of dowries is seen at all economic levels.

"The higher socio-economic strata is equally involved in such practices," she said. "Even the highly educated class of our society do not say no to dowry. It runs deep into our social system."

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

A painfully gruesome practice that includes the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical purposes, this custom is observed by a number of Indian communities- widely practiced by the Dawoodi Bohra community, a sect of the Shia-Muslims, who are led by the Syedna.

Locally termed as “Khatna”, this ritual is performed to preserve the family’s honor, increase sexual pleasure for the male, and enhance fertility and preservation of virginity/chastity. Using a razor, or sharp blade, young women from the age of seven are forced to undergo the circumcision before they attain puberty. Depending on the degree of mutilation, it can cause severe pain and shock, infections and sexual dysfunction.

Nasreen,(name changed), a woman from a tiny community refused to let her 14 year old be circumcised.

“We are seen as an educated community, but the truth is our girls are put through such barbaric rituals even today”, she says.