First girl's orphanage

They may not be related but they share everything with each other. Living together has give rise to a strong emotional bond. They live as sisters. They are all orphans.

“They come crying when they are brought here but with time, they get used to this place and begin to live as a member of this big family,” says Isha Nighat, chief warden of the Bannat Girl’s Hostel, a wing of J&K Yateem Trust. There are 110 orphan girls in the orphanage.

Rehana Razak was just one year-old when her father died. “My mother would say that he had been militant and was killed,” says Rehana.

Rehana’s grandfather and uncle took up the responsibility of looking after Rihana and her three siblings. But a few months later their grandfather died. Her mother also died a year.

“My mother’s hopelessness killed her. She was shattered by the death of our father and died of a heart attack,” says Rehana.

She became a part of the orphanage because her uncle could not take her responsibility anymore. She was nine then. The decision was also made by her brother so that Rehana, the youngest child of her parents, could continue her education.

“Initially I would remain alone. I would sit in a corner, hide my face with my hands and cry as long as I could. Then with time and after seeing other girls who had also passed through similar misfortunes, I got adapted to this place,” says Rehana. She wants to become a doctor.

Like Rehana there are 109 other girls who live in this girl’s orphanage. They are not allowed to move out of hostel premises and the administration has built a school in the vicinity of the hostel, where girl students from local areas also come to study.

The school was started at the same time when the hostel was established.

“We started with an idea that no child should be left uncared. The idea was to give them good education and this dream was inherited from my father,” says Zahoor Ahmad Tak, Chairman J&K Yateem Trust, who started the girl’s hostel in 2002. Tak says that his father’s dream would never have become a reality if they hadn’t the support of their donors.”

Girls living in this hostel seem quite satisfied with the facilities available to them.

“We have selected a representative from every room who takes care of the monthly needs like soaps, shampoos, clothes, beddings, etc. and, God forbid, if anybody falls ill, the representatives inform warden who then calls a doctor,” says Kausar Jabeen, a student of class 9 and representative of her room. “A ‘mother’ also sleeps in each room.”

There are three cooks in the hostel who prepare food for the children. Though they have every facility available in the hostel but the parents’ separation make them sad often.

“Some girls don’t have any of their parents alive. Their limited resources have brought them here and we agree that a children is safest where her or his mother is but to keep them here is only because we want to give them better education and want to make them independent,” says Tak, Chairman of J&K Yateem Trust. All the girls and workers in the orphanage call him Papaji.

“To take care of a girl child is a very tough job in the present circumstances and when it comes to 110 girls, one can think how tough it could be,” says Isha Nighat. “We can’t be liberal when it comes to girls. They need a lot of care because at times they get too emotional. Whenever that happens we try to be patient to motivate them.

I am not saying that they irritate us, but they treat this place as their home so they also expect to be treated in a similar way.”
The students have also got a female private tutor who takes care of their studies and teaches them languages like Arabic and Persian. For other subjects, their school takes care of that. Some special teams also visit this hostel to impart vocational training. In winters their warden teaches cooking. She says, “They are my daughters so I want them to have every skill so that they don’t get any problem in future”.

Life in this hostel starts from six in the morning. After the morning prayers, they make their beds and iron their uniforms. Then the children get ready for school. In the evening when they are back they do their homework. Seniors do their work themselves and for juniors there are mothers who take care of them.
“The upper class limit is 12th and the youngest one is Shakeela who is presently in 4th class and was brought here when she couldn’t even talk,” says Warden Isha Nighat.

J&K Yateem Trust dates back to 1972. It was started by Abdul Khaliq Tak, popularly known as Tak Zainagari, father of present chairman, in Hardushiva Sopore. After getting registered in 1973, they began their work in Srinagar 1974. Presently, J&K Yateem Trust has about eight orphanages in which there are about 400 children (orphans) and in whole valley they have 78 units.

Female foeticide: koor cha nur

Jammu and Kashmir which was declared a foeticide free zone by UNICEF in 1994-1996 was in headlines when Census 2011 was released. J&K state was topping the list with 834. The ratio has dropped from 941 since 2001.

After 2001 census authorities went in dormant mode as they believed J&K is a Muslim majority state so people won’t even think of aborting girl child as was done in pre Prophet (SAW) period when girl Childs were buried alive by their fathers.

In 2001, six districts showed a positive sex ratio in the 0-6 age group, including Kulgam (1,046:1,000), Kupwara (1,021), Shopian (1,011) and Ganderbal (1,014). But the trend has changed and in the latest census, the number of girl children in these districts has got reduced to 800s and became concern for everybody.

According to health department, the reducing sex ratio is believed to be a result of mushrooming of diagnostic centres. So the government is keeping its vigilant eye on these diagnostic centres and till now they have banned 78 clinics (till 16 June) for conducting pre-natal sex determination tests in its drive to check the practice. “We have sealed 54 clinics in Kashmir and another 24 in Jammu which were not following the set guidelines,” says Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma. He further adds “Sex determination tests are more prevalent in civilized (urban) areas of the state and effective steps have been taken by the government to curb the practice”.

Four years ago Gul Afroz Jan, who teaches law at Kashmir University, first raised the alarm that female foeticide was rampant in the Muslim-majority valley. She was ridiculed by government that her sample size was very small. She says, “They criticized me so much that I was beset with self-doubt, I was wondering if I had got it all wrong."

Her socio-legal survey on the Female Foeticide with Special Reference to J&K says that 13 per cent of the diagnostic centres in the valley carry out gender determination tests despite it being illegal. About 10 percent of respondents said that they have gone for gender determination tests. While 50 per cent of those going for the illegal test were doing it for the first time and 30 per cent for the second time. All those going for the test second time had already aborted a girl child.

The reason for aborting the girl child, the study says, were pressure from the husband (30%), pressure from in-laws (40%), joint decision of the couple (20%) and self choice of the woman (10%). While 40 percent of the abortions had been carried out outside the state, 30 per cent were done in local nursing homes and 20 percent in government hospitals, the study said.

“This practice is done quite secretly and silently in private hospitals and in government hospitals it is given the name of abortion for medical reasons by paying more money to medical and paramedical staff,” says Gul Afroz. However, gynaecologists and obstetricians completely deny any involvement in what they term as ‘criminal abortions’. “I think non-medicos and paramedics are involved in these unprofessional and unethical crimes but none of the gynaecologists as far as I know is involved in this type of crime,” says Dr Mehraj, Registrar at Lalla Ded Hospital . He also says that he has himself attended such kind of patients but only when they come to our hospital in a very serious condition as Para medicos can’t help if sometimes complicacies arrive.

The declining number of females shows that daughters are not preferred in the state. “We have a lot of unclaimed babies in the hospital whom their parents leave in the premises of the hospital after they are born, most of these are girl babies,” says Tasleema, a senior nurse in Lalla Ded Hospital .

The people mostly involved in this illegal act are mostly believed to be moneyed class, which has enough money and means to do this rather than poor who have their children starving. But there are also some people who move door to door for a child. “I didn’t have any child after 15 years of marriage, I thought of adopting a child so to reduce some stress of my wife but my parents didn’t support that. Then I went to Delhi in 1995 and there doctors suggested me for an IVF procedure and we got our first baby, our angle in our life and after that we got more two daughters without any medical process” says Manzoor Ahmad. He further adds,” I really feel blessed now, there was a time when we both partners used to literally cry in our room for a baby and now we feel like our Lord has payed us off for every single tear”.

There has been a baby boy preference always in the state but earlier it wasn’t on the verge of a baby girl.”I have 7 daughters and a son. I wished for a baby boy and then finally I got a baby boy after 7 daughters” says Ghulam Ahmad, a 65 year old man. And according to a survey done by BBC radio from Srinagar office, it was also found that a girl child was preferred more when it came to adoptions as such couples believed girls are more loyal and more caring than boys.

This sex ratio issue forced Separatists groups, Ullemas, Imams and government too to raise their voice against this heroinous crime against daughters and they all have appealed to masses to act on this issue.