Changing Lifestyles

By Upadhyaya Gupti Sagar Muni

There is a great deal of talk about vegetarianism today. Every one is conscious of how harmful a non-vegetarian diet is to ecology. It is sad, however, that our knowledge and awareness don't get translated into right action. Not to speak of society, even homes are butcheries. Even in the pious wombs of mothers, we kill without any qualm. The country, it seems, has adopted a fully violent life style.

Man Is Losing His Sensitivity : In this advertisement culture which promotes non-vegetarianism, all stories of dharma are without any impact on mind. It seems man is no longer sensitive to anything. It's TV culture from palace to the poorest of society. Our government in its race to earn more and more exchange, advertises meat products. The attractive advertisements tempt you to be non-vegetarian. 

According to research done by Mass Communication Research Centre in Singapore, 74 percent increase in non-vegetarianism in India is due to tele-ads.

Is This Progress? : How unfortunate is this country of ours which no longer blinks even an eyelid at the number of abortions each year. Even the government has legalized foeticide. Is this how a country becomes a progressive country in the world's eye? Is this progress indeed! Is this democracy? Is this our intellectual growth? Or is it disaster? You decide! There is sex selection today. A girl foetus is terminated forthwith In Jaipur alone 3500 female embryos are destroyed each year. 

Abuse of Medical Termination of Pregnancy : Doctors encourage termination to make a profit. They abuse the Act of 1971. Don't they know how harmful are the tests which determine sex - how harmful for the child and mother both? Case of death due to abortion are shockingly high too. Dr. S. C. Kabra of Sawai Mansingh Medical College says in his book Miscarriage of Medicine that the invasive tests first determine the sex and then terminate the female embryo.

Let Her Die! : The BBC film 'Let Her Die' shows how a girl child is killed after she is born in one of the villages in Jaisalmer (Rajasthan). The hair rise on your skin when you hear about such things. The heart grieves. The mind finds it unbearable.

In the entire world people are fighting against abortion, but facilities for abortion, but facilities for abortion are freely and widely advertised in our country. Shall we ever do anything about these places where humans are butchered?

On BBC, Emily Buchanan, in her weekly programme. Assignment, raises third world issues. Whether they focus on Moslem extremists in Algeria, or famine in Zimbabwe, or the exploitation of Latin America by the West, her programmes kick up a lot of dust. A lot of dust was kicked up by her documentary, Let Her Die. Special coverage was given to Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu in the film. These two states have excessive gender related abortions.

Buchanan's film tries to focus on the temperament of the aggressive Jaisalmer people and how they consider woman a burden. The film was shown on October 2, 1993, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. Even through India ignored it, the film viewed internationally - Sweden specially was agitated by it. In the film women confessed that they preferred to be rid of the girl-child while yet unborn. They prefer not to raise her and give dowry. A man stated unabashedly that if his next child was to be a girl he would get it terminated.

After the film was telecast, Sweden's Foreign Secretary and Member Parliament Magratha Wilkund expressed shock. She felt that the world should interfere since what was happening in India was abominable. She declared that if India does nothing to stop this brutal practice, there might be economic sanctions against the country. The Human Rights Minister, Alifsenson too reiterated the same sentiment. She suggested that other world agencies working for human rights should step in, and India should stop receiving further aid from the world. Sweden is one of the largest had given ten million rupees through Sweden International Development Agency, SIDA. The money was money was meant for projects from forestation to literacy. Out of this money six crore was meant for education activities and social awareness.

The film so affected the Swedish people that one of their teams visiting Rajasthan studied the problem of selection and asked why nothing was being done to stop it. They even asked why aid should be given to India for social uplift if such were its practices.

Think : Those who make a noise about brutality to animals, let them think about whole humans who are being killed here. Can you ignored is! Wake up and unite. Don't let such doctors thrive in our motherland. If we do nothing, then we too are silent shares in this crime of foeticide.

Do you think such a brutal act does not affect our code of conduct? Do you think the next generation will not be affected by it? Be warned against those who endorse such practices while yet bachelors! Be warned against those who are willing mated but unwilling fathers! Ask them to which hell they are booking their passage. Or are you determined to make this earth itself the worst hell? Think and decide. His story shall not forgive such humans-- ever.

Our modern age is the most progressive of all ages, but when you hear about this deeds of Indians you want to call them cannibals. Can we insult motherhood like this? Can there be we kill girls like this --even before they are born? Can there be worse pain at any moment for a mother whose child is killed in her womb? Forced to accept the killing of her unborn child by this male denominated society of ours, can a woman know worse indignity than this?

Think, Woman! : Think woman, had your mother terminated you in pregnancy, would you be here today? Would you have seen this world? If not, then how can you terminate your own child? If a man says something to you, you call him critical of women. And yet you prefer to bear only men. Those of you who say, ' don't criticize women' or 'we are discriminated against,' you yourself are being cruel to woman--more cruel than men even! Why this dichotomy in your action and work? I think woman is woman's worst enemy when she burns her for dowry or kills her in the womb.

Woman, How Can You Do It? : A woman does not tolerate it if her child is hit even by a flower. She cries if the child is hurt. Even when cousins playing together quarrel a mother takes side of her child. She foes not tolerate anyone scolding her child even if they are uncles or grand parents. Yet a woman goes ahead and kills a legitimate child in her womb during the first few months of her pregnancy. Is she not perturbed at all to see a part of her own soul destroyed like this?

The Blind Law of This Nation : How blind the law is! When a child is killed in its mother's womb, it is called abortion, but when killed after birth, it is called murder. What were our country's leaders thinking when they made such laws? Murderer gets capital punishment, but when you kill inside the womb you get rewarded! There was a Bombay news item on May 11, 1993 that Tribhuvandas Foundation and Jyoti Sangh of Ahmedabad were given an award of rupees lakh and a half, and fifty thousand respectively, for their work in the area of birth control. The Health Minister announced that Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra take the cake when it comes to abortions. He congratulated the two states and asked the rest of the country to follow in their footsteps. I ask you to think about the above. What do these statements express/ Do they point to progress, or to our utter moral degradation? Is this moving forward or falling into the pit?

Even an illiterate man calls abortion a sin. He known it is murder. Even the laws of the jungle are not as brutal as the laws of the civilized world. How utterly unfortunate is this nation of ours! What a contradiction in our behaviour! We feed pigeons, give food to ants, give porridge to a bitch after litters, feed even the fish out of kindness, serve the cripple, helps orphans, but we get our own child killed.

Why Law? : Dear Reader, until this law is repealed, men and women shall go on being licentious. Abortion is now common practice. To get rid of an unwanted child you go to expensive fancy clinics and doctors. The certificate of a doctor says clearly, ' I am a doctor to serve life, not to destroy it.' When graduating, the doctors are asked to repeat the above. But what about these doctors who kill each minute without any qualms? Their professional honour is now for sale. What should I call these--doctors or butchers? You, as mothers, fathers and responsible citizens, have to help with the right answer. Why are laws made? Laws are made to help what to help what is right and stop what is wrong. If law fails to do this, it encourages wrong action, and we then meet lawlessness wherever we turn. If you do not want this earth to be populated by sinners alone, let's go back to the origins of our decent lives.

Highly educated parents are the ones most eager to terminate unwanted children. Is this how you control population--by killing the female child through sex selection and turn a mother's womb into a butchery? Is this the nation from which the world learnt the ideal of Brahmacharya, learnt the lesson of self-regimentation? The same nation now indulges in free sex and kills unborn children. This pious nation stands polluted by such behaviour. We have indeed touched the lowest point--our licentious behaviour is such that we order the killing of our own child. This child after all was due to an act of love. If you can do this to your child, you will go ahead and murder others also.

The main object of the amniocentesis test was to check on the child's health; now it is used only for sex determination, for termination purposes. Our Western education has made us abuse this test. The figures released by various surveys reveal all that is being done by such centres. In Bombay alone in a short period of one year, thirty to fifty thousand female foetus were destroyed. Whatever anyone may say, I do believe that selective killing of the female child is the latest method of woman's age-old subjugation. According to the latest figures we still have only 921 women per 1000 male in this country. Let's probe a little further.

Dilation and Curettage : The child is shattered by sharp instruments and dragged out. The doctor dilate the opening of the womb. Then the child is pierced by sharp objects. The child thus is wounded within the womb. The child unable to bear the agony dies eventually.

Perhaps the child thinks 'since my mother does not love me, let me die.' The doctors then use forceps to pull out the pieces. If you look at all the tiny limbs of a child ejected from the womb, your heart will wither with grief and shock. Even doctors and nurses hate to be involved in this kind of work. But money makes the mare go. They go ahead and do what they do for money. 

Some times in the process, the woman's interior lining gets wounded. And she suffers from its ill effect all her life. Some times she loses her capacity to bear children.

Caesarean : The stomach is cut open to reach the womb. An embryo up to 5-6 months is aborted by this method. The child because it is premature, dies quite often. If it somehow survives, the doctors kill it.

Suction Method : The instrument sucks out blood. The embryo then is just a piece of meat to be cut up and discarded. A tube is inserted into the womb and the pump at the other end does the suction. The embryo loses consciousness knocking against the womb. The tiny limbs are sucked out eventually. Some times an embryo is still alive when sucked out as if to appeal to the mother , 'O mother kill me not! What have I done to deserve this? But when mothers go deaf what good is any appeal!

Dissolution Method : In this method a huge needle pierces the womb. The needle releases a drug into the womb. The embryo too receives a drop or two of the drug and starts to hiccup. The drug makes him turn black with poison; the child dies. Sometimes the drug dissolves the child limb by limb.

Prostaglandin : In this method a tablet is given to the mother. The embryo affected by it begins to choke. The tablet is meant to choke the child. The child dies in no time.

All these acts, whether done by woman or by man, are worse than anything humans can do. I wonder if the earth is worth inhabiting after this. Even gods wished to be born as humans on this earth, the same human existence is now so barbaric. Let poison not enter our life organs. Resurrect life take care. Even if the population problem is a real problem, we must find new ways to control it ways which are not brutal. The Acharyas and saints have given us clean and pious methods like self-control. Practice them. Don't turn this life into a living hell. History will not forgive you.

The Child Says : Mother dear, at least you should not allow me to be killed. Otherwise it will not be just my murder; you will be called a licentious woman. Do you think you can kill me this time and have me later? Forget it! The ones you kill me will never be yours. Have you not heard what the scriptures say? Or do you not believe in them? Then listen, mother, the scriptures say, women who kill their unborn child are born sterile life after life. Even if you do not care about me, care about what the scriptures say. And answer me please, do you wish me killed even now?

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Source :- From 'Inner Light' Authored By Upadhyaya Gupti Sagar Muni translated By Dr. Sunita Jain

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