INDIA'S LEGAL BATTLE AGAINST FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION SHAMES SRI LANKA'S SILENCE

The Supreme Court of India is now seized with a question that should shake every South Asian nation. 'Can the systematic mutilation of girl children ever be justified in the name of religion or tradition?'As Chief Justice B R Gavai stood before a national consultation on safeguarding the girl child last Saturday and named it 'Female Genital Mutilation', he did what Sri Lanka has steadfastly refused to do for decades. He broke the silence. He called it what it is: a fundamental rights violation, a denial of survival, a harmful practice that persists despite constitutional guarantees.

- y Nuha Faiz

A nine-judge bench of India's highest court is now deliberating a Public Interest Litigation that challenges the validity of FGM, practiced among certain Muslim communities, alongside cases concerning discriminatory practices at Sabarimala, Parsi Agiyaris, and mosques. This is not a footnote in some obscure legal journal. This is constitutional reckoning. This is a nation; messy, imperfect, contradictory India, finally dragging its darkest secret into the harsh light of judicial scrutiny.

And where is Sri Lanka in this moment?

THE DEAFENING SILENCE

We look away because to look directly at FGM would require us to ask uncomfortable questions about power, patriarchy, and the price we are willing to let girl children pay for our cowardice.

India's journey to this Supreme Court moment did not begin with the state. It began with survivors. Women from the Dawoodi Bohra community; educated, articulate, angry, who refused to let the practice that violated them in childhood remain shrouded in whispers and euphemisms. They formed organizations like WeSpeakOut. They conducted surveys within their own community. They collected testimonies. They built an evidence base. They filed the PIL. They forced India to see.

These women did the work that the state should have done. They paid the price; ostracization from their community, threats, the pain of reliving trauma publicly to protect the next generation.

Where are Sri Lanka's survivors? Are we to believe they do not exist? Or have we simply made it impossible for them to speak?

THE MYTH OF NONEXISTENCE

Let's dismantle the foundational lie that allows Sri Lanka to sleep peacefully: "FGM doesn't happen here."

How do we know?

Have we looked? Has the Ministry of Health conducted any assessment, survey, or study? Have our gynecologists and pediatricians been trained to recognize the signs? The answer to all of these questions is no.