I’am a Daudi Bohra woman and I was circumcised when very young. I  do not remember at what age. But I do recall the incident. My mother  took me to the house of a woman in our Bohra mohalla. Except for  the lady, no one was at home. I was told to lie down on my back on the  floor and spread my legs. It hurt me bad and brought tears to my eyes.  The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.
As I grew up and  became aware of my sexuality I realized the purpose of this circumcision  is to discourage masturbation. It limits the possibility of sexual pleasure  from the stimulation of the clitoris. The circumcision exposes the nerve  endings and direct contact makes the area hypersensitive and painful to  prolonged touch.  While the practice of male circumcision is universal in the Islamic  countries, female circumcision (sunna) is not. Saudi Arabia, considered  the cradle of Islam, does not have the practice of female circumcision  (Harden, 1985). A considerable amount of literature is available on the  more drastic variety of female circumcision namely, clitoridectomy and  infibulation1 as practiced in Africa. In Asia, the countries where female  circumcision is practiced, but literature is singularly lacking, includes  Malaysia, Indonesia, Southern parts of the Arab Peninsula, along the  Persian Gulf, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrein, South Yemen and  among some sects in Pakistan2 and Russia. (Asma El Dareer, 1982)3.
A  more systematic study of sunna -the least drastic variety- is lacking. This  article deals with the practice and nature of sunna in a Muslim sect in  India namely the Daudi Bohras.  The Daudi Bohras -an Ismaili Shia sect- number approximately half a  million and are concentrated in the western states of Maharastra and  Gujarat. Those residing outside India are primarily found in Pakistan and  E. Africa. (Engineer, 1980). A highly organised sect, they have a spiritual  head known as Dai, Maulana or Syedna. Despite the fact that the sect  prides itself on being modern in terms of education, occupation and  family planning, the Syedna continues to exercise considerable control  over his followers.  The information on the nature and practice of this custom was gathered  by talking informally to several women on the community, especially  those with young daughters, interviewing two women who do female  circumcision and drawing upon secondary sources. The data was  gathered in the city of Bombay where approximately 50 percent of a  total of approximatively half a million Daudi Bohras reside. 
The Bohras practice the sunna variety in which the prepuce or the tip of  the clitoris is removed. The word for circumcision is khatna and applies to  both male and female. The practice is supported but not enforced by the  clergy. No other Muslim sect practices female circumcision.  Khatna is performed by mullanis, women who have a semi-religious  standing, or by dais or midwives, or by any woman with some experience.  As some families become more interested in a safe circumcision, they  prefer to go to doctors. (Srinivasan, 1991). The circumcision is done when  the girl reaches the age of seven. The choice of this particular age is not  clear. At this age, the girl is considered nadan (innocent) and nasamaj  (not capable of understanding). She is considered not capable of  understanding what is being done to her and at the same time is  considered sufficiently mature to continue the tradition when she has a  daughter of her own.  

Justification for Circumcision
While the practice is very common, in terms of the number of people  practising, it has undergone a slow change. Among the approximately 50  women I talked to, about 10 percent have given up circumcising their  daughters. Only about 20 percent question, discuss and debate the practice with their family and friends when a daughter comes of age. The  majority eventually decide to have their daughters circumcised. Seventy  percent or more follow the practice without questioning it. The main  reasons for doing circumcision respondents gave include:
a) it is obligatory on the parents to do it as it is mentioned in the shariat;
b) it is a tradition/custom in the community, and
c) to curb the girl's sexuality.
Less commonly cited reasons include:
a) cleanliness and purity; and
b) like male circumcision it represents the attainment of the status of a Muslim.
An unpublished survey4 found that the main reason why women have  their daughters circumcised is to curb a woman's sexual passions.  Srinivasan also found a similar reason. In Sabak (Sunday School) women  are instructed by the wives of the clergy that if a girl is not circumcised  she will bring disgrace on the family and the community. The reasons  cited for giving up the practice included not wanting to subject the  daughter to a painful procedure unless there was a strong rationale for  doing it; not wanting to interfere with the girl's natural sexuality; and to  avoid any medical complications.
The main justification is to curb female sexuality. This is closely related to  the sex socialization of Bohra girls. The word sex is simply not mentioned,  it does not exist. However, the girls are warned to keep away from  strange men. A similar point is raised when discussing Kashmiri Muslim  women. Nallazaralli states, "The women do not understand their own  bodies -the female body in general is considered unclean and an  "improper" subject for discussion". (Nallazaralli, 1974). As one Bohra  woman put it, describing the lack of understanding of young Bohra girls,  "Do they know anything about the human body?" (Srinivasan). When  they start menstruating they are told that now you have become a  woman. There is emphasis on cleanliness and taking of the ritual bath at  the end of the menstruation period but no information about sexual and  reproductive aspects. Young brides do get a few words on sex from an  experienced aunt on their wedding night. While sex is taboo, it is  acceptable and even enjoyed within the context of marriage. A man may  have a higher sex drive but a woman is entitled to sexual pleasure in  marriage.
Bhatty (1988) put it succintly: "Socialization of Muslim girls in Uttar  Pradesh is based on three basic concepts. First, women are inferior to  men in every sphere of life. They are weak physically, mentally and  spiritually. Second, women are responsible for ensuring the continuity of  cultural norms by conforming to the traditional culture and socializing  the young accordingly. Third, the women must safeguard the izzat of the  famiy. The second and third concepts are interconnected since nonconformity  threatens izzat. India Muslim society, like many other  traditional societies, uses double standards for judging men and women  and demands from women complete adherence to these double  standards. Any deviance from the codes of morality prescribed for  women threaten the izzat of her kin group". Unlike other Muslim  women in India, the sexual desire of Bohra women is curbed both  physically and culturally. The task, as expected, is accomplished by  enforcement from older women of the family.
Unlike the more severe forms of circumcision, the least drastic form has  neither serious health nor reproductive repercussions. In my own sample  the most common complaint was the girl's difficulty in discharging urine.  According to one Bohra doctor, there have been cases of infection,  swelling, severe bleeding, shock, tetanus. In some instances circumcision  has been a contributory factor in some cases of frigidity. (Srinivasan).  There has been no systematic attempt to do away with this practice.  Bohra doctors working within the community had tried to take up the  matter with the clergy but without success. An activist of the Bohra  Women's Action Forum, founded in 1989, stated that the practice of  circumcising the girl is abhorent. Reformist5 women have not come to  question female circumcision organizationally; but individually a lot of  women are opposed to it, and have made sure that it is not done to their  daughters. (Srinivasan).

Profile of a Woman who does Female Circumcision
Living in the heart of a Bohra mohalla in a metropolitan city, Ms A, of  lower middle class circumstances, occupies a dilapidated one room plus  kitchen flat and lives together with her son, daughter-in-law and two  grandsons. She is 75 years old, uneducated but literate. She has no  training in nursing or first aid. Widowed at the age of 30, with three  young sons to support, she took the clergy's permission to become  gainfully employed by doing female circumcision. Besides, she states, this  line of work had already been in the family. Her grandmother performed  khatna but her mother never learnt the trade as she was married in an  economically well-to-do family. Her grandmother therefore taught the  trade to another Bohra woman acquaintance. Ms A learnt how to  circumcise from her grandmother's acquaintance and also got some  initial instruction from the wives of clergy.
For the next 35 years, it remained her major occupation. She stopped  only when her eyesight began to fail. She taught her three daughters-inlaw  to circumcise. They were already assisting her in this work and learnt  the procedure by observation. Permission for the daughters-in-law to  practice was duly obtained from the clergy. Today, all the three  daughters-in-law do female circumcision and supplement their husband's  meager income. For Ms A this is honorable work and a perfectly  legitimate way for a woman to earn an income. For doing this work the  clergy takes care of her and sends her a food ration every month. The  community members also take care of her in a similar manner. According  to her, no other Muslim group in India other than Bohras practice it.  Because of this practice, Bohra women, unlike other Muslim women, are  permitted in cemeteries, mosques and can touch the stone of kaaba in  Mecca. Ms A's acquaintances in the mohalla tell her to stop doing this  work and ask her "Why do you make little girls cry?" She replies that as  long as the shariat sanctions it and the clergy support it she will do it but  the decision is really that of the women themselves.

Procedure: She has a rusted box containing five items:
1) the astro – a barber's razor- rusted, with a broken handle (about 8 to 9 inches long,
duly blessed by the clergy);
2) a small stone on which to sharpen her razor;
3) a pile of 1" by 1" pieces of paper -this is used to wrap up the foreskin which is thrown away;
4) a small box of indigenous medicine called abeer or kapurkanchi powder mixed with silk thread ash (pure silk threads are burnt, grounded and put through a sieve). This mixture is put
over the cut over the clitoris, the powder is for its cooling effect and the silk ash for its adhesive value, and lastly,
5) a pile of 1" by 1" pieces of cloth to put on the cut in case of bleeding.
According to her, the entire procedure takes a few seconds and if the girl  is agitated it takes several minutes. The girl is told to lie on her back on  the floor. Her two hands are held over her head by the mother, and her  two legs are held down by a woman each. Ms A holds the foreskin in one  hand and uses the razor (which she claims has been sterilized), with the  other. The foreskin -the skin of a yellow moong bean- is excised. No  anæsthetic is used for the purpose. There is no bleeding unless the girl is  difficult to manage. She recommends to the mother that the genital area  be washed with warm water and antiseptic and the girl be given coconut  water to drink to help in the discharge of urine. The wound is healed in a  day or two. Post circumcision complaints are rare. Occasionally mothers  come saying that the girl won't permit them to wash the circumcised  area. The girl is told not to mention what happened to her to anyone.  Some of the girls are told that a worm was removed from their stomach.  Busy months for her include the summer and Christmas school vacations  when it is more convenient to get it done. Fatima, the Prophet's  daughter was said to have been born circumcised, hence the practice. In  her own practice she has seen one girl in 100 born circumcised in which  case a cut betel nut leaf is ritualistically placed on the clitoris and then  removed.

A Guarded Secret
The girl's circumcision has been kept an absolute secret not only from  outsiders but also from the men of the community. Unlike a male child's  circumcision it is neither announced nor celebrated6. It is a ritual very  strongly guarded by the community women. However, Ms A says this is  no longer true. The washerwoman -a non-Muslim- who comes to her  house knows about it. The men in the mohalla around her house know  about it as mothers with little girls come asking for the whereabouts of  her house.
Her clients include Daudi and other Bohra sub-sects such as the  Suleimanis and Aliya Bohras. Occasionally, she has had Arab girls from the  Middle East brought to her. When a non-Bohra woman decides to marry  a Bohra man and they want a Muslim religious marriage ceremony to be  done by the clergy, the woman is asked to be circumcised. In the adult  stage the size of the foreskin is that of a channa dal.
Today a khatna done at her own home fetches Rs 70 and if she is invited  to the house of the client she asks for Rs 100. Out of this Rs 70 she keeps  Rs 10 for herself, and gives Rs 10 to her daughter-in-law. The remaining  cash is spent in buying coconuts or sweets which are given away as  charity. Although this is her normal rate she accepts whatever the client  offers. Sometimes from the poor she gets as little as Rs 30. About 75  percent of the khatna are performed in her own house, 25 percent of the  time she goes to the house of the client. Occasionally she would be  invited to do khatna for several girls together in Surat, a town 260 kms  from Bombay and which has a fairly large Bohra population7.

The African Connection
The Bohras of India belong to the Shia Ismaili faith. The Ismailis  effectively challenged the Abbasids -the Arab Sunni rulers, and  succeeded, with the help of the Berber tribe, in establishing their own  state called the Fatimid state, in North Africa which later extended to  Egypt and Yemen. Female circumcision was practiced in Africa before the  advent of Islam.
The Ismaili movement, from its inception was a proselytizing mission  which had spread the network of its missionaries to countries like Persia,  Central Asia, Yemen and India. In the eleventh century two missionaries  from Egypt and later a few from Yemen landed at the port of Cambay  and sought converts to the Ismaili faith. The Bohras imbibed the  traditions of the new religion in a thorough manner. Its followers in India  have been very scrupulous followers of all the practices prescribed by the  shariat. (Engineer, 1989). Evidently, female circumcision was a direct  import from Egypt. It must be mentioned that excision/clitoridectomy is  practiced in Egypt. (Hosken, 1979). Circumcision is unheard of in the  indigenous Indian population.
The theory of the Egyptian connection is further strengthened when one  compares the Bohras with two other Muslim sects -the Khojas and the  Memons. All the three sects are petty business communities from Gujarat,  are well structured, and have similar and contemporaneous origin.  Despite similarities among these three Muslim sects, the Khojas and the  Memos do not have the practice of female circumcision. The Bohras and  the Khojas have a common Shia Ismaili origin whereas the Memons are a  Sunni sect. However, all the three comunities have their own distinct  identities, important doctrinal differences and generally do not intermarry  and have separate closely knit socio-religious structures. Like the  Bohras, the Khojas, have a highly centralised command structure and are  tighly controlled from above.
Compared to other Muslim sects, both the  Bohras and the Khojas are better educated, culturally well assimilated  with other non-Muslim Gujarati communities. (Engineer, 1989).  The Khojas or Aga Khanis constitute the Nizari branch of the Ismailis.  Most were converted to the Ismaili fold by the Nizari missionaries who  came from Iran. The Nizari missionaries used local religious idiom to  convert Hindus to their fold. The Prophet and his successor Ali were  projected by them as avatars of Krishna and Vishnu. The Khojas for this  reason remained highly Hinduised for a long time. It was only during the  period of the father of the present Aga Khan that they were encouraged  to openly identify themselves with the Muslims in India. The Bohras on  the other hand were a highly Islamised sect from the beginning of their  conversion. (Engineer, 1989).
Likewise, the Memons, trace their origin to the 700 families, comprising  of 6,178 persons belonging to the old and famous Lohana community of  Sind in Pakistan. The Lohanas, found in the area stretching from Sindh to  Lahore embraced Islam in the 15th century. During this period Sindh was  under the King of Kabul. They were converted at the hands of Hazrat  Yusufuddin -a descendant of the great Sufi saint Ghusul Azam who  probably came from Afghanistan. The present Memon community stems  from these converted Lohanas who migrated from Sindh to Kutch in  Gujarat. (Engineer, 1989). The place of origin of the missionaries -Egypt,  Iran or Afghanistan- and to what extent they were able to impose an  imported religion or were willing to assimilate local customs perhaps  determines the absence or presence of female circumcision among the  Muslims in India.

Notes:
1. Some divide the practice into three and some into four types. The first and the
least severe form is called ritualistic circumcision, where the clitoris is merely nicked.
The second form is called circumcision, or sunna. This involves the removal of the
clitoral prepuce -the outer layer of the skin over the clitoris, sometimes called the
"hood"; the gland and the body of the clitoris remain intact. Clitoridectomy or
excision, a third variety involves removal of the entire clitoris and most of the
adjacent parts. Lastly, infibulation or pharonic circumcision includes clitoridectomy
and sewing of the vulva.
2. The Daudi Bohras in Pakistan practice female circumcision.
3. Female circumcision is not practiced among the Muslims in Bangladesh according
to Profulla Sarker of Rajashahi University.
4. R. Baxamusa (Personal communication).
5. The reform movement has been predominantly concerned with the clergy's
encroachment on secular matters and much of their energy has been channelised
into making the clergy accountable for taxes collected from the community members.
6. Male circumcision is celebrated by distribution of sweets, making of a special meal
and new clothes for the circumcised boy.
7. Another woman who does the circumcision in a small town of about 3 lakhs
population having approximately 50 Daudi Bohra families said that all the families
have their daughters circumcised. Her box contains a razor blzde, bottle of antiseptic,
cotton pads and ash to hold the clitoris steady. She gets Rs 10 and a coconut. With
the money she buys sweets and distributes it to the children. According to her no
other Muslim sect practices female circumcision. She mentioned that other Muslim
women express surprise at finding out that a Muslim sect follows such a practice.



References:
1. Bhatty, Z. (1988). "Socializing of the Female Muslim Child" in Chanana Karuna
(Ed.). Socialization, Education and Women. Orient Longman: N. Delhi.
2. Dareer, Asma El. (1982). Woman, Why Do You Weep? Zed: London.
3. Engineer, A.A. (1980). The Bohras. Vikas: N. Delhi.
4. Engineer, A.A. (1989). The Muslim Communities of Gujarat. Ajanta Publications: N.
Delhi.
5. Harden, B. (1985). Painful Rite of Passage. Greensboro News and Record July 28th.
6. Hosken, F. (1979). The Hosken Report. Women's International Network News.
Lexington. Mass.
7. Kashmir, Some Call it Paradise: Gulshan Nallazarilli as told to Carol Muske. Ms. July
1974, pp. 12-14.
8. Srinivasan, S. (1991). "Behind the Veil, the Mutilation". The Independent. 14th April.


Source:
All for 'Izzat'.
Reprinted with permission from:
Manushi, A Journal about Women and Society, No. 66, pp. 17-20.

For further information write to:
Manushi
C/202 Lajpat Nagar 1,
New Delhi 110 024, India.

* Editor’s note: The urdu term “Izzat” used in the above paper signifies “honour”.