Every year, on the eve of National Girl Child Day, we pause, briefly to speak about the girl child. We write articles, hold seminars, issue statements, and share slogans. Yet a disturbing question remains unanswered: why do we need a special day to remind ourselves that a girl deserves to live, learn, and be loved? Do we celebrate a National Boy Child Day with the same urgency? That we must set aside a specific day to remind ourselves of the value of the girl child is not a cause for celebration, but a painful exposure of our shared moral lapses and the uncomfortable truth of how casually we have allowed injustice to take root.
Long before modern charters, constitutions, and campaigns, the sanctity of the girl child was powerfully affirmed in religious teachings. In Islam, at a time when female infanticide was a brutal norm, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) openly condemned the killing of daughters and elevated their status with unmatched clarity. He spoke of Paradise for those fathers who raised their daughters with kindness, dignity, and responsibility. He reminded society that a daughter is not a burden but a blessing, not a liability but a means of spiritual elevation. The message was revolutionary: the worth of a man is measured by how he treats his daughters.
And yet, centuries later, how painfully ironic it is that societies claiming moral, religious, and cultural superiority have continued practices like foeticide and infanticide. We must ask ourselves honestly: is religion the problem? The answer is no. Every major religion teaches peace, compassion, and respect for human life. No scripture sanctions the killing of a child because of her gender. What suffocates lives is not faith but distorted culture. Culture, when weaponised by patriarchy, has choked the very ethics that religion sought to establish.
The discrimination against women does not begin in adulthood. It begins before birth, sometimes even before conception, in the desperate prayers for a son, in the silent disappointment at a doctor’s announcement, in the dangerous visits to peers and fakirs promising male heirs. The obsession with sons is not a harmless preference; it is a potential problem in itself. It lays the foundation for every injustice that follows.
Many girls are unwelcome the moment they are born. Many mothers are blamed, abandoned, divorced, or emotionally tortured for giving birth to daughters, as if gender were a woman’s choice. Families fracture, marriages collapse, and women are humiliated for something entirely beyond their control. Society then turns around and asks why women are vulnerable, dependent, or emotionally broken, without acknowledging that this vulnerability is manufactured from birth.
We speak loudly about women’s rights later, education, employment, safety, representation but we ignore the brutal truth that the problem with women begins because she is allowed to be a problem from the moment she is born. When a child grows up knowing she was unwanted, when she watches her mother suffer because of her existence, what kind of confidence, security, or sense of belonging do we expect her to develop?
This is why the debate around women’s empowerment often becomes superficial. The world is quick to shout down those who seek genuine rights for women, labelling them disruptive, rebellious, or excessive without ever addressing the root injustice. How can equality exist when existence itself was questioned? How can empowerment succeed when the right to be born was once denied?
In this context, schemes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao must be understood not as ordinary welfare programs, but as deeply profound interventions. They do not merely aim to save or educate a girl child; they challenge the very mindset that devalues her. Saving her life is the first act of justice. Educating her is the first act of empowerment. Together, they strike at the roots of a social system that normalised injustice at every stage of a woman’s life, from birth to childhood, marriage to motherhood, and finally old age.
A society that truly respects women does not need campaigns to convince people to let girls live. It does not require slogans to justify their education. It does not wait for annual reminders to acknowledge their worth. The need to celebrate National Girl Child Day exists precisely because we have failed her repeatedly.
Let us be clear: the girl child does not need charity, she needs acceptance. She does not need sympathy, she needs dignity. And she does not need to prove her worth, she already has it. On this National Girl Child Day, the real reflection is not about how far we have come, but how much pain we have normalised. Until the birth of a girl is met with not more, atleast the same joy as that of a boy, until mothers are celebrated rather than blamed, until daughters are seen as human beings and not social liabilities, our celebrations remain hollow. Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is this: we celebrate the girl child not because we honour her, but because we have harmed her. And until that changes, this day will remain a reminder, not of progress, but of unfinished justice.

Email:----------------------------darakshanhassanbhat@gmail.com