Guest post by SNEHA BANERJEE: It was a Monday morning that didn’t bring me blues, after many weeks of sweltering heat I could keep the door to my balcony open without fearing the skin-burning ‘loo’ and my room filled with the pleasant breeze which had the promise of bringing in rains once again. I decided to keep my diligently prepared to-do list aside and embarked on staring at the neem tree observing the avian cohabitants of my neighbourhood with the radio on my phone tuned to a FM station. It was then that the unnecessarily loud, over-enthusiastic voice of a radio-jockey broke the serenity of the surroundings. His shrieky voice exhorted a promise to keep Dilliwalon up-to-date with the latest controversies in Bollywood. Now, that was not something that I was very interested in – imagined competition among biggies, who ate what, who holidayed where and with whom and after betraying whom was going to be too depressing to handle, but before I could reach out to change the station, he took somebody’s name that still makes my heart skip a beat even after couple of leap-years have come and gone since I was sweet-sixteen. Yes, any and every news about this ‘star’ interests me and I want to know it all, true or untrue, gossip or through ‘reliable sources’.
But what I heard then, broke my heart. The RJ quoted a Mumbai tabloid, that Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) is having a third child through surrogacy and that he has ensured it is a son through sex-selection.
I know these are allegations, but according to The Hindu, none other than a member of the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee for PCPNDT, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken up the matter with the Maharashtra government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was probing the matter[1]. This is not to be brushed aside. One, it has been reported from Maharashtra, one of the first few states in India where activism against sex-selection and what was then popularly referred to as female foeticide, gathered momentum in the 1980s. Maharashtra government enacted a law – Maharashtra Regulation of Use of Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1988 banning the practice and soon the national-level legislation, Pre Natal Diagnostic Tests (Regulation and Prohibition of Misuse) Act, 1994, (called the PNDT Act) followed, which was later amended in 2002 and renamed the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act (called the PCPNDT Act). Even after the Act came in force in 1996, concerned citizens took note of its poor implementation and no evidence of the effectiveness of the law, and in 2000 a PIL was filed by activists who had been instrumental in lobbying for the law and many of them were Maharashtra-based. Emanating from such a context, if advocate Varsha Deshpande has raised this issue about SRK’s role in sex-selection, then no, this is definitely not an allegation to be taken lightly.
Secondly, if true, then what SRK has committed is exactly what many feminists in India and those of us who are closely studying the phenomenon of surrogacy have feared as a dreadful trajectory that the growth of surrogacy industry in India could possibly traverse, i.e. a widespread use of sex-selection techniques while creating embryos through In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) which is a form of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) of which the multi-million dollar commercial gestational surrogacy industry is also a part. While the PCPNDT Act clearly prohibits and institutes strict punishment for committing sex-selection with the possibility of implicating both the medical practitioner actually doing it and the people who commission the act, the practice of commercial gestational surrogacy has a somewhat quasi-legal status. The practice was considered to be legalised in 2002 with some non-binding guidelines put in place by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for medical practitioners who used ARTs. However, there is no law that addresses this issue but only an Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulation) Bill first drafted in 2008 and further modified in 2010 which still awaits Cabinet approval and is thus a few steps behind tabling in the Parliament. The surrogacy industry in India, with a substantial international clientele which it serves under the milieu of ‘reproductive tourism’, continues to flourish without any regulation by the state, effectively foreclosing the possibility of accountability particularly vis-à-vis rights and the health of the woman who acts as the surrogate merely because she enters a ‘contract’ knowing fully well that there are risks. However, how the issue of informed consent by the surrogates is to be understood in the context of the surrogacy industry in India continues to remain an area that needs to be explored critically. The overlap of the illegality and legality of sex-selection and surrogacy respectively, in a society deeply entrenched in patriarchal son-preference coupled with a population policy that is more obsessed with ‘growing numbers’ than focus on people’s quality of life and matters of social justice, throws open not just the question of biological reproduction overcoming the disease called infertility through ARTs and passing on one’s genes but the quest for a male heir, the phenomenon of daughter-aversion, the devalued and subordinate position of women and girl children in our society despite scores of Ladli schemes and a constitutional promise of equality between the sexes.
Thirdly, the question here is also that of the societal perceptions about the very public lives of celebrities and especially Bollywood ‘stars’ whose sneak-peek is doled out in heavy-doses by the media. I have been thinking closely on this issue for the past few days due to a very recent personal is political moment in my life when Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai came up as the ultimate example of ‘modern’ people rooted in their culture and having a strong belief in the ‘science’ of astrology and thus doing all the upayas to ensure marital bliss when I refused to undergo vishnu-vivaah to recover from the supposed wrath of a certain planet on my relationship with my partner now that we have decided to get married in a civil ceremony without any rituals, religious or otherwise. Overcoming the pure shock of having to at all address the question of why I think such practices demean women when the epitome of ‘empowerment of women in India’ the beauty-queen turned actor and advocate of many ‘progressive’ things from eye-donation to girls’ education happily does all upayas for marital bliss, I do see something to ponder about here regarding the importance of what celebrities and their actions signify in the public imagination. So if Abhi-Ash are purported as the role models to be ‘modern’ and yet astrology believing, then are Aamir and SRK role models for those who are weighing surrogacy as an option? In December 2011, when Aamir confirmed the birth of his son Azaad Rao-Khan through surrogacy, the lobby of IVF-medical practitioners not just got a boost for having been thanked for the technology by none other than Aamir but also the fact that in a country where the rich and the famous go to foreign shores for ‘good’ and ‘reliable’ medical treatment, Aamir commissioned his surrogacy here, which was hailed as an affirmation of the ‘world-class’ surrogacy services available in India justifying its status as the go-to destination for reproductive tourism and transnational surrogacy arrangements. The law is ambiguous, the doctors speak English, there is no dearth of women who ‘volunteer’ to be commercial surrogates, so the surrogacy industry is thriving and Aamir Khan is its ‘surrogate’ mascot (well now, that SRK too becomes one such mascot, the Khan-Khan competition has found a new arena for competition!).
Moreover, as far as Bollywood ‘stars’ are concerned, the entire business of ‘image’ and how they fare on arbitrary indices of being ‘socially responsible’ also determines the way their actions are perceived. That is why I know, Shah Rukh Khan is no Aamir, with no Rang De Basanti or Kuposhan Bharat Chhoro or Satyameva Jayate, he is rather the Kya aap Paanchvi Paas se Tez Hain? guy (I have chosen to rather forget about his ‘freeze it’ days on Kaun Banega Crorepati like many people, our fandom not withstanding). So if Aamir has a child (a son, as that seems relevant to note now) through surrogacy, his third but Kiran Rao’s first, despite an unfounded assumption that perhaps this couple would rise beyond ‘our own’ and also look at adoption, then if SRK too goes on to having a third child through surrogacy should not come as a shocker. But it does, despite the knowledge that the Bollywood elite are moving towards joining the league of their Hollywood counterparts like Elton John-David Furnish, Nicole Kidman-Keith Urban and Robert De Niro-Grace Hightower – all of whom have children through surrogacy. However, sex-selection is an act of violence and discrimination emanating from misogyny, the allegation that SRK has commissioned it is a grave issue.
An important question for me along with all the critical issues raised above is this: How do I understand my shock and deal with my heartbreak that SRK has caused? I am that fan of SRK who has a chill running through her spine when he stands in his signature tilted stance (either on the ‘silver’ screen or on the ‘idiot-box’ screen) and beckons his reel lover with open arms, I wish I could run to him or have someone beckon me in the same way. Perhaps when you love someone in this manner, without any way of knowing the ‘real’ them, (well, I have waited many a times in front of Mannat on my numerous visits to Bambayi nagariya, SRK never bothered to show up for me!), we tend to project qualities on to them and set parameters in such a manner that we set the grounds for heartbreak when the person fares miserably on the standards you set. I guess that is what happened to me with SRK’s sex-selection + surrogacy double whammy. Well, perhaps my love for SRK was not meant to be forever, nursing my broken heart will be a priority now.
Sneha Banerjee is a research scholar at the School of International Studies, JNU
[1] “Complaint against Shahrukh being probed”, The Hindu, 18 June 2013.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
While I understand that you, in particular, have used the controversy surrounding the alleged sex-selection as a starting point to engage with the issues you outlined in your post, I think it’s extremely, extremely important to remember that these were mere allegations, since refuted by the clean chit that was granted to Shah Rukh Khan in this case. News of the alleged sex-selection first broke in a Bollywood tabloid, and these tabloids are not known for high standards of journalism – happening to have a boy can’t be conflated with an unequivocal preference for male children over female children. I have followed Shah Rukh Khan’s career and public appearances over the years – fascinated by how an individual with this urban, consumerist appeal has risen to be a huge star – and while very few Bollywood professionals have feminist credentials, given this person’s general views on women, and his mother, his sister, and his daughter in particular, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s unlikely that he’d have chosen XY over XX. Therefore, I take issue with the apparent heartbreak you’ve suffered – assumption of guilt is really not healthy.
Opting for surrogacy over adoption, however, is a different matter – I wish more people would exercise that freedom of choice to go for the latter: privileging surrogacy as an option to have more children over adoption is indicative of the traditional narrative surrounding adopted children, and I wish these stereotypes were done away with.
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What a different message the man would have sent if he had adopted a female child.
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Which other country forbids and criminalizes sex selection?Social evils can be mitigated through reform of social conditions (e.g.by raising the status of women),and not through enforcement.
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SRK/ anybody shopping for a baby is what I find unbearably disappointing! Opting to have children either biological or adopted is a deeply political choice for any couple, and using technology to merely increase the number of biological children or alter the sibling configuration raise several other disturbing issues. Hoping that this news item at least manages to initiate a debate!
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sneha,dont get disappointed. u will find many men and women adopting a girl child even if they can produce their own. the change is taking place quietly but surely.- without giving loud news on FM radio. srk and amir are silver screen heroes-not real life heroes.
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I’m one of those fans as well and I was very upset when not just the Indian media, but foreign media (Jezebel) also caught on to this sex-selection thing and went nuts. But I’ve since heard that no such thing has happened. And, to be honest, I don’t think he has even admitted to having baby no3. Maybe I missed out on a few hyperRJ’s screechy broadcasts. The last I read he denied baby no3 altogether.
SRK already has a son, and legal ‘heir’, so to speak. So this sex selection thing is a bit weird. I mean, it would make sense if he had two daughters and was trying for a third, a boy, but since his heir is already around, it’s a little lame to be going all, I want male progeny.
Either way, his life and his choices. If it comes to light that his choices are illegal, I hope they make an example of him. Irrational fanlove notwithstanding.
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What??? I cannot believe I am reading this: “So this sex selection thing is a bit weird. I mean, it would make sense if he had two daughters and was trying for a third, a boy, but since his heir is already around, it’s a little lame to be going all, I want male progeny.”
Are you seriously saying that only a boy child is an heir? Are you saying that it makes sense to “try” for a boy, especially if prior children failed to be boys?
You would not be alone if you were saying this, I have seen plenty of families who hoped and prayed for a boy the second or third time around, having had a girl or two already. Honestly, I was surprised to see the sentiment stated so candidly here on Kafila.
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I’m disappointed that this article was published, really. I’m sure you’re an SRK fan as you say, but do give the man a little more credit than that. Jaslok Hospital, as far as I know, is going to serve a legal notice for defamation on the reporter who filed the story, Varsha Deshpande. As for SRK, everything he’s said or written in the past has shown that he’s an intelligent human being, who has shown love and respect to the women in his life (he has always looked after his older sister, for example, who suffers from depression), and who has little interest in confirming to public perception. I think the most impressive thing he’s ever done is to have honestly answered a reporter who once questioned him on “rumours” about his sexuality. He said something on the lines of: “I could have answered that honestly, but you and I know the country we live in.” Come on, don’t just BELIEVE the news from a gossip channel…!!!! And Kafila, please exercise some editorial discretion?????
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Sorry, just a clarification: Varsha Deshpande runs an NGO…she’s not a journalist. And apparently a notice on her has been served. Also, you should perhaps look at the sort of hounding that SRK has been facing recently…there could be more reason than one to want to publicly disgrace him.
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As far as SRK denying the whole surrogacy story goes, here is what today’s TOI says “Shah Rukh has been dodging all talk of a surrogate baby, neither denying nor confirming anything each time he has been specifically asked about an addition to his family.” (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/A-baby-in-Shah-Rukh-Khans-house/articleshow/20827936.cms)
Varsha Deshpande has been served with a legal notice by Jaslok Hospitals and accused of defaming the Hospital according to an Indian Express report (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/activist-in-centre-of-srk-surrogacy-row-gets-legal-notice/1132323/), however she has also made a very valid point saying “If investigations are termed defamation, who will follow law? We are waiting for the government to initiate action. We have proof of the surrogacy and sex determination test”.
There is no denying the fact that the surrogacy news and that they are having a ‘son’ broke through a tabloid and one does have to be careful about them. In my reflections on this case, I had gone by the report in The Hindu (which I guess people would agree, is far from a tabloid) that the BMC has been directed to investigate. I have maintained that I know these are allegations, however the point is that of the significance of people of his stature doing (or getting accused of doing) such things.
In some of the comments above, based on his public appearances and interviews there is an assumption that he seems to be ” an intelligent human being, who has shown love and respect to the women in his life (he has always looked after his older sister, for example, who suffers from depression), and who has little interest in confirming to public perception” as Anupama has said or that ” given this person’s general views on women, and his mother, his sister, and his daughter in particular, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s unlikely that he’d have chosen XY over XX” as Shreya has said in her comment. If Anupama and Shreya, you accuse me of going by mere allegations or reports, what is the credible source that has geared your judgement? Our knowledge of celebrities’ lives and their actions is fed by these kinds of news floating around and none of us have access to conclusively know anything with 100% surety in that sense. This is precisely why I have cited reasons why I do not want to brush this allegation aside when activists rooted in fights against sex-selection since decades demand investigation. Besides, even if true, how do they in any way foreclose the possibility of committing any act that may be ‘gender-insensitive’/misogynist? By that logic, people who love their mother, sister, wife, etc. won’t commit any other act of violence against women? By that logic, say NGOs that work of ‘women’s issues’ or any other kind of organisations like say a company which manufactures sanitary napkins should not have protective guidelines/redressal mechanisms in place for women who complain of sexual harassment at the workplace because hey, these people are in the business of ‘caring’ for women and their issues?
Apart from indicating the ambiguous legal terrain on which an overlap of surrogacy-sex-selection is located as the SRK controversy has brought forth, I wanted to raise some questions around what to make of the significance of celebrities’ life-choices (as conveyed to us by the media) in public imagination.
As far as I understand, Kafila as a collective blog also gives others an instant-publishing platform to voice concerns, raise questions or even some coherent rambling without the push for having to ‘academise’ thoughts/writing. I am glad Anupama, that you are not an editor here, otherwise what would be the fate of a sparsely-published, going-by-gossip poor soul like me?
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hi Sneha – I totally agree with you that there are serious implications if the allegations turn out to be true etc, and that it was wrong of me to treat a personal opinion (my own) as valid and yours as not!! So I stand corrected and apologise for my tone and other assumptions (about what a great feminist SRK is, for example) I’ve made. And I had no idea that Kafila is an “instant publishing” platform – I assumed there was an editorial team of some kind in place. Still, I would still suggest some editorial work on your article, so that you come across as a little clearer in the fact that you don’t believe the allegations until proven, and your main point is one of wanting “to raise some questions around what to make of the significance of celebrities’ life-choices (as conveyed to us by the media) in public imagination”. If you had included this one sentence in your opening paragraph, it would have been a much clearer argument. Still, I apologise for any distress my comments may have caused you. And if I were an editor here, all I might have done is pointed out how you might have organised your writing a little better, is all. If you aim to be a writer, do be prepared also to be re-written, or rejected outright. That’s what I meant by editorial discretion, a valuable asset for any journal to have. You might have taken a point or two into account, instead of only reacting to what you perceive as unfair criticism.
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Anupama -I have no idea of what Sneha meant by ‘instant publishing platform’ – Kafila certainly isn’t one. (Perhaps she only meant that it’s not necesarily academic writing- but we have also published acaemic papers.) There is indeed an editorial team in place, and we take decisions on whether to publish unsolicited submissions from the general public based on discussion within the group. We receive a large number of unsolicted submissions and we have to reject many. This means that when we do decide to publish something, some thought has gone into it. Often in addition, some editing and mutually
agreed upon additons/revisions. We dont think Sneha’s post is about SRK and gossip about him so much as as it is about some
critical isues around surrogacy and sex selection, which is
why we decided to post it.
I will reserve my opinions about the substance of your comments as Sneha has adequately addressed them. I’m only writing this to emphasize that Kafila is not an instant publishing platform but a carefully curated space.
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I should have chosen another phase and not ‘instant-publishing’ for Kafila, I realise. I was only trying to emphasise on the short-duration within which Kafila publishes guest posts, ‘instant’ only to the extent that one can hope to be published within a few days unlike other journals and it being a blog doesn’t exclude writing that is not very academic. Of course, the rigour and standards that Kafila maintains are the reasons why people send in submissions and see if their’s does become a guest-post…. and for a novice like me, it’s a great encouragement and validation to be published on Kafila! Very thankful.
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Er, one more apology: about saying you shouldn’t have been published at all!!! Sorry indeed. I guess I was just annoyed by all this inspiration from gossip channels. Do keep writing, though you don’t really need me to tell you that.
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SRK has finally broken his silence and has admitted to the birth of his son through surrogacy (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/open-letter-from-srk-on-baby-abram/1/290481.html#.Udwff435go8.facebook)… Of course, he has denied allegations of sex-determination… It is important however to wait for the investigations..
What is striking is that there is no mention, let alone a ‘thank you’ to the woman who acted as a surrogate for SRK-Gauri… it is the ‘expert’ doctor and medical staff to whom SRK is grateful apart from God… Aamir Khan did the same in 2011, he “thanked the miracles of science….[and] the Almighty”..(http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-12-06/news-interviews/30481131_1_surrogacy-infertile-couples-kiran-rao) but somehow the woman who ‘rents’ her womb is forgotten…
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