By Nevin Sulthan SN
Kerala has been praised as a global model for human and gender development, with its literacy rate, health indicators, and achievements in women’s education. However, a study I co-authored with Nawmi Naz Chowdhury for WeSpeakOut captures a paradox. It is based on interviews with nine women from a section of the Sunni Muslim community in the Nedumangad Taluka of Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala. The study
found that Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) is practised largely outside public knowledge in the region, on 40-day-old infants.
The prevalence of this practice captures Kerala’s gender paradox: a state that performs well on human and gender development indicators can still quietly carry forms of gender-based violence that these indicators fail to capture.
I write this as a survivor of the practice myself, and as someone who has published academic research on it. This piece draws on both the WeSpeakOut study’s community findings and my lived experiences and academic engagement with the practice, how it is sustained, reproduced, justified, and challenged.
A ritual on the 40th day
In Kerala, the practice is locally known as “sunnath,” “pen sunnath,” “pen chelakarmam”, or “markkam.” In India, FGM/C is extensively documented in the Dawoodi Bohra community, where girl children are typically “cut” between the ages of six and nine years (Johari & Mahmood, 2017; Equality Now et al., 2025). In Kerala, the practice is often carried out at 40 days old, alongside the child’s head-shaving ceremony. Pen Sunnath in the region is performed by women from the traditional barber community, called “Ossathi”; they sometimes visit the house of a newborn child as part of their cultural rite, or they are sometimes summoned directly by the family, or because the local Jamaath expects it as a matter of course.
Since the practice occurs in infancy, no survivor carries the memory of being “cut”. Among the nine participants in the “We Speak Out” research, many learned they had undergone it decades later, sometimes after their marriage, after giving birth to a daughter, or through an incidental conversation with relatives. This delayed discovery of being the survivor is part of the structural design that sustains the practice; here, knowledge is gated selectively by the older women in the family, and the daughters grow up with no memory of the incident, with no tools or vocabulary to understand it, thus manufacturing a collective silence around the practice.
The nine respondents of the “We Speak Out” research, aged between 33 and 65, provided a consistent narrative on the procedure, which is a small cut or prick in the clitorial region with the blade that Ossathi carries, just enough to draw a little blood. These accounts place the practice in Kerala under the WHO classification of Type I or Type IV FGM/C.
Questions of harm and consent
Several participants of the study connected the practice to a loss of sexual interest, but only in retrospect. Husbands often blamed women for their diminished sexual interest, especially after childbirth.
WHO states,“FGM’s immediate risks can be life-threatening and include severe infections, heavy blood loss, as well as extreme pain and emotional trauma. Longer-term consequences for survivors include, as well as those described above, menstrual difficulties; urological complications, including urinary tract infections and difficulty urinating; and painful sexual intercourse.” (World Health Organisation, 2025).
Evidence also indicates that FGM/C is associated with adverse psychological impact, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (World Health Organisation [WHO], 2025; Berg et al., 2019).
Beyond these documented harms, the practice raises a more fundamental ethical concern. The accounts we gathered on our study clearly indicate that the “cutting” is performed on infants who are just 40 days old, with no capacity to understand, question, or consent in any way to what is being done to their bodies. Here, “Pen Sunnath” is not a matter of cultural interpretation of community practices but rather a violation of bodily autonomy through an irreversible act of bodily alteration imposed on infant bodies that cannot refuse, seek information, or advocate for themselves. Others make alterations to the girl child’s body, often without even offering her an explanation. Then, later, she is left to discover and live with the consequences for the rest of her life. Existing taboos around discussing sexuality and the female body curbs many women’s ability to understand what is being done to their bodies. Several participants in the study expressed uneasiness about raising the subject with their natal and marital families, for fear of being judged or shamed.
A global pattern
FGM/C as a practice is not limited to one region. The official estimates of the WHO show that more than 230 million women and girls have undergone FGM/C across the globe (World Health Organisation, 2025). UNICEF/UNFPA regional reporting on Asia shows that more than 80 million women and girls have undergone some form of FGM/C (UNICEF Data, 2025; UNFPA Asia and the Pacific, 2024). India lacks a national prevalence study to date, which means the true scale of the practice remains unclear and continues to hinder evidence-based policy responses (Equality Now et al., 2025; UNICEF Data, 2025)
From Dawoodi Bohra to Kerala
Documented cases of FGM/C in India are largely confined to the Dawoodi Bohra community. Studies by organisations such as Sahiyo and WeSpeakOut have estimated the prevalence of the practice in 75–80% in the Bohra community, typically involving the WHO classification of Type 1a/1b Female genital cutting of the clitoral hood and clitoris (Equality Now et al., 2025; Johari & Mahmood, 2017).
FGM/C cases identified in Kerala differ from those in the Bohra community in scale, visibility, and timing. However, the underlying logic of the practice, i.e., controlling women’s sexuality through an irreversible act performed at an age where it is impossible to provide meaningful consent, remains the same.
The documented evidence of FGM/C as a practice existing in Kerala became public for the first time in 2017, when an undercover investigation by Sahiyo identified two doctors at a private clinic in Kozhikode admitting to performing “sunnath” on girl children in the community. An Investigation by a Malayalam daily corroborated the finding. The then-Health Minister, K.K. Shailaja, ordered an inquiry, and the Kerala chapter of the Indian Medical Association publicly condemned the practice. Several organisations, including the Muslim Youth League, protested outside the clinic and forced its closure (Johari & Mahmood, 2017). After the incident, beyond individual testimonies, there were no efforts to document the prevalence of the practice in the region until the WeSpeakOut study, conducted in 2024 and with its report released in 2026.
The legal vacuum
India currently lacks laws banning the practice of FGM/C. Existing protection relies on the provisions of the POCSO Act’s sections on sexual assault and its aggravated forms when committed by a parent, guardian, or relative, alongside BNS (IPC) provisions on hurt and grievous hurt.
A public interest litigation seeking an explicit ban has been pending before a nine-judge Supreme Court bench since 2020. The central government has repeatedly argued in Parliament and before the Court that there is “no credible data to establish its prevalent existence” and insists that existing laws are adequate to prosecute such a practice (Equality Now et al., 2025). In 2022, Costa Rica recommended at the UN Human Rights Council that India legally adopt the WHO’s definition of FGM/C and criminalise the practice. India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development responded by merely “noting” the recommendation, without accepting or committing to act on it (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2022).
Interestingly, every question raised in Parliament on FGM/C till date has been asked by representatives from Kerala. MPs from Kerala have repeatedly raised the issue of FGM/C in the national record (Equality Now et al., 2025). This persistence gives hope that, with sustained effort to keep the conversations on FGM/C in the state, Kerala’s political establishment may address the practice in the region.
Part of a larger pattern of control over women’s bodies
FGM/C in Kerala and in other parts of India, as well as across the globe, should not be understood in isolation. It sits within the wider landscape of embodied practices of sexual control across communities that operate in the language of tradition and honour; from the virginity testing in the Kanjarbhat community of Maharashtra to breast ironing in central and western Africa, women’s bodies are policed and altered in the name of custom (Thomson Reuters Foundation, 2019; Feinstein International Centre, n.d.). These practices are not connected by religion or region but rather by the shared patriarchal logic of controlling women’s bodies and desires. When we restrict the narration to a single community or region, we miss the larger pattern of gender -based violence and risk feeding communal narratives rather than confronting gender based violence as the structural issue it is.
Where this leaves us
To an extent, I enjoy the privilege of distance, having moved out of the community in my adult life, which enables me to share my stories on public platforms. However, the nine women who bravely shared their experiences did so at their personal risk, as they continue to live in the same families and communities.
These personal accounts, cannot establish how widespread the practice is. However, they establish, unambiguously, that FGM/C exists, and it continues to harm and violate the bodily autonomy of girl children and women. India requires a clear legal framework to end the practice and protect survivors (Equality Now et al., 2025). True transformation of gender relations that underlie control over women’s bodies requires community-led engagement rooted within practising communities, not efforts imposed from outside. It also requires political, educational, and cultural spaces where women can understand, discuss, and question their own bodies without fear of being shunned or shamed.
Note: This article draws on “Understanding Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Community Perspectives and Pathways to Change in Kerala” (Nevin Sulthan SN and Nawmi Naz Chowdhury, WeSpeakOut) and the author’s peer-reviewed paper “Embodied Resistance: Personal Narrative and Cultural Critique of FGM/C in Sunni Muslim Communities of Kerala” (Feminist Encounters, 2026).
*The author is a PhD Candidate, Department of Social Work, Delhi University
Reference list:
Feinstein International Centre. (n.d.). Understanding breast “ironing”. Tufts University.fic.tufts
Johari, A., & Mahmood, A. (2017, August 14). Female genital cutting is being practised in Kerala too: Sahiyo investigation. Sahiyo.sahiyo
Nevin Sulthan SN, & Chowdhury, N. N. (2026). Understanding female genital mutilation/cutting: Community perspectives and pathways to change in Kerala. WeSpeakOut.wespeakout+1
Nevin Sulthan SN. (2026). Embodied resistance: Personal narrative and cultural critique of FGM/C in Sunni Muslim communities of Kerala. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics.lectitopublishing+1
Thomson Reuters Foundation. (2019, November 7). Factbox: Virginity testing: A ritual from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
