Is there female genital mutilation in India? Delhi says no, survivors say yes.
Masooma Ranalvi was in her thirties when she came across an article on female genital mutilation (FGM). The practice is most prevalent in Africa, but as Ms. Ranalvi read about it, a painful memory resurfaced from her own childhood in Mumbai, India.
When she was barely 7, her grandmother, on the pretext of taking her out for a sweet treat, brought her to a dingy building. A woman there asked the young Ms. Ranalvi to lie down, took off her pants, and proceeded to cut her.
“I felt the resemblance so stark – what happens [in Africa] and what had happened to me,” says Ms. Ranalvi, now in her 50s. “It
