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Years ago, the possibility of and people opting for 'customised babies' created quite a stir. it involved genetic engineering and a donor sperm and the result was, supposedly, tailor-made babies that had the desired aesthetics, height and intelligence to please the money-loaded parents. Now I can't comment on how true it was, but isn't the very idea of customising your baby a disturbing one? I mean, the love of parents, universally, is supposed to be pure, unadulterated, unwavering, and most importantly, unconditional. But when you put a thousand and one conditions even before the child is conceived, and then have so many expectations tailing your decision, aren't we defying the very essence of having a baby of your own? If you have not pondered over that thought, please do so now, because RSS has come up with a magical formula, a way to have 'tall, fair and highly intelligent' babies, or uttam santati as they call it, given you follow their magical path that they take you on. Interestingly, this whole 'plan', titled Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (though there's nothing 'vigyan' about it) to have a nation full of beauty-with-brains children sounds like stuff made for a sci-fi movie, because it does not take into account genes, hereditary traits of even the skin colour of the parents. No matter how 'dumb' (for the lack of a better word) or dark-skinned the parents are, if you follow the RSS' dictum for the 'perfect' baby, you won't be disappointed.
Apparently, RSS has a wing dedicated to the research towards this pursuit of having pure and racially hygienic babies, and has some doctors on-board too. Yes, there are medical professionals advocating fair and 'high-IQ' babies. This is in the times when we are propagating acceptance and fighting against the obsession with fair skin. This propaganda, coming from a strong group with political affiliations, feels like a slap on faces of everyone who has ever expressed their opinion on why the Indian obsession with fair skin needs to be eradicated.
Besides, what irks me the most is this. RSS has professionals and resources dedicated to their 'research. They have centers for counselling, 'purifying', and helping prospective parents to have customised babies, and RSS plans to open more such centres to help India become 'beautiful'. And I can't even imagine how much money that costs! With a population of 1.34 million, do we really need more babies, no matter how beautiful and intelligent? Needless to say, the people falling prey to this brilliant dream will be couples (families) from the lower strats of the society and intelligence. How will they fend for their brilliant children? What about education, well-being, job opportunities? Isn't the money RSS is putting into fueling their dream of 'Samarth Bharat' better used for improving the lives of children we already have? Of course, we can't challenge the ideology of RSS, but we can definitely choose not to participate in the madness.
Think about it.
Image: Shutterstock
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