“Unwanted” Girls in India Get a Fresh Start
A new article from Yahoo! News recounts a recent ceremony in India where almost 300 Indian girls with the Hindi name “Nakusa” or “Nakushi” were given the opportunity to change their names. The girls, whose Hindi names meant “unwanted,” were all allowed by their government to choose new names. According to the article:
“The 285 girls — wearing their best outfits with barrettes, braids and bows in their hair — lined up to receive certificates with their new names along with small flower bouquets from Satara district officials in Maharashtra state.”
In India, male children are prized and female children are unwanted. As a result, the ratio of girls to boys under the age of six in that county is extremely disproportionate.
“Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.”
The ceremony detailed in the article is a beautiful symbol. Such efforts are critical to shaping cultures that value both males and females, but the ceremony was also a poignant earthly picture of a spiritual reality. The scourge of sin has condemned all humans to righteous judgement by a holy and just God. And though the young women described in the article are deserving of being wanted and loved by those around them, all we as humans are totally deserving of being spiritually “unwanted” and “unlovable” because of our treason against God.
But, praise God, that is not the end of their story, and it is not the end of the Christian’s story. As sinners, we had no hope. But while we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)! While we were yet marred by depravity and altogether unlovable, God called us out of our sinful darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). When we least deserved new names, He called us His children.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ compelling discourse on gospel missions includes one of His most well-known commands: “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Luke 10:2, NKJV).
Most likely, every one of the Indian girls honored at the ceremony is a Hindu. They probably have little to no conception of the truths of Christianity, yet they have now been exposed to a powerful example of a spiritual reality presented by God’s Word, the Bible. Indeed, the whole of India is a teeming harvest of lost souls, many of whom are branded as “unwanted” and as such have no hope, either in this life or the next.
We must pray that God will send workers into the Indian harvest, not only to reflect God’s mercy and lovingkindness to those society deems “unwanted,” but, most importantly, to share the knowledge of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.
RELATED INFORMATION:
285 Indian girls shed ‘unwanted’ names
Yahoo News
MUMBAI, India (AP) — More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony Saturday that it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.
Luke 10:2
Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.