A mother takes her seven-year-old daughter for circumcision, allowing a part of the child’s clitoris to be cut with a blade in the name of religion. A family allows their 13-year-old daughter to go on a 68-day fast – a tapasya that eventually leads to her death – also in the name of religion.

As the co-founder of Sahiyo, an organisation working to end Female Genital Cutting in my Dawoodi Bohra community, I cannot help but notice the parallels between the two cases.

On October 4, two days after she completed an allegedly voluntary 68-day religious fast, 13-year-old Aradhana Samdhariya died of a cardiac arrest on the way to a Hyderabad hospital. The family labelled her death as “natural” and hundreds of Jains attended her funeral, celebrating the girl asthe clitoris, unlike male circumcision, has no known medical benefits. On the contrary, it could lead to bleeding, infections, reduced sexual sensitivity or long-term psychological scarring. Khatna also falls within the World Health Organisation’s definition of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, a practice illegal in several countries because it is a human rights violation. In fact, in November 2015, three Bohras in Australia were convicted under the nation’s anti-FGM law for carrying out the circumcision of two minor girls. Despite this, the Bohra religious leader – whose headquarters are in Mumbai – publicly endorsed the cutting of minor girls as recently as June.

For the past year, there has been an increasingly vocal opposition to khatna from within the community, but Bohra girls are still taken by their mothers, grandmothers or