Did anyone else catch this snippet on the BBC news? There's a festival in India, where babies are dropped from a 50ft tower onto a sheet held by others. This is meant to promote good health in the infants!!

WTF? WTF? and once more WTF?

Actually I approve...

If the sheets are held by the parents and they miss the baby then it keeps their offspring out of the gene pool...

I like it.

better than the UK where anyone with a white baseball cap or a pair of gold hoop earings is deemed suitable parent material.

Its a sect within muslim culture.

Not Sikh, hindhu etc.

Lets set things straight before we move on

yep am 95% sure it is muslims that do this

This is the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299027/

I won't pretend to know much about Hindu/Muslim stuff but A) I didn't think Muslims had priests, and B) isn't Lakshmi the name of the Hindu goddess? (Character name).

You are right, the movie does refer to a Hindu ceremony. However it is something of a freak occurence, in no way is it sanctioned by the vedas (scriptures) etc. I would contest that it is down to some paedo priests (who are relatively well educated compared to villagers) taking advantage of those who don't know any better.

The director has failed to substantiate his claims with any statistics beyond a couple of news articles where girls were saved from this. By his own admission he has accepted that it certainly isn't as common as the film would make out, and certainly not in sectors of society where the family have some semblance of education. (Whereas the film portrays a wealthy well educated family.)

Not surprisingly, most Indians didn't have anything good to say on the film. I have visited villages many times in India as I have family there, and my parents spent some of their youth growing up in small indian towns and villages. Never have they mentioned anything like this, and never have I heard of anything like this. Generally when I go, they are very keen for me to get involved in stuff they are doing, so no doubt if this did go on then openly with feasts etc then I would have known about it.

Finally, under Hindu religious rules, a man can divorce his wife if she turns out not to be a virgin- so this would be a total contradiction.

This film is serious misrepresentation.

As a muslim, that's the first time i've heard anything like that!

I think it's when they are a bit older- around 10 or so iirc.

It's practiced in some African countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, not very common nowadays but still done by some tribes.

And neither is beheding with a knife either......................;

It certainly seems like a strange "ceremony" to me... I wonder if that's where the term baby bouncer came from.........