Want baby boy? Gulp banyan branches. Prospective Ayurveda doctors taught discriminatory recipes

A textbook used by Ayurveda students across Maharashtra contains five recipes that can supposedly be used to conceive a male child.

 

Here's one: collect two north or east-facing branches of a banyan tree grown in a stable, take two grains of urad dal or mustard seeds, grind all the ingredients with curd, and consume the mixture.

 

Here's another: Create two miniature statues of a man out of gold, silver, or iron after throwing the statues in a furnace. Pour that molten element in milk, curd or water, and consume it during an auspicious hour of the Pushp Nakshatra.

 

"Stating procedure about how to conceive a male child violates section 22 of PCPNDT Act," said Ganesh Borhade, who has been working in the field of Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, and had complained about the textbook to the additional director family welfare in August last year. 

 

In this episode of the People's Court, India Today's Padmaja Joshi asks: Can a textbook chapter describe how to engineer the birth of a male child?