She hated her grandmother's room and the smells that she associated with it. It was in this room, 16 years ago, that she was pinned to a bed. A woman took out a blade. "The extra skin on my clitoris was cut off," Shifa Doctor (not her real name) says.

She was six-and-a-half years old when her mother told her that "something was going to be removed" from her body. "All that I would feel would be something like a pinch," she recalls.

But till this date she remembers the pain. "There was no anaesthesia. It was extremely painful. I still remember using ice-cold water in our western toilet where I was not able to sit for the first few days. It was far from a 'pinch'. The pain was excruciating and, to this day, I say there has been nothing to compare it with."

Shifa, 22, is a journalist. The family has since moved out of their flat in south Mumbai which was predominantly populated by Dawoodi Bohras, a Shia Muslim community that is the only one practising female circumcision which the United Nations has termed female genital mutilation, or FGM.

The United Nations has declared February 6 as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FMG, which is banned in most countries. A Bohra family from Australia had to recently pay a steep price when its members were sent to jail, along with a nurse, for the genital mutilation of the daughters of the family.

Shifa recalls that another girl was undergoing the procedure when she was being put under the knife. "The girl from the second floor of my building was also prepped up so there was solace in the fact that somebody else was going through it, too. It was my grandmother's idea actually. My father's mother. She didn't like me."

Her younger sister has been spared the knife. "We simply lie when we are asked if the khatna - which means circumcision - was done," she says. Khatna, she explains, is one of the prerequisites for getting invited to various functions among the Bohras. If khatna is not done, Shifa says, girls in her age group may not be invited for a Sitavi, a function held in most homes and at the end of which gifts are given. They can also be denied space in the community graveyard.

But an effort is on to end this practice. A group of Bohra women is now rallying support for the cause and hoping to get the government to listen to them. They have amassed 30,000 signatures under the aegis of Speak Out on FGM. The group plans to give a petition to Maneka Gandhi, the minister of women and child development. The petitions seeking a ban on FGM will also be sent to the law and health ministries.

There is good reason for a ban. FGM can cause irreversible lifelong risks, severe pain and shock, uterus, vaginal and pelvic infections, painful menstruation, excessive scarring, blood poisoning, hepatitis, childbirth complications, infertility, painful sexual intercourse, abscesses and even death.

While male circumcision is compulsory among Muslims, female circumcision is not practised among Muslims, barring the Bohras. Female circumcision is widely prevalent in many parts of Africa, and it is believed that Shia Ismaili Bohras have African roots.

But over the years, attempts have been made to mobilise support against FGM. Five years ago, a woman who identified herself only as Tasleem (she did not disclose her actual name) petitioned the clergy, who is the spiritual head of the community called the Syedna, by getting 3,000 signatures of Bohra women. But there was no response. Qureish Rakhib, the spokesperson of the Syedna, did not respond to questions from The Telegraph.

The issue came up again three months ago when Masooma Ranalvi, an activist based in Delhi, who had gone through khatna as a child, wrote about her circumcision as a seven-year-old, on a website. It created ripples, and Ranalvi says she received support from Bohra women all over the world. That's how the campaign against FGM took off.

"For 40 years, it was a dark memory for me. I never spoke about it. I had suppressed it in a space which I had hoped I would not go back to. I had never shared my secret even with my co-activists. But the moment I spoke about it, it was catharsis for me and the reaction I received was unexpected," she says. "From Pune, Udaipur, Surat, Toronto, UK, Australia and elsewhere there were women who had young girls and did not want the circumcision done on their girls. The movement then grew organically and we felt we should go to the government."

Clearly, many women who have undergone the pain of khatna do not want young girls to experience it. Fatema, who is also a Bohra, remembers the experience even now - how she was held down by two women and her grandmother.

Over the years she has spoken to other educated women in the community. "There are various theories as to why it is done. Some say that the real purpose is to ensure that women do not experience an orgasm," she says. She adds that even non-Bohra brides marrying Bohra men are often forced by their mothers-in-law to go through khatna. The procedure is especially painful for older women as the skin thickens over the years.

The women from the forum against FGM feel that once the government bans the procedure, the community will have to abandon the practice. Says Shifa, "Personally, I have forgotten about it. It is like if you a break a finger when you are a child, it is painful. But you move on. But I am glad my mother took the decision to not allow my younger sister to go through the pain."

Ranalvi believes that the time has come to rip apart the secrecy that shrouds the practice.

"We need to openly acknowledge that something like this happens in our homes, in our families and in our lives, and that if we have to break the perpetuation cycle for the next generation, we have to start doing it first in our own homes," she writes. "We owe it to ourselves and to our daughters."