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Here
is a debate among scholars and experts on Hinduism. Makes
for interesting reading. If you are interested in Hindu temples,
you may visit GaramChai.com's Temples
setion.
I read
Mr. Shukla's comments with some interest, curious about how
a Brahmin man could possibly reflect on the status of Hindu
women through time. As I expected, I was disappointed.
Although I also do not appreciate the propensity of the Western
press to assign its own values on India, the fate of poor
mistreated widows in Benaras” is a historical reflection
by one of our own. I have not seen Deepa Mehta's movie, but
I am heartened by her bravery, by her willingness to take
on such social issues. When I was a student, I had assigned
school reading like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Awakening,
and it is very exciting to see a female tackling the issues
of women's place in society, rather than more men speculating
on topics with which they have no context, no empathy.
Indian culture in the 1930's was patriarchal. Though Mr. Shukla
indicates that he had foremothers who were allowed to be free
thinkers, examples abound from my family (orthodox Tamil Brahmins)
of quite the opposite situation. Several of my great-grandaunts,
married when they were barely nine and widowed shortly thereafter,
had to keep their heads shaved and wear a brown wrap for the
rest of their lives. Defiance of this tradition came at a
high price: my great-grandmother, widowed at 21, refused to
parcel her four small children to various relatives, refused
to shave her head and be secluded from society. She was ostracized,
excommunicated from all her husband's relatives. Uneducated
and alone, she eked out a life for her and her children in
a time when it was frankly dangerous for a woman to live alone.
Widowers, however, could remarry and lead normal lives.
The women
of my grandmother's generation were all married by the time
they reached puberty. One of my grandaunts, wedded as a child,
ran away from her husband because she feared the idea of sleeping
with a stranger. Her parents convinced her to return to my
granduncle, who had remarried, making her an unwilling participant
in a polygamous marriage.
In my
mother's generation, few women were allowed to go to college.
Several of my aunts were sold in arranged marriages for family
prosperity and ended up wedded to men who abused them. They
could not divorce—to do so would bring shame onto the
family.
Even in
my generation, education for a woman takes second seat to
getting married. Two of my cousins were married against their
will, and have since left their husbands—they decided
to brave the social stigma of divorce rather than be fettered
unhappily like their mothers. These young women are barely
24.
The above examples are anecdotes of a wider and more pervasive
phenomenon that still exists today, even among the more educated
people. I call it the 'orthodoxy of Shiva Lingam.' When a
woman is pregnant for the first time, she might have a Seemantham,
where milk from a cow that has just given birth to a bull
is snorted through the expectant mother's nose. This is done
to pray for the child to be a boy. A standard blessing by
elders says, "may you have a thousand sons." A man
who has sired a direct line of three males is granted an automatic
ticket to heaven, an occurrence honored in South India with
a Kanagabishekam. And so on.
All this
translates into an environment that allows and condones male
chauvinistic behavior. Every young Indian woman I know has
been the victim of ‘Eve-teasing’ and harassment
when she dared venture onto Indian streets by herself in broad
daylight. Families in India practicing prenatal selection
abort more than half a million female fetuses each year, according
to a Jan. 9, 2006 BBC report. According to the Washington
Post group on April 6, 2006, a textbook in western India says
that a donkey is like a housewife because donkeys "toil
all day and…maybe give up food and water…[except
that donkeys are] a shade better, for while a housewife may
sometimes complain…you'll never catch the donkey being
disloyal to his master."
Let us
not bundle the truth in a nine-yard sari. Women have been
and still are substandard citizens in Indian society. And
if we cannot be honest within our culture group, how can we
expect others, like members of the Western press, to accurately
portray us?
Mr. Shukla's
comments disturb me because of its willful myopia. Forget
about how the press perceives us—if we cannot critique
are own culture and our own history, how can we progress as
a society? I get tons of Jai Hind e-mails from uncles and
aunties who want to remind the children of their friends and
relatives who live in the U.S. of the strength and power of
India. India invented chess, these e-mails say. India invented
the number ‘zero.’ Though we comprise only 1.5 percent
of the U.S. population, 38 percent of doctors in this country
are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indian; X, Y,
and Z Indians are the leaders of Fortune 500 companies. These
uncles and aunties are quick to highlight what is good about
India and the diaspora. But any hint of criticism, and people
like Mr. Shukla get defensive.
Instead, they should see that it is a testament to the progress
of our culture that we are producing such free thinking women
like Deepa Mehta, who despite backlash from fundamentalists,
have persisted in telling stories that need to be told. It
is a testament to the progress of our culture that a female
priest will officiate the thread ceremony of Mr. Shukla's
nephew. I hope to see more examples in my lifetime of women
exposing the fallacies of orthodoxy.
Hindus wash their feet before entering a temple, a literal
and symbolic gesture to clean off grime and to purify themselves
before entering a house of God. Let us follow this example
and recognize that our culture and our history has stepped
and continues to step in muck when it comes to how women are
valued in society. Only then can we wash this filth away;
only then can the rest of the world see us as we want to be
seen. Only then, with clean feet, can we step forward.
Respectfully,
Mohi Kumar
Freelance Science Journalist
Washington D.C.
As a regular reader of the press, I have always been struck
by the negative coverage of Hinduism and have never quite decided
if it comes from ignorance or the fact that it is a tradition
so differently driven from those of the Abrahamic faiths that
is familiar to most people in the US that it imagery disturbs
the writer. Stories abound with comments on the horrible caste
system which is always referred to as an integral part of Hinduism
or more recently the fate of poor or mistreated widows in Benaras
is given as an example of what Hinduism is about.
None of those stories every comment on the vast and fairly bloodless
transfer of power by upper caste Hindus to the lower castes
over the last 60 years, a transfer of power willingly undertaken
and led by upper caste politicians (reservations for SC and
STs is simply not controversial and considered dare I say it
as expatiation for the sins of the past by upper caste Hindus
- however no one seems willing to move on with a redefinition
of the tradition that has already changed much and changed deliberately).
The gender issues also are discussed in totally unrealistic
terms and extreme cases become the case in point.
Real life examples from my family (an old fashioned Gujarati
Brahmin one) are quite different from Deepa Mehta's, we have
a great aunt who was a child bride and decided in her twenties
that she wasn't married to her husband since she couldn't remember
the marriage ceremony and moved him out and brought in a man
of her own age into the bedroom (the three lived together for
another 30+ years) with hardly any consequences or another great
aunt who was a teenage widow and who wasn't made bereft but
had a hundred people in the family calling her Ma when she died
in her late 70s. Deepa Mehta's vision of Hindu widowhood while
certainly based on reality is a very incomplete one and like
all civilizations there are a vast range of behavior among Hindus
and compassion has been more important more then cruelty within
the tradition but one would hardly know it from reading the
press.
Hinduism like all great traditions has the capacity to change
and has changed over the long centuries of its life and is continuing
to change quickly even today. This change though is being done
completely from within tradition with its own symbols and stories
and historic elements being reshaped for the modern context.
There are many reference points within the tradition and at
different times different elements have won the day, some of
these elements we can only shake our heads at today but I imagine
Christians must do the same when comes to the inquisition and
just as they have moved on so have Hindus - today a new configuration
of old traditions is taking center stage. For example to continue
with the issue of gender in religion, Hindus have quietly but
steadily reintroduced women priests without any great fanfare
or controversy or rioting. There are many women priests around
the country particularly in the western state of Maharastra
who officiate at various Samskaras and Yagnas.
On the 28th of May, my cousin sister Neelima is going to be
officiating at the Upanayan Samskara (sacred thread ceremony)
for my younger son. No one in the family objected or even commented
on it. Why? Because everyone knows she knows the tradition better
than anyone else in the family in my generation - Neelima has
a Ph.d in Comparative Religion from Harvard, is fluent in Sanskrit
and the traditional rituals of the karma khanda are both meaningful
and joyful to her. While the image in the press of Hinduism
continues to be hidebound, the faith has never been what it
has been portrayed nor are we traditional Hindus what we are
portrayed. In fact many of us who are serious about our faith
have moved on to modernity a long time ago.
I would really like it if some of our friends in the media would
for once focus on the very real positive changes going on within
the Hindu tradition even as we maintain our continuity with
the past. The Janeo ceremony is a very ancient one, honoring
the moment when a child begins his/her education and the sacred
journey to what we hope will be enlightenment. Women performed
these ceremonies in the past (the Vedas are full of references
to women priests) and we are now doing so again as Hinduism
moves onwards into modernity. Neelima officiating at this Yagna
is the real face of modern Hinduism not the diatribes of contesting
politicians in India trying to find a lever to power. I think
this reality of Hinduism needs wider exposure. What do you think?
Best regards,
Himanshu P. Shukla [hpshukla@optonline.net] |
