Dream of a society where women
are not allowed entry into places of worship. Imagine they are banished to keep
their religious practices confined to their homes. Imagine they are taught that
they serve God best by serving their religious husbands. Think of the God as
formless and yet it is only Him not Her. Get snapped out of the dream and come
to reality. There exists such a society that lives this dream. Not only in the
middle-east, but it exists well within free and democratic India. Not only that
it exists, it is very well protected by the constitution through the
fundamental rights to practice one’s own religion.
Now start dreaming again. Dream
of a society where women freely enter places of worship. Imagine some of the
women sing in praise of deities and become saints themselves. Imagine they are
not only taught religious practices, rather some of them become exponents in
the field of inner exploration and teach the paths to other practitioners.
Think of the God as formless, or having form. Think of the deity as Him or Her;
if any of this is uncomfortable and doesn’t fit in your scheme of imagination,
think of the deity as neither Him nor Her but as one having either genders or having
none of them. Just for the charm of it, imagine that one of such a deity
remains in the masculine form and the other masculine deity takes a feminine
form for a short period. Extend your imagination and give them a child. Give
him all the powers of both his parents and also give him a bell around his
neck. Imagine a young lady waiting to avenge the slaying of his demonic brother,
disillusioned and embodying all anger and negativity in her. Think of this
young man by his sheer entry into the lady’s life transform her into a beautiful
angelic woman. Having inspired by this brave man, think of the lady as falling
in love with him and offering herself in marriage to him. Imagine this young
man wanting to lead a celibate life instead and therefore turns down the offer.
Give him the freedom to look for a place where women do not reach so that he
can continue to remain in an undisturbed yogic state. Give the angel the patience
and ability to wait for centuries till the time he completes his tapas and come
back to marry her. While imagining all this, don’t forget that this deity has
only chosen a place free of alluring disturbances for his meditation. In your
imagination make a resolution not deny him that choice. While dreaming of all
this, never forget that there are thousand other deities who has not taken such
decisions. They all live happily with their consorts or sometimes away from
them. They all have temples that are visited by men and women alike, while this
strange young man with a bell around his neck is also a star, and only one of
them, in some small corner of your imaginary universe. Get out from the dream
startled and come back to reality. There exists such a society too, that lives
this dream. It exists well within free and democratic India and nowhere else.
Yet, unfortunately it is in the danger of being questioned and abandoned by the
same constitution that promises fundamental rights to practice one’s own
religion.
The Supreme Court of India
recently questioned the age old practice of not entertaining women in
menstruating age span within the Ayyappa temple premises at Sabarimala while
hearing a public interest litigation filed by the Kerala unit of a lesser known
NGO, Young Lawyers Association. The Honourable Supreme court, no doubt, has all
the powers to question a social practice that may seem conflicting with the
constitutional guarantees of equality and justice. While doing so, it would
serve well by exercising equality of perception and judgement on all sections
of the society; not by concentrating only on one section and that too, the
least harmful. By the time this issue of Yuva Bharati is in the hands of the
readers, in all likelihood, there would be a clear picture of the stance taken
by the Court. Having made the point, let us confine to elaborating on a more
pressing issue; the components that drive decision making in our country even
after so many decades of freedom; the engine, piston and the fuel.
With continual and dismal
trend of criticising, ridiculing and dismissing the time tested religious and
cultural practices, irrespective of public sentiments or cultural validities,
the engine that drives the country, appears to be something that the British
carefully left behind as a forced gift for free India. This gift is
essentially, a mindset that keeps on doubting about all practices that are
native to this land as primitive and needing modernization. This mindset is an
outcome from a factory of the modern education system. The production line in
this factory, at one level has a framework for worldview. The produce goes
through this framework and course corrections are made by filtering out any
good regards for native value systems, its inherent diversities and
pluralities. Thus the engine, namely the mindset is devoid of nativity and
comes through as a well groomed and ready-to-fit into a monolithic western
value system.
With continual and dismal
trend of inconsistent secularism, the engine has a piston that keeps running
back and forth during every cycle of elections and run up to elections. And
that is appeasement politics. With every forward movement, the piston pushes
favours to minority groups, thereby creating congenial electorate. With every
backward movement, the piston disregards the majority to keep the engine
running.
It is better to mention
what the fuel is, without any decoration of expressions. The simple reason is
because the fuel on which the engine runs is nothing but ‘ignorance’ –
ignorance of the Hindus about their own religion, religious practices,
scriptures and philosophies. It is because of this engine of enslaved
mentality, the vehicle of free India doesn’t seem to move in the direction it
ought to move. As darkness
is nothing but absence of light, ignorance is not something which is true. It
is merely the absence of knowledge. The absence of knowledge happens because it
is convenient for the enslaved mind to remain in the comfort zone believing
that all that is traditional is against modernity.
If it was not for the
ignorance, the narrative about women not being entertained in the Sabaraimala
temple would have been very different. It would have included a mention of a
temple not very far from the holy hill, the Attukkal Bhagavati amman temple, where
4.5 million women gather for the Pongala festival. The line up of women who
gather to cook prasadam in earthen pots, run several kilometres spanning half a
dozen villages. If the argument was about the ‘weakness’ of Ayyappa’s ability
to continue his meditation irrespective of who visits, the narrative would have
included mention about women being allowed to visit thousands of other local
Ayyappa temples anytime. If the argument was about the ‘primitiveness’ in
considering women unclean during menstruation, the narrative would have
included mention of another temple in the opposite end of the country, the
Kamakhya temple at Guwahati, with the presiding deity being an embodiment of
the sacredness in the process of menstruation.
A tradition can have
answers for any number of doubts. But no tradition, however ripe and rich it
may be, can have answers to motivated campaigns. The answer for such campaigns
should not be searched in tradition under question but in the motivation of the
campaigner. Any attempt to service the engine will not help. The vehicle will
change course only when we change the engine, to that of National education,
with a piston pumping Nationality running on the fuel of Knowledge. If
plurality in India is still a reality, it is not because of what the
constitution promises but because of what Hinduism dreams of. It is our duty to
preserve the native practices if we intend to keep the dream of plurality real.
A. Sudarshan
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YB-ET