The presiding deity of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam in Andhra Pradesh (India) had travelled earlier to places like Kuwait, UAE, UK and the US to grant audience to adherents living abroad. [break]
However, Kathmandu was the first venue outside the country of Lord Balaji’s permanent residence to hold the nuptial Kalyanotsav ceremonies between divinities. Female devotees in the open ground provided an air of authenticity to the wedding atmosphere.
French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir famously argued that it was not women’s inferiority that had determined their historical insignificance; rather it was their historical insignificance that had doomed them to inferiority. Religion has been one of the most powerful tools of subjugating women over the ages.
Cultures reduce the Second Sex—Beauvoir’s term for women—to the secondary status. Yet, most women accept subordinate position without question.
The uppercase deity is always Him. His prophets have all been men. Authoritative interpreters of scriptures have to be scholars of the dominant gender. However, women continue to believe that they are the keepers of tradition.
Ascetic schools put so much emphasis upon purity that when a female is accepted into a religious order; she has to spend her life in the dread of pollution.
Menstruation expels the living goddess Kumari from her sacred sanctum. Marriage disqualifies both monks and nuns, but even violent assault on sexuality can stigmatise a woman.
The controversy over a young Buddhist nun, who was gang-raped inside a bus in Khandbari in eastern Nepal and then told by monks that she could not aspire to be an Ani anymore because she did not remain a virgin, is fresh in collective memory. The law has since taken its course.
The district court in Sankhuwasabha recently sent the perpetrators of the heinous crime to jail. Full rehabilitation of the victim in the religious order of her choice is still awaited.
Worldly interpreters of the Enlightened One assert, as an official of Nepal Buddhist Federation had declared in the aftermath of the tragedy, “A vessel that is damaged once can no longer be used to keep water…”!
It is not that women do not realise that religions perpetuate unequal gender relations. Lord Venkateswara boasts of two consorts, as do many other Hindu deities.
Muslims refer to twelve wives of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as Mothers of the Believers. In contrast, even a mythical figure like Draupadi—the real protagonist of Mahabharata—becomes a butt of ridicule for having had five husbands.
Despite such oddities, deities flicker like lamps in the darkness and provide some light even though very little warmth wafts to the travails of women in tradition-bound societies.
The first prophet of Marxism describes the irony very accurately: “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”
It is possible to contest Marx’s conclusion that religion is the opium of the people. Politics is no less of an intoxicant and communism is perhaps more potent drug than any other dogma known to humanity.
Religion has a delirious effect, but at least it carries a promise of salvation. Communism demands total submission with little freedom for withdrawal from the faith.
However, the Mahatma of Marxism provides a better framework of appreciating the inescapability of religion than preachers of various faiths. For women, religion has indeed been the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering at the same time.
That may explain the lure of faiths that draw women to places of gods, assemblies of preachers and sites of rituals in droves.
Custodians of culture
In stark contrast to the liberating feel of religious rituals where male priests and their minions attend to most chores, Hindu festivals are often stifling for women.
Dashain is the time for autumnal cleaning and ritual sacrifice, tasks that keep women of the house engaged long before and much after the actual festivities. Cleaning and housekeeping continues right up to Tihar, which brings loads of work for the homemaker.
Holi revelries are usually all-male affairs. On the day of Holi this year, women cooked goats on kerosene stoves.
Despite assurances of the government, LPG cylinders are still difficult to get. Chicken is easier in the kitchen when facing fuel scarcity. But bird-flue scare is keeping consumers away from the fowl.
Unconcerned with the predicaments of homemakers, men cursed politicos over rounds of drink accompanied with piping hot savouries supplied endlessly from the kitchen.
Holi gets even more male-centric as brats take to the streets throwing water missiles at anything that walks and wears a saree, a pair of salwar-kameez, a set of jeans and tees, or any other gender-specific ensembles such as shirts or tops over skirts.
Women take pride in being custodians of culture, and they seem to bear not just the burden but even brunt of festivities with an equanimity that defies explanation.
Drawing from strictures of scriptures, men exercise exclusive authority in religion. After all, authority is the right to make a decision and have it obeyed with the use of force if necessary.
Men have historically controlled most instruments of coercion. Priesthood is a lucrative profession; hence, it has been reserved for male of the species. Power makes the use of force unnecessary: An order is obeyed even before it is formally conveyed.
The power to consecrate too lies with men in almost all organised religions. Women, however, have created some space within gaps in the Hindu religion whereby they exercise considerable influence, which is the capacity to impose a decision in the name expertise, experience or manipulative abilities.
No yagya is considered complete unless it is performed in the company of the consort. Astrologers decide auspicious date and time. Priests chant holy mantras from appropriate scriptures.
However, when it comes to rituals specific to a family during rites of passage such as birth, sacred-thread or marriage ceremonies, elder women of the house have the last word. Little wonder, grandmas impatiently wait for joyful events in the family.
In addition to the attention that festivities and ceremonies focus upon the womenfolk, such occasions create diversion from the drudgery and dull routine of a homemaker’s life.
Families from both sides of the marriage come together. Distant relatives congregate. Everybody comes to know about college going kids and children who would be reaching marriageable age.
Cousins in powerful positions can be implored to help the less privileged while they still can. Without the forum of cultural ceremonies, women of the extended family would have little opportunity to socialize and test their influence in social affairs.
Culture is politics of the most enduring kind. That could be the reason women bear all its burdens with fortitude.
Promise of secularism
Much of the opposition to secularism is born out of false assumptions. Contrary to popular conception, secularism is not a synonym of atheism.
It has been argued that Christ was a being a secularist when he ordained, “Render unto Caesar.” In that sense, secularism merely separates temporal obligations from spiritual responsibilities of a conscientious person.
Mahatma Gandhi once said that those who thought religion had nothing to do with politics understood neither religion nor politics.
The Mahatma elaborates the importance of religiosity without sectarianism for a harmonious society in a succinct manner, “Religion and state will be separate. I swear by my religion, I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state will look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern”.
Once this distinction is institutionalized, a woman would be free from burdens of history.
When survival depended upon fight or flight, a pregnant or lactating mother had a definitive disadvantage. Man emerged as provider and protector of the hunter-gatherer societies.
Pastoral civilization created some space for women when they became participants in the production process, but the role got curtailed as settled agriculture and creation of surplus led to warfare over control of resources. No matter who wins in a war, women always lose.
The exchange society that took men to faraway lands for trade and profession put responsibilities upon womenfolk without authority commensurate with the role.
Inequalities between the dominant and dominated gender increased after Industrial Revolution and the rise of robber barons who considered themselves creators of wealth.
This may change as civilization moves towards centrality of information not only for production and distribution but also for battles that would have to be fought collectively to check ecological degradation.
In future, which comes sooner than most people realise, creativity will have an edge over authority. Power would flow from the ability to imagine new solutions for age-old problems.
Influence would become a function of ability to see the universe as one and the courage to go beyond boundaries of countries and cultures.
These are the traits where women have always had an advantage. In their eagerness to become like men, they may lose some of these abilities even when they acquire new skills.
That said, a secular society devoid of gods would probably create a more level field for most of Her (Mother Nature) children to live and celebrate life on equal terms.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analysts in Nepal.
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