Indian women are indeed blessed !! We now have a convict of the
1993 Bombay
blasts contesting elections for a parliament membership, who opines that
every Indian woman should give up her identity and take her husbands name after
marriage. Pearl's of wisdom indeed ... from a man who has had multiple
adulterous relationships whilst being married (thrice if you must know), an
ex-drug addict who never bothered to care for his young daughter Trishala or
wife Richa Sharma, both of whom were conveniently abandoned although he knew
for years that Richa suffered from cancer. Morally inspiring for all those
women in his life who hanker for dutt (pun intended) lastname, provided they
manage to stick around dutt long.
Dutt may have munnabhai'ed the media and even ruffled Renuka Chowdhary's
feather's, but it was definitely not enough masala for the media spotlight to
dwell on him for long. The confused-plastic-faced-ac(h)tor-wannabe-politician
was quickly upstarted by the street-thugs "Shri Rama Sene" in Karnataka.
India now has its very own homegrown wannabe "Taliban-Sene" who
orchestrated and videotaped the molestation and attack of
women in Mangalore in the name of god.
Apparently physical violence and a public molestation of women is the easiest
way to be in the news. Tsk-Tsk ...dutt's what happens if you wash Pri(vate)ya
Dutt(y) linen in public, Sanju baba. Politics is gonna be a steep learning
curve for you. If the Muthalik-meets-Dutt scenario had occurred some years ago,
how many times would Dutt have been married off on Valentine's day ??
All in a Go(o)d days work, given that Indian politicians have certainly run
out of issues to solve in the run up to elections, where the mastermind of the
Mangalore attacks is known but yet is allowed to abscond. Targeting 49% of
your population is good enough to get eye-balls, never mind that politicians
dont have the balls to address important issues like eradicating corruption,
ensuring proper supply of electricity, proper public infrastructure, good
primary education, water and so many other social issues which jostle for
attention...but none of these silly issues are as important as women visiting a
pub.
Any woman who visits a pub instead of making rotis at home, feeding her
husband and pressing his tired legs at night, is fit to be called a prostitute
according to the Rama Sene while enlightened souls (in the NCW too) went a bit
further to justify the attacks in the name of stemming immoral activity in the
Mangalore pub. Since the police and judiciary have outsourced their work to
local thugs and hooligans its high time the government stopped wasting the
tax-payee's money on maintaining a police force and judiciary, both of who
cannot ensure law and order nor keep justice. Well if India can be the
outsourcing manna for the world why cant we outsource the police's work to
these self-appointed
custodians of Indian culture ?!? Think of the Tax benefits!!
Fundamentalist Hindu
bigots == fanatical Islamic radicals ?! If there is a logic to the methodical
madness being unleashed across each state one has to give credit to their
inspirational idol, the Taliban. Nothing less will do. If the ShivSena and MNS
in Maharashtra can rail and rant against the South Indians and then drive away
the North Indians, then why should the
wannabe-power-grabbing-southern-politician be left behind. He can jump onto the
"lets control the corrupt Indian woman" bandwagon which is a problem that has
taken on global hues today, with gullible Indian woman being lured by the
foreign hand... what sacrilege!!
Not to be left behind, some women feel they should form a Sita
Sene to counter the increasing attacks on women and the debate on "Indian
culture" is ferociously raging on the idiot box and in the print media. Every
person I have met thus far, has an opinion (or two or three) by which time my
grey cells stop parsing the string "indian culture" correctly. The word
"culture" tickles my phunny bone (and I've been told I have f3w of those)
enough to delve into some mythology since religion is the thread that binds
retrograde chauvinists across the world masking their selfish desire for
control and power.
Kalpana Sharma summarized
it more eloquently :
The Sri Rama Sene is a fringe element. But lurking under the skin of many
men, irrespective of caste or community, is a similar view of what women should
and should not do. Men fear women’s autonomy, for, it challenges their power.
And they fear women’s sexuality even more. Hence, the desire of fundamentalists
of all types to control women’s sexuality.
Is that why every river has a feminine name and Earth is called MotherEarth
and the country is called motherland and not FatherEarth and Fatherland
respectively !? Culture-vultures never miss an opportunity to letch on
mytholog(ical)y to explain that women should be frozen into this ice cube of
patriarchy, certainly fit to be seen and admired, but she can never stir or
voice herself.
Were the women of yore beautiful icy figurines trapped in an ice cube?
Not Sita, Rama's wife, who left her husband when
he asked her for an "agnipariksha" (trial by fire) to prove her chastity. She
epitomises the courage (that many Indian women lack) of leaving her twin sons
with her husband Rama and returning to her mother's (Earth) after around 20+
years of marriage.
Draupadi practised polyandry, perhaps the only
woman with 5 husbands at a time when it was more common for men to practise
polygamy. She is the only woman in mythology over whom a war, the Mahabharata,
was fought to avenge an insult to her. In that epic, she refused to tie her
hair until her insult was avenged.
Mirabai had no compunctions about
leaving her husband for Krishna and would the brainless religious
fundamentalist idiot dare to brek the idols in the Radha-Krishna temples(?),
since Radha was never married to Krishna and left her husband for Krishna. Its
called adultery in English, but for millions of Indians the name
Radha-Krishna is synonymous with love, bhakti and devotion.
Wendy
surmises the position of women in Vedic literature, especially the
Chandayoga Upanishad where Jabala asks her son to take her name so he calls
himself "Satyakama Jabala (the son of Jabala)". Interestingly, dutt (pun
intended) may have been completely missed instances in Indian mythology where
the children take on the mothers name and not that of the father (who was
sometimes unknown, or got just a passing reference....).
Gowriputra (son of Gowri, an epithet for Parvati, Ganesha's mother who is
supposed to have sprang from the scurf of her body) ;
Krishna was called "Devakiputra" (son of Devaki) ;
Skanda, one born of 6 mothers ;
Pandavas were called Kuntiputra's ; ... so on...
The Sene has surely not seen this aspect of Hinduism. Moving on to the
men who are commonly addressed with the prefix Sri/Shri which is the
feminine subjunctive in Sanskrit. It is also an epithet for
Lakshmi whose husband (Vishnu) is commonly referred to as
"Lakshmipati/Shripati" (the husband of Lakshmi) as is Sitapati (Husband of
Sita).
Shiva's epithet is "Umapati", the husband of Parvati or Shakti (the female
energy) without whom he is considered to be a shava (corpse). Are there
instances of Parvati/Shakti being addressed as "Shivapatni"? Not that I know
of.
There may be more but I am not inclined to dig out lores of yore when I can
blithely snore away the night, sans the pita-pati (pun wholly intended).
