Women – Divine yet Demeaned!!!

Women have to play many roles. And each of these roles interact with men in different ways. When she is born, she plays the role of a daughter. A cute little babe, who brings light to the household and more often than not, luck to the father. Growing up she becomes the girl who is expected to excel in studies to become an independent woman while at home she is expected to learn making a home and help her mother.

Once she has grown into a maiden, she has to deal with so many guys trying to vie for her. And if she falls in love with someone, then comes the dilemma and the tensions about the colony resident’s words, family’s feelings and the confusions of love and infatuation. Once she takes on the mantle of a wife and then a mother. Balancing between both these roles itself is a big management issue and over that if she is a working women, then the complications increase exponentially. (I think women don’t need to be trained in management, they can be given MBA degrees from birth.)

A girl listens to her heart until unless society forces her to listen to her mind instead. This makes her much more attuned to feelings and emotions. A girl’s actions are supposed to be governed by her emotions rather than by logical responses. And so, being more susceptible to love or even a show of love, she is purer of heart than most men even since childhood.

And yet, women have always been mistreated in every age by too many people. From Sita being abducted to girls being raped in the recent past, girls are being abused a lot. Are men becoming as raw and ruthless as an Asura? At least Raavan and the other Asuras prayed to Lord Shiva. But the actions of men now are becoming so demonic that even the Asuras of the past would feel ashamed of being compared with today’s men.

During the Vedic age, more than 3,000 years ago, women were assigned a high place in society. They shared an equal standing with their men folk and enjoyed a kind of liberty that actually had societal sanctions. The ancient Hindu philosophical concept of 'Shakti', the feminine principle of energy, was also a product of this age. This took the form of worship of the female idols or goddesses.

After worming through lots of books in various fields, I have a feeling that even ancient Indians were completely mired in confusion regarding women and their treatment. The confusion extends even up to the Vedas where we have guidelines teaching us to consider women as divine and worship them in one place while asking men to stay away from women while in penance, considering women impure in that instance. How could something be divine and impure too is one thing I have never understood.

The savage act of rape became prominent in India only after the British and other outsiders, mainly due to the armies which raped every women they found in the villages they won from their enemies. But I have not found any citations as such of Indian soldiers also being this animalistic except for in mythological stories where Asuras form the bulk of the perpetrators. Because even then, there were many strictures that stopped men from committing atrocities like that against the female gender.

Since the Delhi incident, I see many posts on Facebook condemning the Indian government for being so compassionate upon culprits of rape incidents. When compared with other countries, India ranks 2nd in the number of rapes committed. As such, the Indian government has delayed far too much in taking stringent actions on the assaulters.

From Wikipedia

But is either life imprisonment or death the right punishment for such people? I disagree. Death for people like the accused for the Delhi incident is more of an escape from punishment. And after the life imprisonment, there is no guarantee that the guy won’t go back to the same way of life he lived before.

My opinion, the victim is the right person to decide the punishment for such criminals. Indian women’s compassion sometimes amazes me so much. I have heard of many stories where the victim just wants to marry the accused and leave it. But even in such cases, the couple should be kept under legal observation for a stipulated amount of time to make sure the girl is not victimized even more.

But if the victim is dead, in that case, the criminal should be transformed into a eunuch and put on display as they used to display corpses in the olden ages.  If the victim was ravaged like the Delhi incident with torture, then the same should be done to the criminals in public. There would be many who might condone this as too much to do in public. But in these days, people only learn by example. And doing it in public might put enough fear in a tentative criminal that at least one hypothetical victim is saved.

This seems to me as the only way India can curb the rape cases and restore the respect and divine position women once had in its history.

If you can't worship women as you are supposed to, at least have the civility to treat them with the respect due to them!

Update as on 5th May, 2013 11:31AM:

One of my readers rightly pointed out that the punishment I proposed was a horrific way to teach people the value of women. But normally, it is the fear of retribution that forces men to act "civilized". Unfortunately, in India, this fear has become non-existent with respect to women. So when the law is not able to strike this fear into men, this sort of horrific examples are needed to strike fear in their hearts.

Due to the Jalianwala Bagh Incident and all thanks to the British, we Indians have learnt the value of life the hard way. But now, we need to relearn the importance of women. The Delhi Incident has opened doors for that. But to keep the demons away from women, such examples are necessary. And so, in my opinion, this is the right path. 

More food for thought:
Vedic Women - Esteem of Women in Vedic India

Women and Vedas

Rape statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia