PRESANTATION ON HISTORICAL REVIEW OF STATUS OF

WOMEN IN INDIAN SOCIETY AND THEIR STATUS IN FAMILY AND RELIGION

BY ANUPMSW 2ND YEAR

FCW

DEFINITION

• A true woman is a woman who wakes up every morning faced with millions of decisions and despite what the world is telling her she chooses to make the right one.

• She stands by what she believes, realizes what she deserves and doesn't settle for less.

• She is honest, and loyal, and 100% faithful.

WOMEN IN VEDIC ERIOD

• During the Vedic age more than 3OOO 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.

• ‘SHAKTI’ the feminine principle of energy.

BIRTH OF THE GODDESES

• Goddess KALI portrays the destructive energy.• Goddess DURGA portrays the protective.• Goddess LAKSHMI the nourishing.• Goddess SARASWATI the creative.

EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN VEDIC PERIOD

• A girl should be brought up and educated with great effort and care.(MAHANIRVANA TANTRA)

• All forms of knowledge are aspects of thee and all women throughout the world are thy forms.(DEVI MAHATMYA)

• Upnayana• Brahmavadinis• Sadyovadhus

WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN VEDIC PERIOD

8 types of marriage were there in Vedic period 1. BRAHMA 2. DAIVA 3. ARSHA 4. RAJAATYA 5. GANDHARVA 6. ASURA 7. RAKSHASA 8. AISACHA

WIFEHOOD IN VEDIC PERIOD

• After marriage the girl became a GRIHINI which was considered ARDHANGINI or one half of her husbands being.

• Both of them constituted the GRIHA.• Women was considered its SAMRAJNI and had

an equal share in the performance of religious rites.

DIVORCE, REMARRIAGE & WIDOWHOOD

• Divorce and Remarriage of women were allowed under very special conditions.

• If a woman lost her husband she was not forced to undergo the merciless practices.

• She was not compelled to tonsure her head.• She was not forced to commit SAHAGAMANA.• She could live a life of SANYASIN.

PROSTITUTION IN VEDIC AGE

• Prostitutes were very much an art of the Vedic society.

• They were allowed to make a living but their lives were regulated by a code of conduct.

• They came to be known as DEVADASIS.

STATUS IN LATE VEDIC ERIOD

• Status of sons rose.• Daughters were derived of their rights.• Women were not allowed to take art in religious

activities.• Women were classed with wine and gambling.• According to AITREYA BRAHMANA a daughter is the

source of misery but a son is the protector of a family.• POLYGAMY was practiced.• Women lost their right to attend the assemblies like

sabha.

SOME DEROGATORY COMMENTS BY MANU REGARDING WOMEN

• SWABHAV EV NARINAM• AVIDVAM SAMLAM• MATRA SWASTRA• NAUDWAHAY• NRAKSH VRAKSH• YASTO NA BHAVET

INFLUENCE IN MUSLIM PERIOD

• Women were derived of their rights of equality with men.

• They have to stay within the four walls of their houses with a long veil on their faces.

• They were regarded as captive and saleable commodities in Muslim families.

• One man is allowed to have so many wives with the easiest provision of divorce.

DEVELOPMENT STAGE

• Raja Ram Mohan Rays revolt against woman’s subjugation to men and British influence on Indian culture and civilization undergone a change.

• It was under the enlightened leadership of Mahatma Gandhi that women reasserted their equality with men.

• Women were allowed to come out of their houses without the veil on their faces.

STATUS OF WOMEN IN FAMILY

• According India’s constitution, women are legal citizens of the country and have equal rights with men (Indian Parliament). Because of lack of acceptance from the male dominant society, Indian women suffer immensely.

• Women’s roles in society are often complex as they involve juggling responsibilities between paid work and family.

• Women are responsible for bearing children, yet they are malnourished and poor in health.

• Most Indian women are uneducated.

CONTD

• Although the country’s constitution says women have equal status to men, women are powerless and are mistreated inside and outside the home.

• India is a society where the male is greatly revered. • Very few women seek medical care while pregnant

because it is thought of as a temporary condition.• Starting from birth, girls do not receive as much

care and commitment from their parents and society as a boy would.

CONTD

• Even though the constitution guarantees free primary schooling to everyone up to 14 years of age (Indian Parliament), very few females attend school.

• Only about 39 percent of all women in India actually attend primary schools.

• Even though women work twice as many hours as men, the men say that “women eat food and do nothing.” This is mainly because the work the women perform does not require a lot of skill and are smaller tasks.

STATUS OF WOMEN IN RELIGION

• However much people might indulge in tall talk, in no country or age were women given full freedom in religious and social matters, nor are they given their rights even to this day! – P.R. Sarkar.

• Every religion existing today discriminates in some way against women.

• The scriptures of all religions degrade and denigrate women, put them down and designate women as being inferior to men.

STATUS OF WOMEN IN BUDDHISM

• The scripture describing the conduct to be followed by Buddhist monks and nuns is called the Vinaya.

• However, if we study this Vinaya, we see immediately that the rules and regulations were quite different for women than for men.

• In one published version there are 250 rules for monks but more than 350 rules for nuns.

• If one reads the Vinaya further, one sees that many of the rules for women are so graphic that they border on pornography.

• After the departure of Buddha the monks made it very difficult for women to join as nuns.

CONTD

• To summarize, Buddhism became a patriarchal power structure that viewed women as lustful temptresses

immersed in sensuality and not in dharma.• According to Buddhist monks, because a female body is

associated with evil, lust and greed, it is not possible for a woman to become spiritually realized.

• However, if she desires to become a man and mentally becomes a man, she can get realization.

• Despite great obstacles there have been Buddhist nuns whose noble and courageous lives have been recorded for history, one of them being Nangsa Oobum.

CONTD

• Today Buddhist nuns prevail in Sri Lanka, Nepal and a few other countries.

• They shave their heads, and take vows of chastity.• They are still subordinate to monks and are also compelled to

serve as housekeepers to the monks. • The Sri Lankan government subsidizes the monks by providing

them food, housing, health care and education. However, it provides nothing to nuns. Nevertheless, the nuns continue their lives of meditation, sacrifice and service to the poor.

STATUS OF WOMEN IN CHRISTIANITY

• Several thousand years ago in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and also in India and surrounding cultures, female deities were the main object of reverence.

• By 4500 B.C. this had changed to a patriarchal, stratified and warlike culture. It was this patriarchal culture from which Christianity emerged.

• Hence we have male deities of the Lord Jehovah, God the Father and Jesus, the son.

• In Genesis 3.16, Yahweh curses Eve, telling her, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shall bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

CONTD

• Timothy 2.11-12, where it says “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

• In Ephesian 5.22-24, Paul says, “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as unto the Lord….” And further, “The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man”…. Man is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.

• The apostle Peter says (in I Peter 3.1-2,6) that let wives “be in subjection to your own husbands” and have “chaste conversation coupled with fear.”

CONTD• The sufferings of women under Christian laws have known no bounds.

Women were forced into marriages against their will. They were put away at their husband’s whim. And worst of all, tens of thousands of women were burned at the stake after being declared witches.

• Later on in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the Catholic and Protestant clergy who were in the front of the opposition to women’s suffrage, saying that female obedience was meant by God.

• And today men continue to dominate the organizational structure of Christian religions.

• Even to this day many devout Jewish men recite in their prayers, “Blessed by God King of the universe that Thou has not made me a women.”

STATUS OF WOMEN IN ISLAM

• Muslim scriptures simply excel in their persecution of women.• We can say that Islam is deeply anti-woman. Islam regards

women as physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually inferior.

• In Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, one cannot ignore the ULAMA.

• Ibn Al-Ghazzali, the famous Islamic theologian said that “The most satisfying and final word on the matter is that marriage is a form of slavery.

• Prophet Mohammed himself stated, “We have not been left any disaster more harmful to mankind than woman.”

CONTD

• The Koran states that a man may have four wives plus as many concubines as he can afford. A woman may have one husband, and generally only the man can divorce.

• Muslim theologians have concluded that man was the original creation, and woman was created for the pleasure of man.

• Al-Ghazzali has said … “Their dishonesty is awesome and their wickedness is infectious; bad character and weak mind are their major nature…”

• Even recently (1985) a Muslim writer, Ahmad Zaky Tuffaha, seriously quoted the following Hadith: “If a woman offered one of her breasts to be cooked and the other to be roasted, she still will fall short of fulfilling her duties to her husband.

CONTD

• Another famous Hadith states that “The Prophet (Mohammad) used to pass (have sexual relations with) all his wives in one night, and at that time he had nine wives.”

• In Pakistan in 1977, General Zia al-Haq took over the country in a military coup and proceeded to make life a living hell for Pakistani women. He introduced two Islamic laws in particular that brought forth untold sufferings to women – so much so that it is difficult even to write about it. The two laws were the Zina and Hudud.

• The time has come to throw away words of belief and exploitation, because those words are riddling you with inferiority complexes and paralyzing your minds.

STATUS OF WOMEN IN HINDUISM

• For women so many rigid rules and regulations were framed in Hindu religion.

• Hindu women were forbidden to take the names of their husbands, and the husband’s elder brothers.

• Female infanticide was sanctioned right from early times, by the Vedas, as stated in Atharva Veda.6.3.4.: “Let a female child be born somewhere else; here, let a male child be born.”

• The Brahmins further indicated the killing of baby girls in a prescribed manner, such as cutting up the baby and then feeding it to animals.

• The Rajputs would throw their baby girl up in the air and slice her with swords as she fell down to the ground.

CONTD

• Today, starvation, suffocation and live burial of the babies is

done – and often by the mothers. • Since Indian independence, in the past fifty years, more than 50

million baby girls have been killed in India. • Young Hindu girls when given in marriage could be abandoned

at will. • Quoting from Manu Smruti IX.72: “Though a man may have

accepted a damsel in due form, he may abandon her if she be blemished, diseased or deflowered, and (if she have been) given with fraud.”

• Yet Brahmin men were free to engage in sin with devdasis any time they wanted.

CONTD• The Aryan Hindu wife can be burned by her husband any time, for

any reason.• As prescribed by Manu.VIII.371, the guilty wife is to be devoured

publicly by dogs. • The dowry system has been prevalent in India since the time of the

Vedas thousands of years ago.• Another horrible fact one can also read in Indian newspapers is

witch-burning.• It was Brahmins who destroyed the dignity of women by (1)

forcefully confiscating a woman’s property, (2) enforcing the dowry system, (3) locking women in the home, and (4) denying their women education and keeping them in a state of enforced illiteracy.

CONTD

• “Even to this day, there is a custom whereby the mother asks her son on the eve of his marriage, ‘Where are you going?’. He replies, ‘I’m going to bring you a maid-servant.’

• The Shudra women were forced by the Brahmins to go around topless – another aspect of exploitation of native women by Brahmin men.

• Even to this day, lower caste women must submit to rape by higher caste men, because the police in India do nothing.

• Swami Shivananda states: “To a woman there is no greater yoga, sacrifice or act than the service of her husband.

CONCLUSION

• Every religion existing today in the world – discriminates in some way against women.

• The scripture of every religion today degrades women.• Every scripture indicates to women that they are inferior to

men that their value is next to nil.• Surely the time has come to update these scriptures – by

women.• Do not tolerate injustice! This will not only harm women or a

neglected and downtrodden segment of humanity, but will cause a serious spot to grow on the vast body of society.

REFERENCES• Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, The Awakening of Women, Ananda Marga

Publciations, 1995.• Encyclopaedia Brittanica.• Barbara MacHaffie (ed.) Readings in Her Story: Women in Christian

Tradition, Fortress Press, 1992, p. 27.• Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Supreme Expression II, Ananda Marga

Publications, p. 59.• Merlin Stone, When God was a Woman, Harcourt Brace, 1976, pp. 226-

227.• R.A. Klein, The Religion of Islam, p. 190.• Hughes, The Dictionary of Islam, p. 680• Manu Smrti – the book of Hindu laws written by Manu.• Women in Buddhism, Part II by Rev. Patti Nakai

THANK YOU