Sthree Dharma

[dhu]

<b>Mother India’s daughters</b>

Tarun Vijay
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I feel a bit outdated when my little daughter, Class Six champion, sets the “profile” of my cellular phone and finds a website that’s really important for my work in a manner my teachers in Gandhi School used to tell me something new about the weather conditions. I get educated and enriched with the experiences and inquisitive dynamics of Shambhavi, that little whizkid I introduce to the world with pride: “Oh yes, that’s my daughter.”

I am growing up with her; she is the only one who can chide me and use a loud voice asking me to stop doing something she dislikes. She belongs to the brave new world order that sets our time. Nothing can be happier than to realise its existence and live with it. So, when a government tries to correct something that was essentially wrong, we must smile. The world will be a darker, unliveable place without daughters and hence we must say thank you to Dr Manmohan Singh for having passed a bill that makes them feel better and counted.

Since we are living in a society where criticism is considered more important than positive appraisal, let’s make an exception and clap a little for Manmohan Singh’s small but sweet gesture to help Mother India’s daughters: that the Central government will bear the educational expenses of single daughters in families, is more significant in its message than the real programme.

In a nation where every acquirable attribute is sought from a female deity — money and material comforts from Laxmi, academic virtues from Saraswati and annihilation of one’s enemies from Kali — it is inconceivably roguish of us to kill the female foetus symbolising the very same worshipped deities.

One has to see the greatest marvels of the world like the Ajanta and the Ellora to understand the high place a daughter or a woman had in our society just a couple of centuries ago. Shiva couldn’t find solace without Uma and when Sita rebelled against the wrongs of a dogmatic social order, Ram could never find peace and found final refuge in the waters of Saryu.

Draupadi was the originator of the Mahabharata, the epic war and she is adored in the scriptures as an embodiment of Dharma. Adi Sankara had to learn a few lessons from a lady scholar and Gargi and Maitreyi defeated the great male scholars of their times and were revered higher than any other rishi, and the mother of Nachiketa had the courage to tell Yama she could not remember who fathered her son.

No one burnt her to death accusing her to be a woman of no morals or a witch, like we had seen happening in Arab societies, and, more notoriously, in early Christendom where millions of women lost their lives after being declared witches or creatures without soul.

And then came the loot, plunder and rape with foreign invaders coming to our land with jihadi flags and missionary evangelism. The woman was as low and dispensable in their eyes as customary in the lands of their origin — a commodity to be used and thrown away or at best to be “tilled” to get a “harvest.” That affected the mindset of a subjugated, colonised people and women came to be seen differently.

They had to burn themselves alive to save their honour, and a ritualistic, rude Brahminical order set in where purdah was thought to be a better choice, the practice of forced sati came to be worshipped, widows were exiled to Vrindavan to face slow death and giving birth to a girl was thought to be a curse. That was the time when Brahmin priests were blessing the flag of the East India Company in the Kali temples praying for its victory and Indian soldiers were finding it a matter of pride to serve an army of white men and kill their own countrymen in the name of military discipline.

We have degenerated into a society that hates daughters and burns them for not bringing the right “price” for its nalayak sons. The states which bore the brunt of Semitic brutalities, became shell-shocked and killed their daughters or shamed them into hiding. That’s what we see in Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It’s quite possible that the civil servants who saw the Doctor’s bill passed had taken very fat amounts as dowry.

Things have come to such a pass that it is difficult to imagine an IAS or an IPS officer in the northern belt getting married without a “price tag”. Dr Manmohan Singh might have passed the bill to educate our daughters, but can he ensure that the scholarships will be given without greasing the palms of the babus and that his own officers are committed against taking dowry?

Imrana could not fight back, neither can the women who face the same injustices at the hands of some caste panchayat or a personal law board. Women political leaders too make use of such victims for furthering their pro-women image. Nothing helpful really emerges in the end. So, in spite of several Anu Aghas and Mehboobas, daughters remain unwanted.

Those who invite blindness to facts to attack the RSS, do not want to recognise that the largest number of dowryless marriages take place in Hindutva families and Dr Hedgewar, the founder of the movement, had the courage to inspire and encourage a reformist organisation for women at a time when things were much worse than today.

In conclusion, it’s no use worshipping motherhood or performing disorderly aartis of Bharat Mata if her daughters are not equally respected and listed at par with sons.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->