Worth to read - How can India be free when her women are not?
Swati Sinha
Answer– India is suffering from a very ugly and rotten past, and the
problem is that Indians go on praising their past as golden. The whole
world, except India, believes in evolution; India believes in
Involution.
Now it is an absolutely accepted fact of science that man is evolving,
becoming more and more mature, but India still lives under the
illusion that the highest has already happened; now we are falling,
deteriorating. The modern man, according to Indian ideology, is the
worst. The farther back you go in the past the higher the quality of
humanity you will find this is putting things absolutely upside-down,
this is not so, and unless this whole idea is shattered, destroyed,
burnt, India cannot be really free.
The very idea is depressing; one loses all zest for living. If it is
only that we are going downhill every moment, then how can there be
hope and how can there be joy? Then life can only be a boredom, a
drag; it cannot be a dance and a celebration.
Hence India lives under a very great burden; that burden creates its
spiritual slavery, and out of that burden many more things arise – one
thing leads to another. The past of India is full of pseudo religion
and the pseudo religion imprisonments for man. It gives you masks, it
creates the hypocrite, it does not help you to discover your original
face.
One can be politically free easily, but unless one is spiritually free
one will not be able to use that political freedom at all for right
purposes. It will only create chaos, anarchy; it will be destructive,
not creative. So the political freedom has not proved a blessing to
India for the simple reason that the inner soul is still living within
walls, chained. But the problem is the Indian mind respects those
chains, worships those chains. It does not think of the prison as a
prison but as a temple. The moment you start thinking and believing
that your chains are ornaments and very valuable, you start protecting
them. Rather than throwing them away you cling to them.
India clings to its past, and that clinging is not allowing it to
release the splendours of its soul. The women of India are living in
utter slavery; their slavery is double. The men are slaves, but the
women are the slaves of these slaves. And why are the women living in
such slavery? If you go to the roots again you will find that the
pseudo religion is its cause.
From Manu up to today the woman has been condemned for the simple
reason that all these socalled saints and mahatmas were living with
repressed sexuality, and when you live with repressed sexuality the
woman becomes immensely important. Then your whole mind is full of
fantasies about women, and naturally one starts feeling that the woman
is the cause of all these fantasies. You cannot get them out of your
mind because those fantasies are very alluring, fascinating, but the
reason is not the woman at all. Repress your desire for food and your
mind will be full of food. Repress any desire and the repressed desire
will take revenge; it is bound to happen so. It will assert itself in
a thousand and one ways. If you prevent it at the front door it will
start coming in through the back door.
India has lived with a repressive morality; its morality is not
authentic, not true, not sincere. It is not centred in a self-realized
consciousness, it is just cultivated, painted on the outside. It is a
painted face! And you know it – everybody who lives with the mask
knows it – that the real face is the total opposite of it. The real
face is repressed and the unreal one is praised, decorated,
worshipped. This creates a deep split, this creates schizophrenia.
Indian culture is schizophrenic, it is insane, but beautifully
rationalized, beautifully covered. And the greatest problem, the
greatest taboo in India has been sex. Just as in the West today the
taboo is death, in India it has been sex. These two things have to be
understood because these are the two fundamental taboos. Either a
society creates a taboo around sex or it moves to the other extreme
and creates a taboo around death. Both are deeply related – two
extremes of the same phenomenon.
Sex is birth, sex is the beginning, and death is the end. A few people
are trying to hide the fact of birth and a few other people are trying
to hide the fact of death. The culture which makes sex a taboo will
accept death, and vice versa: the culture that creates a taboo about
death will accept sex. Humanity needs freedom from all taboos, freedom
from all extremist ideologies, because to be an extremist is to be
insane. The sane person is balanced: he is exactly in the middle, he
follows the golden mean. And to be in the middle is to transcend
duality, is to transcend the extreme polarity.
Man needs a new kind of understanding which accepts both birth and
death as part of life, with no fear. The moment you accept both, the
moment you can celebrate both, you go beyond both. If you create a
taboo around the energy called sex then the woman is condemned. The
condemnation of the woman, the slavery of the woman, is simply a
condemnation of sex.
Reduced to its scientific roots you can easily see it: unless sex is
respected the woman will remain a means either to be exploited,
manipulated, possessed like a thing, or renounced – again like a
thing. Either you possess the woman – then she is your property – or
you renounce the woman, but again it is the same thing: she is your
property. And woman considered as property cannot have freedom. India
considers the woman as property. The worldly use her and the
other-worldly, the so-called mahatmas, renounce her, but both agree on
one point: that she is your property. She has no soul, so where is the
question of giving her freedom?
One of the most respected incarnations of God in India is Rama. His
wife, Sita, was stolen by Ravana. After years of fight and struggle
Rama defeated Ravana, brought his wife back, but first she had to pass
through an utterly inhuman examination. The examination is called AGNI
PARIKSHA, ’fire examination’; she had to pass through fire. If she was
absolutely free of any sin while she was away from Rama, even in her
dreams, then she would come out of the fire unharmed, if she had
sinned, even in her mind, then she would be consumed by the fire.
Now, this is sheer stupidity. Fire does not believe in your morality!
Fire has no respect for any culture, any religion, any values. Fire
has its own laws; it cannot suspend those laws But one thing more has
to be noted: only Sita had to pass through the fire, not Rama. And
there is a greater possibility… He was also away from his wife – what
had he been doing? But he was beyond question. He was a man, and this
is a man-dominated society. And he was really a male chauvinist pig!
Sita passed through the fire and, the story goes, she survived. And
back home, when they reached their capital just a single man objected,
but not to Rama himself. That man’s wife had not come home one night
and when she came back in the morning he simply said, ’I will not
accept you. I am not Rama! Get lost! I am finished with you!’
This was reported to Rama and he simply threw the pregnant Sita into
the forest. She was not even given a chance to say something – she was
not even asked! She was not even told what was happening to her. Who
asks one’s own property? If you want to dispose of your furniture you
dispose of it. If you want to burn it, you burn it. If you want to
sell it, you sell it. And still Rama is worshipped as God by Hindus,
he is thought to be one of the greatest incarnations. People seem to
be utterly blind! Even women go on worshipping Rama! At least they
should start burning his effigies, they should start throwing his
statues out of the temples, because no man has done so much harm to
women as this man has done.
Another Hindu, Yudishthira – he is called Dharmaraj, ’the king of
religion’… He was a gambler, and not only did he gamble away his whole
kingdom, he gambled away his wife too. He staked his wife and lost her
in the gamble. A woman is just a possession! You can gamble away your
house, your king-dom, you can gamble away your wife! And still he is
called the king of religion, one of the most respected persons – a
great saint. Nobody raises the question of what he did with Draupadi,
his wife. Was it human? Even a very barbaric person would think twice
before doing it. Even a criminal would not dare to do it. And still he
remains one of the most respected persons in the history of India.
Not only did he stake her and lose her in the gamble, but Draupadi was
divided by five brothers. He had four brothers and they all wanted
Draupadi – she was so beautiful. They were all interested in getting
her, so the only solution was that they divide her; she would be the
wife of all five. So the time during a week was divided – how many
hours she would be a wife to one brother and how many hours a wife to
another brother. A possession can be divided! And she was not even
asked.
This is ugly! This is subhuman! This is animal! And this is India’s
past. Indian saints have been telling the whole world that the woman
is the door to hell. And of course, if woman is the door to hell she
cannot have freedom, she cannot be allowed to have any say in life.
Either possess her, dominate her, reduce her to a commodity, or
renounce her; that is again the same. Possessing or renouncing, the
woman remains a commodity.
This whole structure has to be shattered; only then can the woman,
Indian woman, be free. The Indian mahatmas go on condemning the woman
as nothing but blood, bones, pus, dirt. And it is very strange – they
never think that they were born out of the woman, they had lived in
the womb of the woman, and they are also made in the same way: bones,
blood, pus. They are not made of gold or silver or diamonds! All
Indian scriptures condemn woman as ugly, as rotten… and man? They
don’t talk about man at all. Strange logic! A double bind, a double
standard.
Mrs Kohansky went to her butcher of many years and said, ’Bernie,
today I need a beautiful chicken, maybe four pounds.’
Bernie pointed out three chickens in the display counter, but Mrs
Kohansky turned up her nose at all of them. ’I asked for a beautiful
chicken!’ she sniffed.
So Bernie went to the back of the store, and from his refrigerator
room he extracted an especially plump fowl. He brought it forward with
pride. The lady was cautious. She took the chicken and slowly began to
examine each part with her fingers – lifting the wings, feeling the
breast and groping inside the cavity. Finally the butcher’s patience
waned. ’Tell me, Mrs Kohansky,’ he demanded, ’do you think you could
pass such a test?’
But there are different criterions for men and women. These different
criterions have to be absolutely destroyed, only then can the woman be
free; otherwise she cannot be free. And without the woman being free,
the country remains basically unfree. The woman constitutes fifty
percent of the population, but she is more important than just fifty
percent because all the children will be raised by the woman. If she
is a slave she will create the slave mentality, unconsciously, in her
children’s minds. The girls and the boys – everybody is raised by the
woman; they will be conditioned as slaves. The woman can only give
them what she has. So it is not that only fifty percent will remain in
slavery, it will amount to almost ninety-nine per-cent. It will be a
rare individual in India who is truly free!
The first thing is the ugly, pseudo religion, the phony morality. For
thousands of years, even today, the phenome-non of sati has been
happening. Sati means a woman throwing herself into the funeral pyre
with her dead husband. There is every possibility that the idea came
from Egypt to India. In fact, geologists say that in the remote past
Africa and India were one continent. India fits the African continent
exactly – if you cut out the maps of both and bring them close, you
will be surprised. And South India still carries negroid blood. North
India is Aryan, South India is African, it is negroid. It is possible
that in the remote past both comments were one, that India was joined
with Egypt. And now it is a well-established scientific fact that
continents drift, they move. They are still drifting; they go on
changing their Locations very slowly.
In India all the North Indian languages were born out of Sanskrit, but
not the South Indian languages. They are not of Sanskrit origin; their
origin is completely lost. In Egypt this was the idea: that when the
king dies all his wives have to be buried with him, because till the
Last Judgement Day he will have to live in the grave and he cannot
live without servants and wives and all kinds of luxuries. So with him
all the luxuries were buried, treasures were buried, slaves were
buried and women were buried – they were not more than slaves.
The same idea has prevailed for at least five thousand years in India:
the woman has to throw herself into the fire. And of course it is a
difficult task. Just put your hand into fire and you will know. Just
the flame of a candle touching your finger will show you what it means
to jump into a funeral pyre alive! So it was not done willingly – the
woman was really thrown into the funeral pyre.
And the arrangements were made in such a way that no-body would be
able to see. Much purified butter was thrown in before; it created so
much smoke. And the brahmins, the priests, were standing all around
with burning torches, and then the woman was brought. And such a great
noise was created with drums and the chanting of mantras and the
shouting of slogans that the cry of the woman would not be heard.
Sometimes she tried to escape from the funeral pyre and those burning
torches were there to push her back into the funeral pyre. It was pure
murder, ugly murder, very barbaric!
And then the woman was worshipped. This still goes on happening even
now although it is illegal. But the worship is not illegal. This is a
strange thing! If a woman jumps into the funeral pyre or is forced to
jump, that is illegal – it still happens! – but once a woman is burnt,
has become a sati, then a temple is raised and then she is worshipped.
If burning oneself in fire is illegal then all these worshippers
should be imprisoned immediately, thrown into gaols, punished, because
they are encouraging something illegal! But no steps are taken against
them.
Why has no man ever burnt himself with his wife? The Indian scriptures
say that love is so great, it is because of the greatness of love that
women have been throwing themselves in with their dead husbands. I can
agree it may be because of great love, but then why has no man…? In
thousands of years not a single man has thrown himself into the
funeral pyre of his wife. Does it mean that no man has ever loved,
that only women love? This is a strange thing! And the mahatmas and
the saints are absolutely silent about that. There is a double
standard about everything.
The woman in India has not been allowed to read the Vedas the
Upanishads, for the simple reason that she is ’impure’. Why is a woman
impure? And if she is impure, then how can a man be pure? He is born
out of the woman! But the woman is not allowed to become a priestess
because if she becomes a priestess then these double standards cannot
be continued any-more. She has not to be educated, she has not to be
allowed to read the scriptures – that is man’s domain, his privilege,
his prerogative.
The woman has to be kept in ignorance because if she is ignorant she
will remain obedient. If she becomes as know-ledgeable as the priests
then it will be difficult to dominate her, it will be difficult to
argue with her, it will be difficult to force her into slavery. And
this is not only true about the so-called, the pseudo mahatmas, the
phony ones, even great people like Mahavira, Buddha and others could
not go against the tradition; they compromised. These are the few
points I cannot agree on even with Buddha and Mahavira.
Mahavira said that no woman can attain to liberation unless she is
first born as a man. All that she can attain through medi-tation,
austerities, yoga, is a new birth in the body of a man, and then she
can attain to the ultimate truth. But no woman can go directly from
the body of a woman to the ultimate liberation. And these people have
been saying that man is not the body. You can see the contradiction,
the inconsistency, the utter nonsense of the whole thing, the
ridiculousness! Man is not body, man is consciousness. And woman?
Woman is a body,she is not consciousness!Or do you think consciousness
is also male and female?It is such a simple thing!
If you are silently watching yourself, that watching, that witnessing
cannot be male or female. Witnessing is simply wit-nessing; it has
nothing to do with sex, it has nothing to do with gender. And freedom,
the ultimate freedom, truth, liberation, nirvana, God, is attained
through witnessing. If God is attained through witnessing, then why
can a woman not attain? Just because she is in a female body? And what
is wrong with being in a female body? And what is special about being
a man? There seems to be nothing special: maybe a little difference in
hormones, in a few glands.
But to say that the woman cannot attain to nirvana, to moksha, to
ultimate liberation, means you are making your liberation dependent on
hormones and glands. So your liberation has nothing to do with
religion but with chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physiology!
Mahavira says no woman can attain to liberation directly. He is simply
compromising with the traditional view. He is not courageous enough,
although his name is Mahavira. Mahavira means ’the great courageous
man’, but he is only ninety-nine percent courageous; one percent of
cowardliness is there, absolutely present – he is compromising.
Even Buddha for years denied initiation to women in his commune. The
fear of the society condemning him! The fear of the repressed monks,
because if women were there then the repressions might start
surfacing. I may be the first person who has accepted women totally.
equally. Even Buddha and Mahavira are very reluctant.
Buddha finally initiated women into sannyas – because his own
stepmother insisted and he had owed much to the stepmother… His own
mother died immediately after giving birth to him; he was brought up
by the stepmother And she had loved him so much that he could not say
no to her, he had to agree. But once one woman was initiated then the
door was opened, then other women insisted that they had to be
initiated too and he had to agree, he could not be partial. But he
must have said it in deep sadness.
He said, ’My religion was going to exist on the earth in its purest
form for five thousand years, but now it will only exist for five
hundred years. The women will destroy it.’ This is a very condemnatory
note from Buddha – I cannot accept it. This shows his fear. This shows
that he was in some way or other agreeing with the rotten tradition
that has been always condemnatory of women. He rebelled against many
things, but he could not rebel against one of the most fundamental
things that has to be destroyed.
Indians are so much against me for the simple reason that what
Mahavira has not done, Buddha has not done, I am trying to do.
Naturally they are offended, and they have found great arguments –
rationalizations I will call them, not really arguments… They say a
soul is born as a woman because of past sins. How do you decide it?
And who is the judge? The males are de-ciding it – and of course they
decide in their own favour. They are born as men because they have
done great virtuous deeds in the past and the woman is born as a woman
because she has sinned in past lives. This is a punishment and she has
to suffer it. This is consoling the woman, giving her a
rationalization. A very tricky political game!
It was the first year that the family had been living in Germany, and
the father wanted his little boy to shine at his studies. Mr Stein
asked for Max’s report card.
Reluctantly, Max showed it. Mr Stein was angry and scolded the boy for
his poor grades.
’Well, Papa,’ said Max, ’the other boys in my class are Nazis. They
know I’m Jewish and they bother me so that I can’t study. That’s why I
got such a bad report card.’
Mr Stein relented. ’All right, my son,’ he said. ’Anything for your
future. I’m converting you into a Nazi, then you won’t have any more
trouble.’
So Max had no more trouble in his class, but at the end of the next
term he came home with another terrible report. Mr Stein was furious.
’What’s your excuse now?’ he yelled.
Well,’ Max said, ’you know, Papa, we Nazis don’t learn as fast as
those Jewish boys!’
One can always find excuses, rationalizations, but they are all
inventions – the inventions of cunning people.
An old Chinese man is walking down the road when he comes across a
small Chinese boy who is cutting his nails. ’Little boy,’ says the old
man, ’stop cutting your nails!’
The small boy looks up at him and then carries on cutting his nails.
’Little boy,’ repeats the old man, ’I say, you stop cutting your nails!’
Again the boy looks up at him and then continues cutting his nails.
’Little boy,’ exclaims the old man, ’why when I have told you to stop
cutting your nails do you carry on?’
’Because my neighbours beat their child,’ replies the boy.
’But what has that got to do with you cutting your nails?’ asked the old man.
’What has cutting my nails got to do with you?’
No real reason is there, but if you repeat a certain thing for
thousands of years people become conditioned to it, they start
thinking that it really is a reason. A rationalization can appear as a
reason if repeated too often, and India is very repetitive: it has
been repeating the same nonsense for thousands of years.
So every Indian mind is full of bullshit… or you can call it ’holy
cowdung’! That will look far more Indian and far more religious too!
Holy cowdung is sacred and if your head is full of it you are bound to
go to heaven because holy cowdung is the only thing in the world that
defies gravity. It will take you up and up and up until you reach
heaven!
This male-chauvinistic country has lived in many kinds of slaveries,
slaveries within slaveries. For twenty-two centuries India has been in
slavery, political slavery. A country can live in slavery for
twenty-two centuries only if somewhere deep down it is spiritually
ready to accept slavery. Unless somewhere deep down there is a desire
to remain a slave, nobody can keep anyone for two thousand years and
more in slavery, that is impossible. But if spiritually you are a
slave then politically, economically, socially, you will also be a
slave.
The Indian woman has to be freed from her chains. Her freedom will
help India to be really free. If the woman remains unfree, India’s
freedom will remain just superficial – some-thing borrowed, something
imported, not grown within it’s own soul. R. K. Karanjia, it is true
that India cannot be free when her women are not, but the women can be
free. It needs guts to issue the challenge. It needs courage to create
a revolution in the minds of women and men.
That’s exactly what I am doing through sannyas: making an effort to
destroy the spiritual slavery of the Indian soul. The whole past is
heavy, a Himalayan weight, but it can be drop-ped. Once you become
conscious of it there is no problem in dropping it. It is our own
creation; we can immediately get out of it. But then you will have to
be aware that unless you die totally to the past you cannot be reborn.
One has to die to the past to be born anew, and India has forgotten
how to die, hence it has forgotten how to renew itself, rejuvenate
itself. Instead of dying to the past it goes on making it glorious, it
goes on praising it. It enjoys the nostalgia that ’We had a great
golden past.’ And that is all sheer nonsense! That past has never
existed; it is just imagination, nothing more – pure imagination. We
have invented the past. Seeing the ugliness of the present, which is
our doing, we go on escaping into the past – to avoid the present.
There are only two ways: either escape into the past or escape into
the future. Both are anti-rebellion.
To live in the present is the only rebellion I know of, the only real
revolution. Get rid of the past, get rid of the future and live in the
present, totally herenow, with intensity and with Passion. And that
intensity brings freedom.
Source – Book “Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing”
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when things don't seem to be going your way, always know that God has
a plan for you. If you place your trust in Him, He will give you great
gifts. We don't always know what God's plans are for us. We just know
that His ways are not our ways, but His ways are always best.