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PRESANTATION
ON HISTORICAL REVIEW OF STATUS
OF WOMEN IN INDIAN SOCIETY
AND THEIR STATUS IN FAMILY AND
RELIGION
BY ANUP
MSW 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
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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
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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
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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