Today is 8th of March and as we celebrate the International Women’s Day I would like to take the opportunity to mention something about ancient Indian traditions. More often than not, the current generation is of the opinion that traditionally the oriental world has been hostile to women, they were not given any rights, they were suppressed and so forth.
The Truth
However nothing can be further from the truth, even I do agree that in the past few centuries, the position of women did degrade and practices like child marriage, Sati were present but I am talking of ancient times even before that.
There are thousands of examples which show that women occupied no less important a place in the society than their male counterparts.
Some Facts
For those who think that ancient shastras and texts condemn women, I must say that they are having a wrong notion. Here are some facts which are to the contrary:
Most of the ancient deities were female not to mention the all powerful Maa Adi Shakti, the nine devis, and many more were all female. You can check out this post related to women in religion.
Many female mystics were there which were respected despite their outward appearance. For example females like great kashmiri Hindu poetess Lal Ded (c.1350) danced naked in trance.
Hindu Shaivite mystic namely Akka Mahadevi (c.1150) remained naked still she was respected in those times as well as today
All these different stories and many more just go to show that women liberation existed in those days too.
It can be stated that although there are crimes against the female gender, but to generalize this would be going bit too far. Many of the so called women right organizations which make such a hue and cry out of this issue actually just work to gain power and fame in the garb of such issues. There has been a recent trend where every issue under the sun is either turned into a male-female issue or a caste issue and this has the element of dirty politics in it. Very few organizations genuinely work for women upliftment, the rest are just trying to take advantage of the current feminist currents in the society.
I am sure some people may not like this harsh statement but I do not intend to demean every genuine volunteer working for women empowerment. At this portal of Metaphysics Knowledge we look at things as they are from the spiritual or metaphysical perspective and are not concerned about politics or such things hence our views seem to differ from the mainstream views at times.
A few lines dedicated to women power on this day
The body of a woman or man does not make much difference to our day
They are both the same, just that it is the nature and God’s play
The slight psychological and physiological differences do not matter
What is important is to break the old rules, just make them shatter
Those of us who see lust in the female body need to think twice
For such is the divine shakti, maa bhavani call it by any name
The sansar is a maya, the entire drama is just Her game.