Women? My foot. Woman can at most be regarded as a property. If you consider them as individuals you are mistaken. No blood pressure please! Bot first, what the law has to say about property? Property refers to legally protected rights and interests an individual or entity holds over physical or conceptual assets.
Earlier I wrote about the wives of various gods in Hinduism. I also wrote about the sons of gods – https://shitwhole.com/the-sons-of-gods/. The gods were literally obsessed with the concept of sons. Cursed is that God who had daughters. Similarly, all gods wanted a greater number of wives. Majority of gods have at least two wives. Flaunting wives seemed to be an acceptable fashion!
Likewise, many great Hindu kings had more than one wife. There are even accounts of some kings who had over 300 wives. While the Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala: Kept 10 wives and 350 concubines, the Hyderabad Nizam credited with 600 wives! The more wives one had, the more “manly” he was considered and wealthier!
Taking this thought further, it was a practice among the Hindus, when a husband dies, a “devout” wife was expected to immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. A woman who died this way was often regarded as a goddess. This practice, known as Sati, was banned by the British government in the late 1800s. However, the last known case occurred on 4th September, 1987, involving Roop Kanwar who was immolated on 4 September 1987 at Deorala village of Sikar district in Rajasthan, India. At the time of her death, she was 18 years old and had been married for eight months to Maal Singh Shekhawat, who had died a day earlier at age 24, and had no children. Several thousand people attended the sati event. After her death, Roop Kanwar was hailed as a sati mata – a “sati” mother, or pure mother.
Yet another point is that, despite both government of India and the Supreme Court keep asserting time and again, no woman is given equal share in the property by the society. Slogans like “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” and initiatives such as Ujjwala Yojana speak of empowerment, yet the reality often falls short and ugly. Things are becoming too raw and as we get closer to the truth, we declare women as ‘Adi Shakti’ and ‘Mother’. Yet nothing works.
For us in India, a woman is treated as property. Anybody can have her. In a swayamvar (is an ancient Indian practice where a woman of marriageable age is chosen as wife from a group of invited suitors), anyone can marry her; many a Rukmini were abducted; five husbands can share her; she can be the 16,108th wife or lover. All these facts prove that she is but a property. Further, she can be waged in a dice game; she can be publicly disrobed; she can be sold. We can do anything with a woman, for she is only a property. She can be sold, retained, and discarded. What we have been taught over 10,000 years of Hinduism is in our blood. Fully digested. We are brainwashed. We cannot but think her as property.
She is a woman, a goddess, a mother, and a loving wife if she gives birth to sons. She can be all too. If she cannot bear sons, the husband has every right to bring another wife. After three wives and considerable efforts, the son-sacrifice ritual (Putrakameshti) was performed.
Women? My foot. They are properties. Don’t you agree now?
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”. Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
