Ielection of Srimat Swami Gahananandaji He also got ... places in perspective the es says on...

and was deeply attracted towards them. He was also greatly influenced by the dedicated lives of some of the monks of the Ramakrishna Order, especially the late Swami Prabhanandaji (Ketaki Maharaj), who was his cousin in pre-monastic life. He had also once met Swami Abhedanandaji Maharaj, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.

Swami Gahananandaji joined the Ramakrishna Order at its Bhubaneswar centre in January 1939 at the age of twenty-two and received mantra diksha from Swami Virajanandaji Maharaj, the then President of the Order, after two months. In 1944 Swami Virajanandaji Maharaj gave him brahma-charya vows and the name Amritachaitanya, and in 1948 sannyasa vows and the name Gahanananda.

At Bhubaneswar, he worked under the inspiring guidance of Swami Nirvananandaji Maharaj (later a Vice President of the Order). t is with great pleasure that we record the He also got opportunity to serve Swami election of Srimat Swami Gahananandaji IShankaranandaji Maharaj (later the seventh Maharaj as President of the Ramakrishna President of the Order) and Swami Math and Ramakrishna Mission at a meeting Achalanandaji Maharaj (a disciple of Swami of the Board of Trustees of the Math and the Vivekananda and a Vice President of the Governing Body of the Mission held on 25 Order) when they visited Bhubaneswar and May 2005. He is the fourteenth President of Puri. From 1942 to 1952 he served at the the Order.Kolkata branch of Advaita Ashrama, Swami Gahananandaji was one of the Mayavati. In the course of those ten years, he Vice Presidents of the Math and Mission went to the Mayavati ashrama in the since 14 April 1992, and succeeds Swami Himalayas a couple of times to stay in solitude Ranganathanandaji Maharaj, who attained and spend time in study and meditation.mahasamadhi on 25 April 2005.

Between 1953 and 1958, he was at the Born in the village of Paharpur in Sylhet Shillong centre, where he worked under the district (now in Bangladesh) in October guidance of Swami Saumyanandaji Maharaj 1916, Swami Gahananandaji studied the (a disciple of Swami Brahmanandaji lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Maharaj). During this period he also orga-Swami Vivekananda during his student life,

NEW PRESIDENTOF THE RAMAKRISHNA MATH & RAMAKRISHNA MISSION

nized flood relief operations in Assam a couple of times. Keenly interested as he was in the service of sick people, Swami Gahananandaji was posted to the Mission’s hospital centre, Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan, Kolkata, in 1958. For twenty-seven long years, he was deeply involved in all its activities as an Assistant Secretary under the inspiring guidance of its founder secretary Swami Dayanandaji Maharaj the Order. From that time he was also simulta-during the first five years, and then onwards neously the head of Ramakrishna Math as its head for twenty-two years, till 1985. (Yogodyan) in Kankurgachhi, Kolkata.

The Seva Pratishthan was originally As a Vice President, Swami Gahana-started, and was known for several years, nandaji travelled extensively in various parts only as a model maternity and child welfare of the country and visited many branches of centre. The vast and multifaceted form that the Math and Mission and also a number of the centre assumed in later years was largely unaffiliated centres. In 1993 he represented achieved under the stewardship of Swami the Ramakrishna Order at the commemora-Gahananandaji Maharaj. He worked tive function organized by Council for a tirelessly to develop and expand its services Parliament of the World’s Religions in to cater to the medical needs of more and Chicago (and attended by 6,500 people from more people belonging to poor and low- all parts of the world) to celebrate the cente-income sections of society. During his stay nary of the 1893 Parliament of Religions there, he started health-care activities in where Swami Vivekananda made his historic thirty-three remote villages through mobile appearance. During that time he also visited medical units, free eye-operation camps in the centres of the Order in the US and nearby villages, and medical relief for Canada. He also visited at different times Gangasagar Mela pilgrims every year. He various places in the UK, France, Switzerland, also organized medical-relief work for the Holland, Russia, Australia, Japan, Myanmar, refugees during the 1971 Bangladesh war. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia

Swami Gahananandaji was elected a and Mauritius.Trustee of the Ramakrishna Math and a In all these places, Swami Gahananandaji Member of the Governing Body of the Maharaj spread the message of Sri Ramakrishna Mission in 1965. In 1979 he was Ramakrishna, Sri Sarada Devi and Swami appointed an Assistant Secretary of the twin Vivekananda, and also gave mantra diksha to organizations. Even after that, he continued thousands of spiritual seekers. He always to shoulder the responsibilities of the Seva responded to requests for spiritual guidance Pratishthan as its Secretary till March 1985. from all corners of the country, including very Thereafter he came to the headquarters at remote villages, ignoring his personal Belur Math to function as a whole-time difficulties and inconveniences.Assistant Secretary. He became the General We earnestly pray for the continued Secretary of the Math and Mission in 1989 fruition of his spiritual ministrations and and continued in that post for three years till steady growth of the activities of the Order 1992, when he became a Vice President of under his guidance.

Prabuddha Bharata350

PB-JULY 2005 12

� Traditional Wisdom �

VOICE OF THE BRAHMAVÁDINÆ

I walk with the Rudras and the Vasus, I, with the Adityas and all the gods;I bear up the two, Mitra and Varuna, I, Indra and Agni, I, the two Ashvins.

I am the Em press of the universe, the bestower of riches, I was the first to know among the holy ones;Me the gods put in many places, Making me en ter and dwell abun dantly. (Vak)

What so ever thing I do of toil, Bur dens of com ple tion on me lie;Yet unto an other falls the spoil And gains he the fruit thereof, not I.

Yet if I toil with no thought of self, All my works be fore the Self I lay:Set ting faith and duty be fore pelf, Well for me shall be the on ward way. (Lalla)

O Govinda, we adore Thee this early dawn but for one boon: let us al ways, even unto oursev enth birth be with Thee, serv ing Thy will alone! Change all other de sires in us into thisunique as pi ra tion: to be Thy hum ble ser vi tors! (Andal)

O hear me! I am bliss ful hav ing es poused the bodi less, speech less, and home less hus band. Ithere fore do not crave for any thing more. Nor do I in fu ture as pire for any hap pi ness that ispiece meal. (Akka Mahadevi)

Re mem ber, the beauty of a woman is not enhanced through clothes and cos me tics, butthrough phys i cal and men tal pu rity. (Gauri Ma)

13 PB - JULY 2005

PRABUDDHABHARATA

Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached!

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Vol. 110 JULY 2005 No. 7

� This Month �

The ed i to rial, Bridging the Gen der Di -vide, places in perspective the es says onwomen’s is sues that fea ture in this number.

Prabuddha Bharata—100 Years Ago re -ca pit u lates the prob lem of ‘Mat ri mo nial Ex-penses of Hindu Girls’—a prob lem which,though much at ten u ated, is yet to lose its rel -e vance in In dian so ci ety.

In his Re flec tions on the Bha ga vad gitathis month, Swami Atula nandaji takes upverses twelve to six teen of Chap ter Twelvecon tain ing Sri Krishna’s enu mer a tion of theat trib utes of an ideal dev o tee.

Hindu Woman as Life Part ner is a lu cidrep re sen ta tion of the Hindu ideal of mar riedwom an hood as ob tained in the Vedas andDharmashastras. It high lights the egal i tar ianap proach to gen der and women’s rights andalso elu ci dates the con cept of pátivratya. Theau thor, Dr Usha Ka poor, is Prin ci pal, GuruNanak Dev Uni ver sity Col lege, Jalandhar.She is a spe cial ist in pub lic ad min is tra tionand has worked on vol un tary agen cies forwomen’s wel fare.

Fem i nists across the globe have beenhigh light ing the pol i tics of dom i nance and sub ju ga tion that have de prived women ofcon trol over their lives and ac tiv ity. SriSarada Devi: The Power of Love and Com -pas sion is a re fresh ing relook at the con cepts of peace, power and be ing as they ap pear inthe life of Sri Sarada Devi, of fer ing freshfem i nist par a digms. Dr Sreemati Mukherjee,the au thor, is Head of the De part ment ofEng lish, Basanti Devi Col lege, Kolkata.

In her ar ti cle De vo tion as Coun ter-mar -gin al ity: Some In dian Women Models, K S

Sunita ex am ines the role of de vo tion in thelives of sev eral women who oc cupy a prom i -nent place in In dian his tory. The au thor isAssistant Pro fes sor, De part ment of Eng lish,Osmania Uni ver sity, Hyderabad.

Steps to Women’s Em pow er ment is agraphic nar ra tion of the way in which Rama -krishna Mis sion Ashrama, Morabadi, Ranchi,is fa cil i tat ing the socio-eco nomic em pow er -ment of the tribal women of Jhar khand, be -sides help ing them man i fest their in her entspir i tual strength as en vis aged by SwamiVivekananda. The au thor, Swami Shash-anka nandaji, is Sec re tary of the Ashrama.

In the sec ond half of his es say, The ProseStyle of Swami Vive kananda, Prof. U SRukhaiyar draws our at ten tion to the fe lic i -tous use of fig ures of speech and po etic im -ag ery, the pow er ful ap pli ca tion of rhe tor i caltools and the skil ful cre ation of har mo ni oussound ef fects that char ac ter ize Swamiji’sprose. The au thor, lately de ceased, was for -mer Pro-Vice- Chan cel lor, Jai Prakash Uni -ver sity, Chapra.

Dr Gordon Stavig, a re searcher from Hol -ly wood, has re trieved a re port of SwamiVivekananda’s talk at the V Club, ‘Had NoMeats at the Din ner’, from the elec tronic ar -chives of the New York Times. This we pres -ent in A New York Times Re port on Swamiji.

Rani Ahalyabai’s pi ety, cour age, for ti tude and gen er os ity are as leg end ary as is her ad -min is tra tive acu men and sense of jus tice and eq uity. In cre at ing a wel fare state in Malwa,brav ing per sonal trag e dies and ex ter nalodds, she ex em pli fied gen u ine karma yoga.She is the sub ject of this month’s Glimpsesof Holy Lives.

PB - JULY 2005 14

Bridging the Gender Divide

EDITORIAL

I am Vrinda

As I held my newly born grand daugh terin my arms, my mind was thrown backsev eral de cades to a time when I my self

was a cu ri ous tod dler try ing to make sense ofall that the many women in our joint fam ily af -fec tion ately tried to put into my lit tle head.Some one had just com mented that the babylooked just like me and that opened a flood -gate of mem o ries.

A small frock had been bought for mysec ond birth day, and my brother Hari, just ayear older than me, was given a shirt. I likedthe shirt better than the frock, but my mothersaid that I was a girl, and that girls worefrocks. It had never oc curred to me that some -thing set my brother and me ir re vo ca bly apart, for we were very fond of each other. But I wasa sharp child, and in no time was out tell ingoth ers which—ta bles, chairs and all—was aboy and which a girl, much to the amuse mentof my aunts!

Once I started go ing to school at the ageof five, things took a more con crete shape.Boys would join to gether for their games, andwe girls had our own. Things just seemed tosort them selves out that way. We girls pre -ferred hide-and-seek while the boys wouldpitch in for cops-and-thieves. At times I didfeel like join ing my brother’s friends at theirgames, but then backed out for fear of be ingsin gled out; the boys were, af ter all, morerough-and-tum ble. At home too, motherwould pre fer to have me by her, even as mybrother would spend a lot of time out, play ingwith the neigh bours. I did not mind, for Iloved help ing my mother with the house holdchores; and when my youn ger broth ers ar -rived, tak ing care of them was great fun.

Ad o les cence only deep ened the mys tery

of this gen der di vide. Boys (in those days yoube came men and women only af ter mar riage,and to el ders at home you al ways re mained achild) now did ap pear to be dif fer ent; and thatnot sim ply be cause of ob vi ous phys i cal con -trasts. It would be dif fi cult for me, even now,to spell out these dif fer ences. Maybe it hadsome thing to do with our emo tions and af -fects, our cares and con cerns. The boys weremore out go ing, com pet i tive; and, though thejoint fam ily did not al low for the dis play ofsuch at ti tudes, they could also be more in di -vid u al is tic, and prob a bly a bit ag gres sive too.Sharing, car ing and nur tur ing seemed to come nat u rally to women. Yet, as in di vid u als, is noteach of us prone to the whole range of these at -ti tudes and dis po si tions? Is this di vide re allynat u ral?

My mar riage was ar ranged for when Iwas sev en teen. I had done well at school andhad a spe cial ap ti tude for math e mat ics. Iwould have loved to pur sue the sub ject, butsuch a course was sim ply not re al is tic in oursmall, out-of-the-way town. The few girls who went to col lege stud ied home sci ence. Be sides, with six chil dren to be schooled, my fa thercould hardly af ford to in vest heavily on hisdaugh ters’ ed u ca tion. The thought of theirmar riage ex penses it self weighed heavily onhim, and we daugh ters well un der stood hisanx i ety.

Life at my in-laws was pat terned on thelines of our own joint fam ily; I sup pose thisheld good for most fam i lies. The only dif fer -ence was that I was now in the role that mymother played when I was young. A daugh -ter-in-law in a joint fam ily would be busythrough out the day. The rel a tives, the chil -dren, the milch cat tle—all called for at ten tion.The busy ness spiced the mo not ony and left lit -

15 PB - JULY 2005

tle time for re flection on the drudg ery that awoman’s life can be. The reg u lar round ofpujas, fes ti vals, kathas and cel e bra tions bright -ened up our lives. Children were born, andgrew up, as a mat ter of course. Sons of coursewere cause for spe cial cel e bra tions; and toomany daugh ters could oc ca sion one to lose the love of one’s hus band and fam ily, caus ing usdaugh ters-in-law no lit tle anx i ety.

Women trail their daugh ters all theirlives, at least men tally if not phys i cally. Mydaugh ter Gauri has lived a tem pes tu ous life,and I have al ways been con cerned about her.She has been a non-con form ist all along, trueto her times; or is my think ing sim ply a re flec -tion of the eter nally re cur ring gen er a tion gapthat keeps con found ing el ders? Gauri, to me,is more a son than a daugh ter. She has a mindof her own, right from mat ters of dress tochoice of ca reer. All my daugh ters have hadgood col lege ed u ca tion, but Gauri alone in -sisted on pur su ing a pro fes sional ca reer; shewould not re main a ser vile house wife, she in -sisted. Her mar riage was by choice, but it hashardly been as happy as the ar ranged mar -riages of my own times. The ‘dou ble shift’—of fice and home—prob a bly tells on her nerves.Her of fice is over whelm ingly male-dom i -nated, and the con de scen sion of her male col -leagues an noys her. The ex clu sively maleshop floor also re sents in tru sions from a fe -male su per vi sor. Her hus band was not used to house hold chores prior to mar riage, and he isnot much of a help to Gauri at home. This of ten leads to fric tion. To top it all, he is not at allkeen on hav ing daugh ters, and al most con -vinced Gauri to have her preg nancy ter mi -nated once they learnt that a sec ond daugh terwas on her way.

This grand daugh ter of mine, then, hadall but gone miss ing. As I look into her wist fuleyes, I can only hope that her par ents and so ci -ety will re al ize her value when she grows upto give abun dantly of her self, and that she willnever have oc ca sion to re gret her par ents’ de -ci sion to al low her this life.

The Making of GenderThe Ox ford Ad vanced Learner’s Dic tio nary

de fines the word male as ‘be long ing to the sexthat does not give birth to ba bies’, and fe male to that which can. Sex, then, is linked with re pro -duc tive func tion, and is there fore bi o log i callyde ter mined. Gen der is de fined by the samedic tio nary as ‘the state of be ing male or fe -male’, but a lengthy, boxed note sug gests thatthere is much more to gen der than what is re -vealed by the above def i ni tion. It be gins withthe an nounce ment: ‘When you are writ ing orspeak ing Eng lish it is im por tant to use lan -guage that in cludes both men and womenequally. Some peo ple may be very of fended ifyou do not.’ Gen der is not sim ply a given fact,de ter mined by bi ol ogy; rather it re fers to be -hav iour that is so cially and cul tur ally ac -knowl edged as ap pro pri ate (as mas cu line orfem i nine) within a given so ci ety, at a giventime.

Sex is ge net i cally de ter mined—the pres -ence of a Y chro mo some re sults in male anat -omy. This pro cess in turn is me di ated throughhor mones and other chem i cals. The pri maryef fect of this trans la tion of ge netic in for ma tion is on the struc ture of the gen i ta lia, and later, atpu berty, in the man i fes ta tion of sec ond arysex ual char ac ter is tics—fa cial hair, prom i nentbreasts, and so on. This pro cess can go awry ata lot of points lead ing to sex ual am bi gu ity, butin gen eral most hu mans can be clearly cat e go -rized as male or fe male.

Gen der, though based pri mar ily on bi o -log i cal sex, can have a wide range of mean ingsand con no ta tions de pend ing on the cul tural,so cial and in sti tu tional struc tures that go tode fine it and de ter mine its ex pe ri en tial na ture. Thus fem i nin ity for Vrinda was not ex actlywhat it was for Gauri. Even for Vrinda, the no -tion of be ing a woman was con stantly chang -ing—from her pre-ad o les cence days, throughmar riage, to be ing a grand mother—and evenin her ad vanced age she could hardly pin point what it re ally meant to be a woman. There arealso marked cross-cul tural vari a tions in gen -

PB - JULY 2005 16

354 Prabuddha Bharata

der con cep tions. What it means to be a man ora woman in the US or in France is quite dif fer -ent from what it means in Ja pan or in Ghana.Gen der no tions also change sig nif i cantly withtime. The phirangi memsahib of pre-In de pen d -ence In dia would have ap peared much moremas cu line to the ‘na tives’ than a con tem po -rary Brit ish lady would to a Mumbai girl.

Gen der is about at ti tudes, think ing, andbe hav iour; and these in turn are heavily in flu -enced by so ci ety and cul ture. What Vrindawould wear or how she would marry was cul -tur ally pre de ter mined. If Gauri was hav ingprob lems on the shop floor, that was be causeshe was try ing to en ter an ex clu sively malepre serve. Terms like ‘male nurse’ tes tify to thehighly gendered na ture of many pro fes sions.The ste reo type of the bread win ner hus bandand home maker wife is still largely true andsets the tone for gen der di vi sions within thefam ily. The hugely pop u lar fash ion in dus trythrives on the never-end ing de sire of men andwomen to conform their body im age toever-chang ing and ab stract ide als of mas cu -lin ity and femininity.

Gender Discrimination

So ci ol o gists have long noted the fact thatvir tu ally ev ery so ci ety known to his tory hasbeen based on as sump tions of gen der dif fer -ence and has been marked by male dom i -nance. Bi o log i cal and evo lu tion ary ex pla na -tions have been of fered to ac count for this fact.Male sex hor mones make for bulk ier mus cu la -ture and fa cil i tate ag gres sive be hav iour, thusac count ing for the dom i nance. Ac cord ing toevo lu tion ists, the fe male of a spe cies sur vivedbe ing se lected out by ac qui esc ing in this dom i -nance and main tain ing high fer til ity rates.

Un for tu nately, these bi o log i cal the o riessmack of chau vin ism, for even in highlyevolved hu man so ci et ies, where nat u ral orsex ual se lec tion has ceased to be an im por tantde ter mi nant of evo lu tion, gen der dis crim i na -tion is ram pant and has been caus ing un toldsuf fer ing to in nu mer a ble women across all

sec tions of so ci ety. Gen der dis crim i na tion,there fore, has more to do with pol i tics thanwith bi ol ogy. Re searchers rou tinely come upwith find ings that re veal dif fer ences in brainstruc ture and func tion be tween the sexes. Forin stance, male brains tend to be larger; boystend to do better in spa tial rea son ing whilegirls out per form boys in ver bal skills; boys’eyes tend to be more per cep tive of mo tionwhile girls’ of col our and tex ture. But none ofthese dif fer ences make for su pe ri or ity. Ifwomen have not been able to make an im pactin a whole range of ac tiv i ties it is sim ply be -cause so ci ety has stacked the odds heavilyagainst them. For example, en gi neer ing islargely male-dom i nated be cause fac to ries and work shops are taken to be ‘nat u ral’ male do -mains and, re search in these ar eas be ing ‘ex cit -ing’, at tracts male stu dents. As a di rect con se -quence, math e mat ics and the phys i cal sci -ences—the ba sic pre req ui sites for en gi neer -ing—have been dom i nated by men stu dents.So when men out per form women in tests ofmath e mat i cal ap ti tude, it prob a bly re flects the lack of suf fi cient op por tu nity for girls to de -velop their math e mat i cal skills rather thanany in her ent bi o log i cal lim i ta tion. Even insuch an ‘ob vi ously mas cu line’ do main as ath -let ics, with proper train ing, women are able toachieve per for mance lev els that ex cel mostmen.

Women’s his tory, where it does ex ist (forhis tory writ ing it self has largely been a pa tri -ar chal busi ness), is a his tory of sub or di na tionand sup pres sion. Women have been lookeddown upon as weak, ir ra tio nal, and fickle.Such think ing jus ti fied their ex clu sion frompub lic af fairs and con fine ment to the do mes tic sphere. They were sup posed to be obe di entand sub ser vi ent to other male mem bers of thefam ily. Their move ments were re stricted andthey had very lim ited right to prop erty. Un -chaste women faced harsh pun ish ment fromre li gious au thor i ties, while un chas tity in menwas over looked. Even as late as the end of thenine teenth cen tury, in parts of Ger many a hus -

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Bridging the Gender Divide 355

band could le gally sell his wife; the min i mumle gal age of mar riage in Brit ain was raised tosix teen only in 1929, and that too as a re ac tionto the Sarada Act of the In dian Leg is la ture;and Brit ish women had to prove their util itydur ing World War I to gain suf frage rights in1918. Girls’ ac cess to ed u ca tion still re mainslim ited in many parts of the de vel op ingworld, in clud ing In dia.

There has been a sig nif i cant im prove -ment in the po si tion of women in In dia overthe last one hun dred years. Not only does theIn dian Con sti tu tion guar an tee equal rights towomen, but leg is la tive steps have been takenat fre quent in ter vals to en sure that they are ac -tu ally able to ac cess their rights. Yet theground re al i ties of women’s lives still leave alot to be de sired and many more changes arere quired if gen der par ity and jus tice are to betruly re al ized. The rel a tively poor nu tri tionalsta tus of In dian women, high ma ter nal and in -fant mor tal ity rates, se lec tive abor tion of fe -male foe tuses lead ing to a re ver sal of the sexra tio, gen der dis par i ties in wages and emol u -ments, dis crim i na tion against women at theworkplace, do mes tic vi o lence and sex ual ha -rass ment are all too com mon for women tofeel gen u inely safe, con tented and ful filled.

The mass me dia is an im por tant pur -veyor of ste reo types, and the In dian mass me -dia has been more ac tive in strength en ing neg -a tive ste reo types than in ush er ing in change.Com mu ni ca tions spe cial ist Kiran Prasadpoints out that though news pa pers do coverwomen’s prob lems,

this cov er age is very lim ited with the rest of thespace oc cu pied by cin ema ac tresses, mod els,video jock eys (veejays) and their hob bies. Manyof the women’s mag a zines are de voted to fash -ion, glam our, beauty ads and aids, weight re -duc tion, cook ery and how to sharpen ‘fem i ninein stincts’ to keep men and their in-laws happy.There are very few ar ti cles on ca reer op por tu ni -ties, health aware ness, en tre pre neur ship, le galaid, coun sel ling ser vices, childcare ser vices andfi nan cial man age ment. Print me dia must fo cuson women achiev ers in di verse fields to in spire

young girls and women and there is no dearthof such great women in our coun try.1

Narrowing the Gender Divide

If gen der is about at ti tudes and be hav -iour, it is these ar eas that need to be ad dressedif we wish to pave the way for more eq ui ta blegen der re la tions in so ci ety.

Men’s Attitudes

As it has been men who have played thedom i nant role in per pet u at ing dis crim i na tion, it is they who need to ques tion their at ti tudesfirst. They need to re al ize that ‘there is nochance for the wel fare of the world un less thecon di tion of women is im proved. It is not pos -si ble for a bird to fly only on one wing.’2 Andthe first thing that men need to do to ad vancethe cause of women is to al low them lib erty.Swami Vivekananda’s ex hor ta tion over ahun dred years ago is still per ti nent: ‘Lib erty isthe first con di tion of growth. It is wrong, athou sand times wrong, if any of you dares tosay, “I will work out the sal va tion of thiswoman or child.” … Who are you to solvewomen’s prob lems? Are you the Lord Godthat you should rule over ev ery widow andev ery woman? Hands off! They will solvetheir own prob lems’ (3.246). If any proactiveef fort is needed, that should solely be to en -sure that women can ac cess their fun da men tal rights. In Swamiji’s words: ‘Our right to in ter -fer ence is lim ited en tirely to giv ing ed u ca tion.Women must be put in a po si tion to solve their own prob lems in their own way. No one canor ought to do this for them. And our In dianwomen are as ca pa ble of do ing it as any in theworld’ (5.229-30). The dilly-dal ly ing in Par lia -ment over the Women’s Bill en sur ing res er va -tion of elec toral seats for women is a sad in di -ca tor of the fact that men can be very loath tore lin quish au thor ity and grant women theirdue.

At a per sonal level, to be able to em pa -thize with women and the women’s cause,men need to be in touch with the fem i nine

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com po nents of their own selves. Pre oc cupiedwith dom i nance, ag gres sion, and in di vid u al -ism—traits that are seen as mas cu line—menof ten for get that as so cial be ings they have toper force prac tice car ing, shar ing and em pa -thy—traits that are per ceived as fem i nine. TheDevi Mahatmya as serts that the Devi ex ists inall be ings as mother (yá devæ sarvabhéteøu mátì -répeîa saósthitá).3 Hence men too need to beaware of and man i fest their own ‘mother’sheart’.

Women’s Attitudes

The Tan tras speak of the Di vine Motheras Shakti, and women, as man i fes ta tions ofthis Shakti, are em bodi ments of Power. It isthis in her ent power that women need to beaware of if they are to free them selves fromsub ju gat ing in flu ences. Men talk about em -pow er ing women, but women cer tainly can -not af ford to be em pow ered—they need toman i fest power in stead. Again, this power need not be ag gres sive or de struc tive. In speak ingof Sita, Savitri and Damayanti as the In dianide als of wom an hood, Swamiji pointed totheir he roic for ti tude, quiet cour age, and asense of per sonal dig nity that pre cluded bit -ter ness in the face of ad ver sity and helpedthem over come tre men dous odds. ThePuranic or i gin of these char ac ters does notmake them anach ro nis tic in the least. As ar -che typal ide als they have eter nal rel e vance. To re late to them is to draw power from our ownbe ing which they in habit. His tory tes ti fies tothe fact that this ‘women’s power’ has beenvalid in mul ti far i ous con texts. In Swamiji’swords: ‘Women in states man ship, man ag ingter ri to ries, gov ern ing coun tries, even mak ingwar, have proved them selves equal tomen—if not su pe rior. In In dia I have no doubtof that. When ever they had the op por tu nity,they have proved that they have as much abil -ity as men, with this ad van tage—that they sel -dom de gen er ate.’4 We need to re think ourcon ven tional no tions of power if we are to ap -

pre ci ate the power and au thor ity that a SaradaDevi ex er cised, as is sug gested by Dr SreematiMukherjee in her ar ti cle in this is sue.

Swami Shashankanandaji’s nar ra tive,‘Steps to Women’s Em pow er ment’ calls at ten -tion to the fact how, with a minimum of in sti -tu tional sup port, women can or ga nize them -selves to better their own socio-eco nomic sta -tus with out un der min ing their cul tural andspir i tual value sys tems.

The Vedic Spirit

Dr Usha Kapoor’s es say, ‘Hindu Womanas Life Part ner’, high lights the egal i tar ian at ti -tude to gen der suf fus ing the Ve dic texts. Ve dic women un der went ed u ca tion on the samefoot ing as men—often to gether, un der oneguru. They en joyed free dom in their move -ments and mat ri mo nial choices. They were ex -pected to be queens (sámrájðæ) of the house -hold—ex er cis ing benevolent au thor ity, werein dis pens able par tic i pants in sac ri fi cial rit u -als, and had a force ful voice in pub lic af fairs.The er u di tion and in sight of the brahma-vadinis—the Gargis and Maitreyis—was thetrue source of their power. In proph e sy ing thebirth of many such ‘Gargis and Maitreyis’ inmod ern In dia, Swamiji was fore see ing thegen u ine re al iza tion of their in nate po ten tial by In dian women. Women need to re cap ture theVe dic spirit, not as an at a vis tic ves tige but asthe free-flow ing dy na mism that makes for theeter nal rel e vance of the Vedas. This would bethe path way to a gen u inely gen der-just In dian so ci ety.

References

1. Kiran Prasad, ‘Con tem po rary Mass Me dia

and Gen der Jus tice’ in Jour nal of Dharma,

XXIX.2,157-8.

2. The Com plete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9

vols. (Cal cutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989; 9,

1997), 6.328.

3. Devi Mahatmaya, 5.71.

4. CW, 9.201.

19 PB - JULY 2005

Bridging the Gender Divide 357

PB - JULY 2005 20

Prabuddha Bharata—100 Years Ago

July 1905

The Matrimonial Expenses of Hindu Girls

Of the can kers in our so ci ety, it is our ob ject to-day to deal with one of the great est of them— the

mar riage ex penses of Hindu girls. The mar riage of a Hindu maid of the high castes at pres ent

has been a stu pen dous dif fi culty. The value of a bride groom is in di rect ra tio to his qual i fi ca -

tions, in nate and ac quired, phys i cal and men tal. The girl’s mar riage of ten makes her fa ther or guard -

ian poorer by a few thou sand ru pees. It is su per flu ous to say how hard it is in these days of keen com -

pe ti tion in In dia to make a sav ing of a few thou sand ru pees. When such a sav ing is ef fected, it re -

quires not in fre quently a life time. So, just fancy what a man amasses in his life is swal lowed up in a

sin gle girl’s nup tial cer e mony! … No won der that prop erty has been mort gaged or sold for debts in -

curred by a girl’s par ent, or he has been re duced to dire pen ury and even beg gary.

Again, a high caste Hindu woman can un der no cir cum stances re marry, whereas a man can

take at a time as many wives as he likes. The wife’s rel a tives try by all means in their power to please

the hus band’s party. In deed the at ti tude of the lat ter to wards the for mer is some what akin to the re la -

tion ob tain ing be tween the rul ers and the ruled. If he seeks the well-be ing of his child (who does

not?), the bride’s war den is ex pected to meet all de mands em a nat ing from the other party.…

If the bride groom’s party can not be sat is fied, they gen er ally vent their ire on the newly wed ded

bride. She, a poor crea ture of hardly 14 sum mers, has to bear the brunt. She is sub jected to di verse

sorts of do mes tic op pres sion. And alas! such treat ment from her con sort or his re la tions has not rarely

cul mi nated in sui cide.

Now, the dis ease hav ing been de scribed, wherein lie the rem e dies? The first and per haps the

most im por tant of them is that the gall ing re stric tions pre vail ing against Hindu in ter mar riage should be

very much re laxed. Only cer tain sec tions of each caste are per mit ted to inter marry in their re spec tive

spheres. Now if one di vi sion of a cer tain caste can be given in mar riage to a mem ber of all the other

sec tions, it fol lows that mar riage will be eas ier, which will nec es sar ily re sult in less en ing the ex penses.

An other rem edy is that the mar riage able age of girls should be en hanced. In our opin ion the

min i mum age should be 16 years which is also the age con tem plated by the Civil Mar riage Act (Act III

of 1872). This be ing an ac com plished fact, fa thers will get more time for ar rang ing for their chil dren’s

nup tial cer e mony. Also, if both par ents are suf fi ciently grown up, they will have strong and healthy

chil dren in lieu of the pale and sickly ones which are now-a-days born so of ten as the ef fect of early

mar riage in which wives be come moth ers even at thir teen. … An other in no va tion wanted is that boys

and girls should be more freely ed u cated. … The last rem edy is that a man should not be al lowed to

take a sec ond wife so long as the first is alive, un less a strong case is made out for this.

I should also sug gest that the State should en cour age such laud able schemes as are cal cu lated

to pro mote our so cial well-be ing. If high of fi cers of the Gov ern ment will by words or small deeds but

be kindly dis posed to pro mote and help such move ments, we doubt not a new era will grad u ally be

ush ered into ex is tence. The ex am ple of a few great men of so ci ety will tell and im i ta tive prog ress will

fil ter down to the masses.

—Girijabhusan Mitra, M.A., B.L.

Reflections on the Bhagavadgita

SWAMI ATULANANDA

Chap ter 12 (con tin ued)

12. Knowl edge is in deed better than blind prac tice; med i ta tion ex cels knowl edge; sur -ren der of the fruits of ac tion is more es teemed than med i ta tion; on sur ren der, Peace fol lowsim me di ately.

In tel lec tual knowl edge is better than prac -tice with out un der stand ing. Med i ta tion isbetter than in tel lec tual knowl edge. Higher

than med i ta tion is the aban don ment of thefruit of ac tions, for it causes ces sa tion fromsamsara, birth and death. So there is hope forall.

From the way in which the Lord hastaught dif fer ent paths for the bhakta in thepre vi ous shlokas, it would be pos si ble to con -clude that the first-men tioned path is the high -est, and so in or der till we come to re nun ci a -tion of the re sults of ac tions as the low est. Thiswould be very dis cour ag ing to those who fol -low one of the paths men tioned af ter the high -est. The Lord there fore ex tols the last-men -tioned path, for those who fol low that pathmay be con sid ered the weak est by some, andthey are there fore most in need of en cour age -ment. But from this we must not con clude thatthe prac tice is in sin cere. In the first place itshows Sri Krishna’s great love and tact. Butfur ther more, the praise is due be cause the re -nun ci a tion of the fruits of ac tion is a req ui sitefac tor in ev ery re li gious path. To the low estand the high est alike, peace co mes only whenthere is non-at tach ment to re sults. He whoprac tises con stant med i ta tion needs it as much as he who chooses this prac tice of re nun ci a -tion of the fruits of ac tion as the eas i est andbest-suited means to Bliss. Ev ery dev o teeneeds it. There fore the Lord ex tols it so highly.

But now co mes an other ques tion. What is high or low any how? If all these paths lead to

moksha, how then can we call any of themlow? Our ob ject of life is free dom. Who careshow the ob ject is gained, how we get free, aslong as we get there? So it is re ally not a ques -tion of high or low, but of suit able ness. Fol lowany of the paths best suited to you. That seemsto be the teach ing. One’s own path, well fol -lowed, is better than oth ers fol lowed mis tak -enly. Sri Krishna does not give any one an op -por tu nity to feel proud be cause he fol lows this path or that: All ways lead to Me. Only moveon. Be ac tive; do not sit down in idle ness, forthen you will get no where. We must strug glefor free dom; oth er wise we will re main bound.Remember the parable of Sri Ramakrishna:When fish are caught in a net, some do notstrug gle at all but re main calm in the net, someagain strug gle hard to come out of the net,while a few are very happy to ef fect their es -cape by rend ing the net. So also there are threesorts of men, fet tered (baddha), strug gling(mumuk shu), and re leased (mukta). We must be mukti-kami, long ing for free dom. And thatlong ing must find ex pres sion in sin cere strug -gle. Each one must strug gle ac cord ing to hisown means—the one as house holder, theother as monk, the one through ac tiv ity, theother through med i ta tion. But all need to prac -tise re nun ci a tion.

When Sri Ramakrishna was asked, ‘What state of mind leads to sal va tion?’ he an swered: ‘If by the grace of God the spirit of re nun ci a -tion co mes to one, then one can get rid of theat tach ment to lust and wealth, and then only is

21 PB - JULY 2005

one free from all worldly bond ages.’ The keyto open the room wherein God is works in acu ri ously con trary way. To reach God youhave to re nounce the world.

Sri Krishna has already ex plained the dif -fer ent paths of bhakti through wor ship ofIshvara, the Lord of the uni verse, and throughwork. The rest of the chap ter is de voted to thewor ship pers of the ab so lute, the sannyasins,for whom there is no work, be cause they donot see any dis tinc tion be tween them selvesand God. They are free from de sire. This free -dom from de sire marks the high est spir i tualcon di tion. This por tion il lus trates the sec ondpart of Arjuna’s ques tion, whether bhakti ishigher or jnana. We will see what the con duct

of the sannyasins is like. Sri Krishna gives herea code of the high est mor als and eth ics, whichwhen fol lowed will make any man per fect.Though we can not ac quire ev ery one of thesequal i ties, some be ing fit ted es pe cially for thesannyasin-life, by the prac tice and mas ter ingof any one of them, a won der ful change willre sult in life and char ac ter.

Let us see then who is the yogi who, re -nounc ing all self ish ness, wor ships the Ab so -lute De ity, the one Spirit who abides in all. It iswell worth know ing this, for such a dev o tee,the true sannyasin, is very dear to the Lord.We may hold him up as our ideal. Into hismould we want to be shaped. Sri Krishna says:

13. He who hates no crea ture and is friendly and com pas sion ate to all, who is free fromat tach ment and ego tism, equal-minded in plea sure and pain, and for giv ing,

14. Who is ever con tent and med i ta tive, self-sub ju gated and pos sessed of firm con vic -tion, with mind and in tel lect ded i cated to Me—he who is thus de voted to Me is dear to Me.

Such a dev o tee can not hate any one, noteven those who cause him pain and sor -row, be cause he re gards all be ings as

him self. He is friendly to all and full of com -pas sion for those who are in dis tress. He can -not do harm to any liv ing be ing and so no crea -ture need be in fear of him. Though he maypos sess things and though he may per formgreat deeds, the idea of own er ship and of be -ing the doer of great acts is not strong in him.He is never proud of his pos ses sions or hisdeeds. Pain and plea sure do not make himlose his bal ance of mind. He re mains un af -fected even when abused. He does not al lowany con di tion to throw his mind into a state ofcon fu sion or ha tred or at tach ment. He is re ally the most ef fi cient of men, be cause he is mas terof him self, he rules his own mind and body

with wis dom and dis crim i na tion. And so he isal ways con tent. He does not think of gain ingany thing be yond what the body needs to keepit self alive. He is a yogi, thought ful, med i ta -tive. His con vic tion re gard ing the un re al ity oflife and the re al ity of the Spirit is firmly es tab -lished. His soul and heart, his hopes, his as pi -ra tions, his thoughts are all ded i cated to Me.Such a dev o tee, says Sri Krishna, who thusloves Me and who thus of fers his whole be ingto Me, whose whole life has thus be come onecon tin ued act of wor ship unto Me—such ayogi is dear to Me. Such a one, we read in thePsalms (112.7), ‘shall not be afraid of evil tid -ings. His heart is fixed, trust ing in the Lord.’

And now Sri Krishna goes on to am plifywhat was said in 7.17: ‘I am very dear to thewise man and he is dear to Me.’

15. He with whom the world is never an noyed and who is not him self an noyed with theworld, he who is free from ela tion, in tol er ance, fear and anx i ety—he is dear to Me.

How of ten we are an noyed with theworld, with peo ple, with con di tions.Things do not go as we want them to

go and we get an noyed, we be come mis er a ble. But not so the yogi. He does not al low hismind to be dis turbed. His mind rests in God.

PB - JULY 2005 22


What does he care about an noy -ances, lit tle trou bles that passby like the ship on the ho ri zon?He dwells in Eter nity. And soalso he does not cause an noy -ance to oth ers. Why should he?He has noth ing to gain by it. Hedoes not want any thing. He issat is fied and con tented. Helives in the At man. There hefinds his joy and rest. And all that he asks for isto re main fixed in That. Should he for a mo -ment lose that con scious ness of the Spirit, then he tries with all his might to re gain it. But theworld can not give him that. So he does not goto the world for help. He makes no de mand on so ci ety or on any per son. He gives no cause for an noy ance.

And when he has any wishes and thesewishes are ful filled, he does not be come ex -alted or un duly ag i tated with joy; he is not car -ried away by his suc cess, nei ther does fail uremake him de spon dent. He is al ways peace fuland con tented.

Now we be gin to un der stand why the

wise man is so very dear to the Lord. We thinkof jnanis as re mote, cold and in dif fer ent. Butwhat is the fact? They flow over with love,sym pa thy and com pas sion, be cause they have re al ized the Truth. Ha tred, self ish ness andenvy are all caused by ig no rance, by see ingsep a ra tion, by not be ing able to re move thespec ta cle of maya, which dis torts our vi sion.The true vi sion is one ness, one Soul ap pear ingas many. Dif fer ence oc curs only on this levelof con scious ness. When we rise above it withthe help of bhakti or jnana, then we see the de -lu sion of it all. Then we re al ize that the Onealone ex ists, and that we are only His re flec -tions.

23 PB - JULY 2005

Reflections on the Bhagavadgita 361

We think of jnanis as remote, cold and

indifferent. But what is the fact? They flow

over with love, sympathy and compassion,

because they have realized the Truth. …

The true vision is oneness, one Soul

appearing as many.

16. He who is free from wants, who is pure, ef fi cient, un at tached, un trou bled and hasgiven up all (self ish) un der tak ings—he who is thus de voted to Me is dear to Me.

He who is free from ex pec ta tions, free ofwants—how happy he is! Trust ing inthe Lord, he is not wor ried about the

fu ture. The yogi is clever, he pos sesses pres -ence of mind and sound judge ment. He is ef fi -cient, alert, alive, and not dull and stu pid. Heis prompt and quick in mat ters de mand ing

prompt ac tion. He does not sway from hispur pose. Noth ing can trou ble or dis turb him.He aban dons all self ish un der tak ings cal cu -lated to se cure ob jects of de sire in this world or even the next. He who thus serves the Lord isdear to Him.

(To be concluded)

Paths to the Divine

inivR{[ana< }anyaegae Nyaisnaimh kmRsu, te:vinivR{[icÄana< kmRyaegStu kaimnam! .yd&CDya mTkwadaE jatïÏStu y> puman!, n inivR{[ae naitsÿUae -iÿUyaegae=Sy isiÏd>.

Of these the path of knowl edge is for those who have de vel oped de tach ment from work and

have re nounced it; for those who have not this de tach ment but de sire the fruits of work, there is

the path of ac tion; but for the man who has spon ta ne ous faith in tales about Me and such other

things, and who is nei ther averse nor overly at tached to work, the path of de vo tion is re ward ing.

—Uddhava Gita, 15.7-8

Hindu Woman as Life Partner

DR USHA KAPOOR

Hin du ism re gards man and woman asthe two halves of the eter nal Be ing,each con sti tut ing a vi brant, ex is ten tial

part, quite in com plete in it self. In the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, Prajápati, the pri mor dialGod, di vides him self into two—man andwoman, the sym bols of cos mic po lar ity de riv -ing sus te nance from the same source.1 In thecos mic scheme man rep re sents Purusha (thePer son, Spirit) and woman Prakriti (Na ture,pri mal Mat ter), both of whom unite to keepthe world go ing. So goes the Ve dic verse: ‘I amHe, you are She; I am song, you are verse; I amheaven, you are earth. We two shall here to -gether dwell be com ing par ents of chil dren.’2

The Matrimonial Ideal

Mar riage is the co ales cence of com ple -men tary op po sites for plea sure, prog eny andself-ful fil ment. The cos mic model of the mar -riage of Séryá, the daugh ter of the Sun, withthe Aùvina twins (who de feated the primesuitor, Soma, in a rac ing con test) de ter minesthe praxis of the Hindu con cept in this re -spect.3 Be ing equal halves of one es sence, hus -band and wife are part ners in joy and sor rowand in the ful fil ment of the four fold aims oflife—dharma (eth i cal per fec tion), artha (ma te -rial ad vance ment), kama (plea sure) andmoksha (lib er a tion). Neither is su pe rior to theother as each has dif fer ent nat u ral func tions toper form and so cial ob li ga tions to ful fil. Hin -du ism ex pects the part ners to shed their in di -vid ual iden ti ties to be come one at the phys i -cal, men tal and psy chi cal lev els be fore trans -mut ing the ma te rial re la tion ship into a spir i -tual one. Says the Rig Veda in the con text of‘Séryá Viváha’: ‘Bless now this bride, O boun -te ous Lord, cheer ing her heart with the gift ofbrave sons. Grant her ten sons; her hus band

make the elev enth’ (10.85.45).No where do the Vedas say that woman is

man’s prop erty, as she came to be con sid eredin cer tain pe ri ods of his tory. Nor is it en joinedthat her role shall be sub or di nated to that ofher hus band. This is ev i dent from the sukta ofSéryá’s bridal in the Rig Veda: ‘En ter yourhouse as the house hold’s mis tress. May au -thor ity in speech ever be yours!’ (10.85.26).‘Watch over this house as mis tress of thehome. Unite your self wholly with your hus -band’ (10.85.27). ‘Here dwell ye, be not parted; en joy full age, play and re joice with sons andgrand sons in your own house’ (10.85.42). ‘Actlike a queen over your hus band’s fa ther, overyour hus band’s mother like wise, and his sis -ter. Over all your hus band’s broth ers bequeen’ (10.85.46).

In the Hindu rite of mar riage, when thebride groom holds the hand of the bride, he ina way prom ises his com pan ion ship on equalterms. When he asks her to tread on the stone,he wants her to be strong like it and not showweak ness of any kind in any sit u a tion. ‘Re sistthe en e mies; over come those who at tackyou.’4 Sub se quent rites of mar riage like theob la tion of parched grain, circumambulationof fire and the tak ing of seven steps by thebride are equally dig ni fy ing for the girl. Af terthe sev enth step is taken the bride groom tellsher that they have come closer to each other.‘With seven steps we be come friends. Let mereach your friend ship. Let me not be sev eredfrom your friend ship. Let not your friend shipbe sev ered from me.’5 Ob vi ously ‘friend shipim plies equal ity, not sub mis sion’. Be fore thede par ture of the bride from her pa ren talhome, the bride groom touches her heart andre it er ates the same feel ings, add ing that theLord God has brought them to gether: ‘I hold

PB - JULY 2005 24

your heart in serv ing fel low ship. … You arejoined to me by the Lord of all crea tures.’6 Af -ter reach ing her hus band’s home, the bride -groom makes her look at the po lar star af tersun set and ex horts her to ‘be firm with me’,‘bear chil dren’ and stay to gether ‘a hun dredyears’ (1.8.19). All this shows that in an idealHindu mar riage the girl is not a com mod itybut a re spect able hu man be ing. Al though mo -nog amy is pre ferred and di vorce dis cour -aged, as the cou ple is be lieved to be united forever in this and the next world, the smìtikárasand oth ers like Kauôilya al low the dis so lu tionof some forms of mar riage such as the bráhma,daiva, árøa and prájápatya with the con sent ofboth par ties in cer tain cir cum stances.

An Equal Half

The Hindu woman as life part ner has afour fold char ac ter: she is ardháïginæ, one halfof her hus band, met a phor i cally speak ing;sahadharmiîæ, an as so ci ate in the ful fil ment ofhu man and di vine goals; sahakarmiîæ, a part toall her hus band’s ac tions; and sahayoginæ, aver i ta ble co op er a tor in all his ven tures. Hus -band and wife to gether are called dampati,joint own ers of the house hold, shar ing work in terms of their bi o log i cal, psy cho log i cal and in -di vid ual dharma. The for mer pro vides theseed (bæja) and the lat ter the field (køetra) for itsfruc tifi ca tion, so that hu mans could be per pet -u ated in the cos mic pro cess of evo lu tion. Bothhave the joint re spon si bil ity of help ing theirchil dren grow in all re spects, but the con tri bu -tion of the wife is al ways im mense.

As life part ner the Hindu woman hasequal right to par tic i pate in re li gious rites andcer e mo nies; in fact, cer tain sac ri fices like theSætá har vest sac ri fice, the Rudrayága for suit -able sons-in-law or the Rudrabali sac ri fice forma te rial pros per ity are per formed by womenalone. Hindu law giv ers like Gobhila andAùvaláyana or dain that no rit ual or sac ri ficecan be com plete (sampérîa) with out the pres -ence of the wife. Even Rama had to or der forSita’s statue in gold to make up for her absence

dur ing his Aùvamedha sac ri fice. In theRamayana, Rama’s mother Kausalya of fersob la tions to the fire god Agni and Tara per -forms the Svastyayana rit ual for the suc cess ofher hus band Vali against Sugriva. Women ofthose days were quite learned in the Ve diclore. Draupadi was a brahmavádinæ and Tara an ad ept at re cit ing mys tic syl la bles. Oghavati,Arundhati and Sulabha pos sessed a thor oughknowl edge of the Vedas and im parted re li -gious knowl edge even to rishis. The spir i tualat tain ments of Savitri and Anusuya have be -come leg end ary. In the BrihadaranyakaUpanishad one meets women of wis dom suchas Maitreyi and Gargi. The for mer aban donedwealth for wis dom and the lat ter en tered intoa de bate with the sage Yajnavalkya at thecourt of King Janaka. Much later, Bháratæ, thewife of Maîõana Miùra, car ried for ward thetra di tion by act ing as judge in the philo sophicde bate be tween her hus band and Shankara-charya. When she found her hus band los ingthe de bate, she em phat i cally told Shankara-charya that his vic tory would be com pleteonly if he could de feat her, since she con sti -tuted her hus band’s better half.

The Vedas give a mar ried woman theright to talk and de bate in de pend ently. Thewife is the home (jáyedastam), says the RigVeda.7 Be sides, she is the trea sure house ofhap pi ness,8 a point elab o rated by Manu in amuch more ex plicit way: ‘Women must behon oured and adorned by their fa thers, broth -ers, hus bands and broth ers-in-law who de sire(their own) wel fare.’9 ‘Where women are hon -oured, there the gods are pleased; but wherethey are not hon oured, no sa cred rites yield re -wards’ (3.56). ‘Off spring, (due per for manceof) re li gious rites, faith ful ser vice, the high estcon ju gal hap pi ness and heav enly bliss for thean ces tors and one self de pend on one’s wifealone’ (9.28).

Manu de clares that the per fect man is one who con sti tutes a trin ity made up of his wife,him self and their off spring (9.45). The wife be -ing a gift from the gods (9.95), she ought to be

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Hindu Woman as Life Partner 363

sup ported to the end of her life. If Manu points out the se duc tive na ture of women (2.213-4),he is equally un sure of the un bri dled pas sionof men. He ad vises that wise men must not bein the com pany of even their own moth ers, sis -ters or daugh ters in a lonely place, for theymay de vi ate from the right path (2.215)! Manure gards woman as a pre cious unit of the fam -ily and of so ci ety but de nies them ab so lutefree dom due to their phys i cal vul ner a bil ity.He, how ever, dis tin guishes be tween the no ble and vir tu ous and the de gen er ate women, and,like other smìtikáras, crit i cizes those who arefaith less, fickle, sen su ous, im mod est, quar rel -some and loose. ‘Day and night women mustbe kept in de pend ence upon males and if theyat tach them selves to sen sual en joy ments theymust be kept un der one’s con trol’ (9.2). Manupre scribes cap i tal pun ish ment for kill ers ofwomen, ex empts preg nant and old womenfrom pay ing fines and sug gests that as a mat -ter of cour tesy, they should be given pre ce -dence when cross ing the road.

Such is the pro tec tion given to the Hinduwife in the Dharmashastras that she can not beaban doned by her hus band even if she in -dulges in sex ual con gress out side mar riage oris raped. Both Devala and Yajnavalkya opinethat a raped woman can not be di vorced as shebe comes pure af ter men stru a tion. The lat teradds that the wife can be aban doned if shecon ceives a baby from an other per son, kills abrah min or in sin u ates against her hus band; ifshe is a ha bit ual drinker, suf fers from pro -longed ill ness, is cun ning, treach er ous, ster ile,ex cep tion ally ex trav a gant, or un couth. Buteven in these cases she should be fed and cladwell and prop erly looked af ter.10 An aban -doned woman with out an is sue or a male pro -tec tor be comes a so cial re spon si bil ity, saysManu.11 If any one grabs her prop erty dur ingher life time, that per son de serves to be pun -ished like a thief (8.29, 352).

When Kalidasa wrote that women go theway of their hus bands as moon light fol lowsthe moon or light ning the cloud,12 he meant

thereby that they were not dif fer ent from eachother. The Hindu scrip tures lay em pha sis onhar mony be tween hus band and wife that is soes sen tial for fam ily peace and pros per ity. Har -mony re quires un der stand ing, which can only be among equals. In the Rig Veda, the cou plejointly pray: ‘May all Devas and Ápas uniteour hearts. May Mátariùvá, Dhátá, Deøôræ allbind us close.’13 The high est duty of man andwife, says Manu, is to be faith ful to each other.While the su preme duty of the hus band is tosafe guard his wife, to care for her needs andne ces si ties, and to keep her happy with giftsand pres ents, the wife is ex pected to be pi ousand chaste, sin cere and faith ful to her part ner,gen tle, suave, skilled and sweet-tongued.

The Pátivratya Ideal

The ob ser vance of the pátivratya dharmaby a woman is not tan ta mount to ser vil ity andsub or di na tion. Mar i tal fi del ity is greatly val -ued in the Hindu tra di tion as it leads to fam ilyhar mony and be stows oc cult pow ers. Awoman who sees the Lord in her hus band andmakes him her very life can not de vi ate fromthe path of vir tue; and vir tue is power it self.There are many ex am ples of Hindu womenwho as life part ners made great sac ri fices, un -der went tri als and trib u la tions, and sometimes showed their thau ma tur gic pow ersborn of chas tity (satætva). Gandhari cov eredher eyes with a strip of cloth as her hus bandDhritarashtra, the king of Hastinapura, wasblind. Mádri, one of Pandu’s wives, burnt her -self on the fu neral pyre of her hus band, a prac -tice which re mained cur rent in some In diancom mu ni ties and re gions down to the Brit ishpe riod, when it was banned in 1829. Sita ac -com pa nied Rama to the for est dur ing the days of his ex ile, kept her chas tity in tact while in the cus tody of Ravana, the king of Lanka, andwent through the agni parækøá so that her hus -band could ful fil his rája dharma. Savitriconfronted Yama, the god of death, and savedthe life of her hus band. Sati Anusuya turnedthe Hindu trin ity of gods into chil dren. Lit ter -

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a teurs like Kali dasa and Tulsidas be came menof learn ing be cause of their wives. Dur ing theMus lim in va sions, many women com mit tedjauhar (the cus tom of en ter ing a bon fire whenthe de feat of their men folk was cer tain) in or -der to pre serve their chas tity. The re sis tanceput up by Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi (widowof Gangadhar Rao) and the Rani of Ramgarh(widow of Raja Lachman Singh) against theBrit ish dur ing the ris ing of 1857 has few par al -lels in his tory. Count less Hindu women par -tic i pated along with their hus bands in In dia’sstrug gle for in de pend ence.

Al though the con cept of pati-parameùvara(re gard ing one’s hus band as God) has suf -fered an ero sion in the wake of women’s em -pow er ment, re spect for the hus band con tin -ues, as is ev i dent from the ob ser vance byHindu women of such tra di tional vows asVaôa Sávitræ, Haritáliká and Karka Catur-thæ—all aimed at a long and happy con ju gallife.

No where do the ac cred ited Hindu scrip -tures or dain that women should be abused,dis graced, chas tised with out rea son or di -vorced in or di nary cir cum stances. Yet ex pec -ta tions from women as life part ners have beenmany and var ied. The best fe male part ner, ac -cord ing to a pop u lar San skrit ad age, is onewho ren ders ad vice like a min is ter, obeys likea maid ser vant, feeds like a mother, pleaseslike the nymph Rambhá, acts as a ver i ta ble

com pan ion, and has the for bear ance ofMother Earth. �

References

1. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.3.

2. Atharva Veda, 14.2.71.

3. Rig Veda, 10.85.20-47.

4. Sankhyayana Grihya Sutras, 1.13.12.

5. Hiranyakeshi Grihya Sutras, 1.6.21.2.

6. Paraskara Grihya Sutras, 1.8.8.

7. Rig Veda, 3.53.4.

8. Atharva Veda, 14.2.26.9.

9. Manu Smriti, 3.55.

10. Yajnavalkya Smriti, 1.72-4.

11. Manu Smriti, 8.28.

12. Kalidasa, Kumarasambhava, 4.33.

13. Rig Veda, 10.85.47.

Bibliography

1. G Buhler, The Laws of Manu (New York: Do -

ver, 1969).

2. P V Kane, The His tory of Dharmashastra (Poona:

Bhandarkar Ori en tal Re search In sti tute,

1941).

3. Usha Kapoor, Women and Wel fare: A Study ofVol un tary Agencies (New Delhi: Indus, 1995).

4. Raimundo Panikkar, The Ve dic Ex pe ri ence:Mantramanjari (Lon don: Darton, Longman &

Todd, 1977).

5. Herman Oldenberg, Grihya Sutras (Delhi:

Motilal Banarsidass, 1973).

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Hindu Woman as Life Partner 365

Partners in Faith

The sage[-woman] placed her hand on the head of Sita and said: ‘It is a great bless ing to pos -

sess a beau ti ful body; you have that. It is a greater bless ing to have a no ble hus band; you

have that. It is the great est bless ing to be per fectly obe di ent to such a hus band; you are that.

You must be happy.’

Sita re plied, ‘Mother, I am glad that God has given me a beau ti ful body and that I have so de -

voted a hus band. But as to the third bless ing, I do not know whether I obey him or he obeys me.

One thing alone I re mem ber, that when he took me by the hand be fore the sac ri fi cial

fire—whether it was a re flec tion of the fire or whether God him self made it ap pear to me—I

found that I was his and he was mine. And since then, I have found that I am the com ple ment of

his life, and he of mine.’—Swami Vivekananda, ‘The Women of India’

Sri Sarada Devi:

The Power of Love and Compassion

DR SREEMATI MUKHERJEE

How can a nine teenth-cen tury Ben galivil lage house wife speak to the needsof a mod ern In dian woman, sit u ated

in the twenty-first cen tury at the cross roads ofcul ture, his tory, tra di tion and mo der nity?1 Ina world that knows, per haps, one of the worstcri ses in hu man val ues, what has SriRamakrishna’s wife, Sri Sarada Devi, to of ferus? As I look around me, I no tice a worldwhere moral and psy cho log i cal frag men ta -tion, rel a tiv ism of val ues, and the in creas ingcom plex i ties of ur ban ex is tence make sim plecer ti tudes im pos si ble. One could be ac cusedof in tel lec tual bad faith if one pro fesses one’sbe lief or rev er ence for tra di tion ally sanc tioned spir i tual fig ures or icons. The only kind of be -lief that is in tel lec tu ally sanc tioned is per hapsbe lief in so cial prog ress through Marx ist rev o -lu tion or be lief in the meth od ol o gies of sci -ence, al though such po si tions are not freefrom their own in ner con tra dic tions and mo -ments of bad faith. There fore, liv ing at a timewhen tren chant skep ti cism and non-com mit -ment to ab so lute po si tions is in tel lec tu ally deri gueur, I would like to ex plore what the val -ues of hu mil ity, si lence and self-ab ne ga tionem bod ied in the char ac ter of Sri Sarada Devican mean for some one who wishes to avoidthe ter ri fy ing abysses that in tel lec tual poweror in tel lec tual cul ture alone can lead to.

Lone li ness and alien ation are not re allythe char ac ter is tic mal aise of twen ti eth-cen tury life alone. In mid nine teenth-cen tury Eng land, Mat thew Ar nold (1822-88) had pointed outthe grad ual alien ation of the in tel lec tual par -tic u larly, from both the self and na ture. In TheScholar Gipsy he lays the bur den of blame notonly on the in creas ing ma te ri al ism and mech -

a ni za tion of so ci ety but also on an ex ces sivelife of the in tel lect, which makes men tal poiseand se ren ity dif fi cult to achieve. Those ac -quainted with the Vic to rian ethos will knowthat not only was it a pe riod of fre netic in tel -lec tual and sci en tific pur suit, but also one inwhich the man i fold com plex i ties of ur ban cul -ture of ten caused the self-con scious in di vid -ual to re treat from mean ing ful re la tion shipsand a mean ing ful re sponse to na ture. In thepoem To Mar gue rite Ar nold poi gnantly ut ters:

Yes! In the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown,Dotting the shoreless water wild,We mortal millions live alone.2

The trend to wards the in creas ing in car -cer a tion of the in di vid ual within the of ten fu -tile and op pres sive life of the self con tin ued inWest ern cul ture (re flect ing ten den cies in ourown cul ture to day), and emerged as an im ageof uni ver sal or global dis or der and ste ril ity inwhat is per haps the sem i nal poem of the twen -ti eth cen tury—T S Eliot’s The Waste land. In this ground-break ing poem Eliot vi su al ized/dra -ma tized this state of spir i tual nul lity and ste -ril ity as a place or a state where there is

… no water but only rockRock and no water and the sandy road.3

His an swer to this state of spir i tual mal aisethat af flicts the world are the three words ofad vice that Brahma (Prajapati) sup pos edlygave re spec tively to the gods, to man and tothe de mons in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:dámyata, datta and dayadhvam.4 Eliot, of course, changes the or der of the words in his poem todatta, dayadhvam and dámyata, which, HarishTrivedi in Postcolonial Trans ac tions has taken

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great pains to point out, is an act of great in tel -lec tual ca su istry on Eliot’s part. I am not in ter -ested in de bat ing these ques tions here, butwould like to draw at ten tion to the clos inglines of the poem, which bor row the tra di -tional in vo ca tion of peace at the end of most ofthe Upanishads: ‘Shantih! Shantih! Shantih!’ It is with the word shanti or shantih that I wouldlike to start ex plor ing the rel e vance of SriSarada Devi’s life for us, and for my self, sit u -ated at the cross roads of tra di tion and mo der -nity in In dia.

Is Shanti Still Possible?

How does one ex plain the mean ing of the word shanti, I won der. Is it some thing that onear rives at through med i ta tion alone, orthrough rec on cil ing some times the most bru -tal con trar ies of ex pe ri ence, or through con -nect ing with some of the most vi tal and abid -ing ar eas of one’s own be ing? Eliot’s own ex -pla na tion of it in the elab o rate notes he pro -vides at the end of the poem is: ‘The Peacewhich passeth un der stand ing.’5 JibananandaDas in his fa mous poem Banalata Sen, a poemthat ech oes and re-ech oes with the lone li nessand fa tigue of liv ing in the world, uses theword shanti to de scribe the in valu able gift thatBanalata Sen even tu ally gave the poet.6 Fromthe ech oes and re-ech oes that the fre quent useof long vowel sounds in Ben gali cre ates in thepoem, the word shanti re ver ber ates throughthe mul ti ple lay ers of ex pe ri ence that the‘thou sand’ years of the poet’s ‘walk ing’ on theface of the earth em bod ies.7 In the end theword re tains an in cal cu la ble di men sionwhose mean ing can not be sat is fac to rily fixed.It sug gests a mys te ri ous re gen er a tion which isnot sim ply ro man tic re gen er a tion. In song 410of the Gitabitan Rabindranath Tagore uses theterm to im ply a re gen er a tion that lights up thedark ness of ex pe ri ence. It is to all these realmsof ex pe ri ence, part un der stood, part vi su al -ized, part ar tic u lated, but ex pe ri enced deeplyas ‘the still point of the turn ing world’,8 that Iwould re fer my un der stand ing of Sri Sarada

Devi.

Shanti as Powerlessness

Sri Sarada Devi had none of the ex ter nalcon di tions of power as we un der stand it to -day, none of the ac com plish ments that makeus vi a ble and com pet i tive com mod i ties in theruth less rat race of our pro fes sional lives.How ever, her life per haps bears out the truthof the fol low ing lines from the Gos pel of Mat -thew: ‘For who so ever will save his life shalllose it, and who so ever will lose his life for mysake shall find it.’9 In my opin ion she standsfor that in ex pli ca ble con di tion of grace whichop er ates on us in mys te ri ous and un seenways, car ry ing re stor ative and heal ing pow -ers. A kind of grace that Shake speare vi su al -ized in Cordelia, who im por tuned the earth toyield forth its ‘blest se crets’ and its ‘un pub -lished vir tues’ in or der to cure the tem pes tu -ous sor row and rag ing ill ness of her fa ther’smind.10

I think when we look at Holy Mother’s(this term was first used by her West ern dev o -tees) life (1853-1920) we have to sit u ate itwithin its par tic u lar so cial, eco nomic and cul -tural con text. Born in a vil lage of Ben gal withfew op por tu ni ties for a for mal ed u ca tion, shewas mar ried off at the age of five. The lives ofex traor di nary peo ple do not nor mally fit thetra jec tory of ev ery day lives, nor can they becod i fied ac cord ing to con ven tional pat ternsand moulds. While obey ing cer tain con ven -tional pat terns of a woman’s ex is tence in latenine teenth-cen tury Ben gal, her life de fies andgoes be yond such con ven tions, and even con -tains par a dox i cal el e ments. Married, yet notmar ried, house wife and sannyasini at thesame time, she re mains, like Sri Ramakrishna,the ul ti mate enigma, whose mean ing it mightworth be our pains to try and com pre hendsome what.

In his es say ‘My Week with Gan dhi’ theAmer i can jour nal ist Louis Fischer made in -sight ful ob ser va tions about the na ture of Gan -dhi’s power.11 Citing ex am ples of pres i dents

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Sri Sarada Devi: The Power of Love and Compassion 367

and prime min is ters like Lloyd George andChur chill who func tioned within the ex ter nalac cou tre ments of power, Fischer ex claimsabout Gan dhi, ‘His power was nil, his au thor -ity enor mous. It came of love. The source of his power lay in his love.’12 I feel that such a com -ment would be ex tremely ap pro pri ate in thecon text of Holy Mother’s life, whose powerlay in her seem ing pow er less ness.

Patience as the Defining Mode ofPower/Powerlessness

In deed, the kind of power she em bod iedseemed to work best not through an ger andad mo ni tion—al though she had prov o ca tionenough—but through pa tience and en dur -ance that went even be yond the myth i cal andpar took of the con di tion of grace that I al luded to be fore. Even if we read her as an avatara (asher dev o tees surely do), we must keep in mind that she had her in es cap able hu man di men -sions, and for a hu man be ing to have the kindof pa tience and tol er ance she ex em pli fied,bor ders on stan dards that re main un reach able for most of us. If she stands for Shakti, then it is a Shakti that ex presses it self in its lim it less ca -pac ity for tol er ance and for give ness, and itsca pac ity to bear pain. Like Je sus Christ, whosetri als on the Cross be came one of the ul ti matesym bols of en dur ance un der pain that the hu -man imag i na tion can en com pass, Sarada Devi pro vides a fairly re cent his tor i cal ex am ple ofthe pos si bil i ties of such en dur ance in a hu manbe ing.

Sacrifice as a Viable Existential Mode

Sri Sarada Devi’s life was prob lem atic, tosay the least. Married to a man who wished topur sue sannyasa and God re al iza tion, sheman aged to make the sac ri fice of do mes ticbliss very early in life. If she had bliss in thecom pany of Sri Ramakrishna, it was not thereg u lar kind of wed ded bliss that manywomen still want. Her life was marked by sac -ri fice at ev ery point. If there was plea sure, then it cen tred around watch ing kirtan and danc -

ing in Sri Ramakrishna’s room through a bam -boo cur tain; in con vers ing with women dev o -tees; in train ing Latu Maharaj, who came to Sri Ramakrishna as a boy, in do mes tic andkitchen chores; in ca sual and sim ple con ver sa -tion with her hus band; and later on in life, hav -ing the as sur ance of the love of a great manydev o tees, house holder and mo nas tic. Seenfrom the stand point of a woman’s sen si bil ity,her great est sac ri fice was prob a bly giv ing upthe de sire to have a child. His torically and cul -tur ally lo cated at a time when moth er hood re -mained a woman’s fore most area of self-ex -pres sion, she had to re nounce what seems apow er ful and in stinc tive de sire for the sake ofthe ideal of dispassion and de tach ment thather hus band wished to fol low. A cer tain in ci -dent nar rated in Swami Gambhirananda’sBen gali bi og ra phy on her will at test to the factthat such a de ci sion or choice was not with outfeel ings of re gret for her.

Once while on a visit to Kamarpukurdur ing the early years of her mar ried life, sheheard Sri Ramakrishna hold ing forth in asemi-hu mor ous, semi-se ri ous mood on howin ju di cious it was to have chil dren, since thechil dren whose annaprashana (first rice-feed -ing) par ents cel e brated, al most in ev i ta blydied. His con stant harp ing on the death of thechildren oc ca sioned a rare mo ment of re mon -strance from Mother. She qui etly ex claimedfrom within, ‘Would all of them have died?’Where upon Sri Ramakrishna de light edly ex -claimed that he had in deed stepped on the tailof a true-bred snake.13 The in ci dent with itsmix ture of hu mour and pa thos, tes ti fies to herde sire to have a child. To quote facts wellknown to dev o tees of Sri Ramakrishna and SriSarada Devi, Sri Ramakrishna had as sured her that her need for chil dren would one day bemet, and she would have so many that shewould not have time for her self. In deed, thiscame true, and if the idea of Shakti sym bol izesplen i tude, Mother was loved, de mandedupon, and also ha rassed by dev o tees male and fe male for all the years of her life af ter the pass -

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ing away of Sri Ramakrishna.

Shakti: Destruction, DefyingCategorization, Ultimately Enigmatic

In the bi og ra phy by BrahmachariAkshaya chaitanya, the first book-lengthstudy of her life, there is a pas sage where theau thor quotes Swami Vivekananda as say ingthat within Holy Mother’s ap par ently calmex te rior was em bod ied the power of the de -struc tive as pect (of God as woman andShakti).14 If she em bod ies Shakti, as SriRamakrishna him self said she did,15 then wehave to keep in mind that en ergy must alsohave its ter ri fy ing di men sions. My mind goesback to an in ci dent I read many years ago,once again in Swami Gambhirananda’s bi og -ra phy. In the chap ter en ti tled ‘Devi’ he re fersto an in ci dent where, in re sponse to some oneten ta tively sug gest ing that a mad rel a tive ofhers might set fire to an ashrama cre ated forSri Ramakrishna, Mother seemed to un dergoa fa cial trans for ma tion and de clared in a loudand un nat u ral tone, ‘That would be just won -der ful! Just the way He wanted it! Let ev ery -thing be a vast cre ma tion ground.’ There uponshe started laugh ing, once again in a loud andun nat u ral man ner, which read ers fa mil iarwith Ben gali will rec og nize in the termattahasya (373).

Credit should be given to Swami Gam-bhirananda for in clud ing this piece of in for -ma tion that of fers what many would con strueas an un nat u ral, un canny and even mon strous di men sion of Mother’s per son al ity. How ever,the in ci dent seems to un der score the com plex -ity of the idea of Shakti. Sri Rama krishnaspeaks of Kali or Mahamaya as some one whogives birth to a child and then gob bles it up. IfKali means Time that both re deems and de -stroys, ac cept ing Kali means ac cept ing trag -edy as in te gral to life. Kali is no sym bol thatspeaks to one of var i ous kinds of power only,but also an idea that stands for the strug glesem bed ded in life. By that to ken, even if we areaf forded a rare glimpse into the ter ri fy ing

depths of Sri Sarada Devi’s per son al ity in anin ci dent like this, she also ex em pli fies suf fer -ing and pain as that face of Kali who is Time.

Shakti: Fortitude

If one were to pe ruse her bi og ra phieswrit ten by Brahmachari Akshayachaitanya,Swami Gambhirananda and Swami Tapasya-nanda, one would be come aware of SaradaDevi’s grind ing do mes tic rou tine. As SwamiTathagatananda, head of the Vedanta So ci etyof New York, once said at a con gre ga tion inwhich I hap pened to be pres ent, ‘None of you,I can guar an tee, would have been able to takeher rou tine in that nar row, ex tremelylow-roofed room, hung over with pots andpans, crowded with women rel a tives andwomen vis i tors, in the way she did, from three in the morn ing till about eleven in the night.’The lives of women veg e ta ble sell ers whotravel long dis tances to sell their produce, orhos pi tal ayahs who work many hours out sidetheir house with out prof it able gains rec om -pens ing them, per haps bear a much closer re -la tion ship to the sheer phys i cal de mands ofher work rou tine, than us who of ten oc cupyelite po si tions in so ci ety and re main far re -moved from the con di tions of such la bour.

It will be worth while to re mem ber thatSri Sarada Devi lived a life that by most stan -dards could be called qual i fied and cir cum -scribed by pov erty. In deed, there is enoughdoc u men ta tion to prove that af ter the death ofSri Ramakrishna, when she lived mostly alone in his pa ren tal home at Kamarpukur from1887 to 1890, she wore sa ris that were knot tedin var i ous places to cover up the rents in thefab ric, and that she also lived on a diet thatcon sisted of rice and spin ach, with out evensalt to sea son the fare. Al though her stay atKamarpukur was punc tu ated by trips to Cal -cutta and to places of pil grim age, it was an in -tensely dif fi cult pe riod of her life. Besides thefact of pov erty, she also had to face the in dif -fer ence of Sri Ramakrishna’s sur viv ing rel a -tives and the cru elty of vil lag ers, many of

31 PB - JULY 2005


whom crit i cized her for not sub scrib ing to thestrict norms dic tat ing a widow’s ap pear ance.Keeping in mind Sri Ramakrishna’s wish thatshe wear or na ments and a sari that at tested toher mar ried state, she did not bow to theweight of pub lic opin ion, but pre served herdig nity and sin gu lar ity of pur pose in the faceof pub lic crit i cism.

In the Midst of Family Life

Un happy with her daugh ter’s state inKamarpukur, Shyamasundari Devi, hermother, re quested Sri Sarada Devi to take upres i dence with her in Jayrambati, where shelived on and off till her death. Holy Motherhad four sur viv ing broth ers, Prasannakumar,Kalikumar, Baradaprasad and Abhaycharan,and their fam i lies now be came her own. Heryoun gest and most prom is ing brother Abhay-charan passed away shortly, leav ing be hind awife (Surabala) and an in fant daugh ter(Radharani or Radhu). Surabala had lost hermother as a child and had been brought up byher aunt and grand mother, who too passedaway shortly af ter her hus band’s death. What -ever the rea sons for her men tal un hing ing, shethere upon be came com pletely in ca pa ble oflook ing af ter her daugh ter. Ob serving her cal -lous treat ment of Radhu in the fam ily court -yard, Mother re solved to take re spon si bil ityfor the child her self. From that day on wards,prac ti cally till the last days of her life, HolyMother re mained Radhu’s for mal care taker.

Some as pects of Sri Sarada Devi’s lifehave a per sis tent qual ity. They are her un wa -ver ing com mit ment to peo ple both within and with out the fam ily, a scru pu lous sense of dis -pens ing her du ties and an un tir ing es pousal of the doc trine of work. In her youth it was SriRamakrishna, his mother, women dev o teeslike Golap Ma, would-be mo nas tic dis ci ples of Sri Ramakrishna, and other house holder dev -o tees who vis ited him who bene fited from hercease less at ten tion to their wel fare. Her ownneeds of wash ing, eat ing and sleep ing weremet with the min i mum of fuss and al most be -

yond the di rect ob ser va tion of any per son. Inour age of ob strep er ous flaunt ing of our selvesand our re jec tion of the val ues of qui et nessand pa tience, maybe we need to look at thequiet mes sage that her life sends us. Apartfrom an oc ca sional mo ment of grum bling (85), she sub mit ted to an ar du ous rou tine of workwith the ut most grace and ac cep tance. Her lifeis well doc u mented, and if this was not the re -al ity of her na ture, there would be stray ref er -ences here and there, ar gu ing to the con trary.She re tained a habit of con tent ment well intoher fi nal years, and rarely dis played dis plea -sure or tac i tur nity.

Her do mes tic life with her broth ers’ fam i -lies was vex ing, to say the least. In the earlyyears of her stay with her broth ers, Kalipra-sanna par tic u larly ha rangued her con stantlyfor money. Later on Radhu, Surabala andNalini (Prasannakumar’s daugh ter) each tooka part in tax ing and stretch ing her pa tience toits ut most lim its. The three women men tionedabove were a con stant fea ture of her ret i nue,whether she lived in Jayrambati or in Cal cutta. Of course, the pres ence of women dev o teeslike Golap Ma and Yogin Ma less ened the bur -den of liv ing with such op pres sive and in trac -ta ble rel a tives, but Sri Sarada Devi mostlylived out a do mes tic ex is tence that was trou -ble some and pre car i ous, to say the least. Theprin ci pal share in mak ing her fam ily life trulythorn-in fested was of course Radhu’s andSurabala’s.

Love as the Defining Mode of Being

Radhu was of ten sick and had to benursed very care fully, and Sri Sarada Devi of -ten took the bur den of this nurs ing. As a childshe (Radhu) had a sweet tem per a ment, but asshe de vel oped and ma tured into adult years,she lost a great deal of her ear lier sweet nessand in fact ac quired a com plain ing, truc u lentna ture. Holy Mother, un re mit ting in her careand at ten tion to wards Radhu, of ten bore thebrunt of Radhu’s tem per a men tal be hav iourthat some times crossed all rec og niz able lim its

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of de cency and or der. I shall re fer to cer tain in -ci dents that oc curred to wards the end of HolyMother’s life.

By this time Radhu was not only mar riedbut also the mother of a child. Dur ing themonths of her preg nancy, Radhu’s nerves hadbeen in such a state of stress that she could notad just to even the most peace ful and un -problematic of sur round ings; the least noiseany where would be enough to up set her. Hav -ing moved around with her to var i ous places,Holy Mother even tu ally re sided with her in asmall house in a place called Koalpara, wherethe al most ab so lute qui et ness of the vil lagesur round ings sat is fied Radhu. For some onewho was used to so much at ten tion from a va -ri ety of dev o tees both male and fe male, HolyMother could well have been a lit tle less ac -com mo dat ing of Radhu’s id io syn cra sies. Butsuch was the ab so lute na ture of her com mit -ment to this girl that she never walked awayfrom what she read as her duty in a par tic u larsit u a tion.

In spite of be ing the re cip i ent of such lov -ing care for years on end, Radhu re mained ca -pa ble of the most neg a tive re cip ro ca tion imag -in able. Once de nied opium, which she hadformed a habit of tak ing from the time of thedif fi cult de liv ery of her child, Radhu took alarge brin jal from a bas ket of veg e ta bles thatHoly Mother was cut ting, and hurled itagainst her back. Sri Sarada Devi’s backswelled up at the point of con tact, but all shesaid was, ‘Thakur, don’t count that as Radhu’ssin. She’s wit less!’ (268).

Within the bounds of my knowl edge, Ican only think of Christ’s re ac tion on theCross, where he prayed to his Fa ther to ‘for -give’ the per pe tra tors who had ex e cuted thedeed of nail ing him on the Cross, as an anal o -gous in ci dent. Ab so lute for give ness of this na -ture is hard to imag ine, but Sri Sarada Devi re -mains a fairly re cent his tor i cal ex am ple of thiskind of ul ti mate hu man pos si bil ity. Per haps,this is the ‘wa ter’ that Eliot was be moan ing the lack of in the rock-strewn waste land of our

mod ern ex is tence.Radharani, as I have men tioned be fore,

was not the only thorn dis turb ing the do mes -tic peace of Holy Mother’s house hold. Sura-bala would of ten break out into in sane dem -on stra tions of an ger and jeal ousy, not stop -ping to ac cuse Sri Sarada Devi of ap pro pri at -ing Radhu for her own self. Once Holy Mother lost her pa tience and de clared in an ag i tatedtone, a rough trans la tion of which amounts to‘Look, don’t treat me as an or di nary per son!You are lucky I don’t take of fence with whatyou say. … Your daugh ter will re main yours. I can cut off her hold on me any min ute that Ichoose to!’ (291). Nalini for her part in sisted on air ing all her petty su per sti tions and ob ses -sions. Once she told Sri Sarada Devi that shewould have to take her bath all over again be -cause a crow had com mit ted some imag i naryof fence on her. Where upon Sri Sarada Devi re -joined, ‘Ob ses sions! Your mind is never cleanof them. They will in crease as much as you al -low them to’ (409). To this same Nalini, shehad on a sim i lar oc ca sion in sisted on the pu -rity of the mind, be cause it was the mind, shefelt, that de ter mined the per cep tion of goodand evil (ibid.).

De spite the frus trat ing con di tions of herdo mes tic life, Sri Sarada Devi had ac quired aniconic sta tus by the time she died. Sought af -ter, im por tuned and loved by dev o tees notonly from Ben gal but from all over In dia, shere tained till the last days of her life a prin ci pleof care and com mit ment to all those whosought her shel ter in some way. Per haps morethan Sri Ramakrishna, she was tol er ant of hu -man ex cesses and deviances. Given her so cial,cul tural and his tor i cal lo ca tion as a Ben galiwoman with a con ser va tive ru ral up bring ing,it was no or di nary act of cath o lic ity to say thatthe thief Amjad and her much be loved Sharat(Swami Saradananda) were equally her sons(328). This was in re sponse to Nalini’s re mon -stra tion one day at Jayrambati, that she should not ex tend ex ces sive hos pi tal ity to Amjadknow ing that he was a thief. She also ex tended

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hos pi tal ity to Nivedita and to the Amer i cansSa rah Bull and Jo se phine MacLeod at a timewhen for eign ers were con sid ered to be ‘un -touch able’ by con ser va tive Ben galis.

Her last words to a woman dev o tee were: ‘If you want peace of mind, do not find faultwith oth ers. Rather see your own faults. Learnto make the whole world your own. No one isa stranger, my child; this whole world is yourown!’ (450). It is on this note that I would liketo end my trib ute to Sri Sarada Devi. Shetouched the lives of many while she was alive.Even af ter her death she con tin ues to drawmany lives to her and per haps pro vides themwith that still point of rest or re pose, thatshanti with which this ar ti cle be gan. �

Notes and References

1. What, in short, is mo der nity? Dif fer ent peo -

ple, dif fer ent crit ics and dif fer ent cul tural his -

to ri ans de fine it var i ously. In In dia, per haps it

would be safe to equate the ar rival of mo der -

nity with the re vival or in cul ca tion of sci en tific

and ra tio nal meth ods of en quiry that was one

of the gifts (al though the word gift is used

keep ing in mind the co er cive, po lit i cally im -

pli cated and some times emas cu lat ing ef fects

of West ern ed u ca tion in In dia) that West ern

think ers brought to the country. We see the

vis i ble man i fes ta tion of this spirit in Raja

Rammohun Roy and his cham pi on ing of a

more ra tio nal and thereby a more hu mane ba -

sis to so cial prac tices and rit u als which were

some times sti fling, life-de ny ing and cru elly

op pres sive to women in par tic u lar.

2. Mat thew Ar nold, ‘To Mar gue rite’ in The NewOx ford Book of Eng lish Verse (1250-1950), ed.

Helen Gardner (New York and Ox ford: Ox -

ford Uni ver sity Press, 1972), 687.

3. T S Eliot, The Com plete Poems and Plays(1909-1950) (New York, San Diego and Lon -

don: Har court, Brace & Jovanovich, 1950), 47.

4. The Upanishads, trans. Swami Prabhavananda

and Fred er ick Man ches ter (Hol ly wood:

Vedanta Press, 1975), 182-3.

5. Com plete Poems and Plays, 55.

6. Jibanananda Das, ‘Banalata Sen’ in BanglaKabita Samuchchay, ed. Sukumar Sen (New

Delhi: Sahitya Acad emy, 1991), 412.

7. ‘Thou sand’ and ‘walk ing’ are sim ply Eng lish

trans la tions of the Ben gali words hajaar and

chalitechhi that oc cur in the poem.

8. ‘Bur nt Norton’ in Com plete Poems and Plays,

119.

9. St Mat thew, 16.25.

10. King Lear, 4.4.

11. Louis Fischer, ‘My Week with Gan dhi’ in

Higher Sec ond ary Eng lish Se lec tions (Prose)(Cal cutta: Visva-Bharati Pub lishing De part -

ment on be half of the West Ben gal Coun cil of

Higher Sec ond ary Ed u ca tion, 1984).

12. Ibid., 61.

13. Swami Gambhirananda, Sri Ma Sarada Devi(Cal cutta: Udbodhan Karyalay, 1987), 32.

Trans la tions of all Ben gali ci ta tions are mine.

14. Brahmachari Akshayachaitanya, Sri SriSarada Devi (Cal cutta: Cal cutta Book House,

1396 BE), 108.

15. Sri Ma Sarada Devi, 105.

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She Merely Lived!

By her out ward man ner she (Sri Sarada Devi) was the most ob scure of all the house hold, yet

be neath the veil of sim plic ity which en vel oped her there was a lofty maj esty of bear ing

which caught the heart and bowed it in prayer ful hom age at her feet. The hu man cov er ing was

too thin to hide the ra di ance of di vine con scious ness be neath. She never taught, sel dom ever

coun selled. She merely lived. And who can tell how many lives were cleansed and ex alted by

that holy liv ing?

—Sis ter Devamata

Devotion as Counter-marginality

Some In dian Women Models

K S SUNITA

In dian tra di tion has gen er ally re spectedwom an hood. Even God is re garded as halfman, half woman, ardhanarishwara. Manu

de clares that where women are hon oured,there the gods are pleased; where they are nothon oured, all work be comes fruit less. Women too are hu man be ings and have as much rightto full de vel op ment as men have with re gardto op por tu ni ties for in tel lec tual and spir i tualgrowth. In early times, ed u ca tion for womenwas en cour aged. The pre sid ing de ity of learn -ing also is a god dess, Saraswati.

Dur ing the Ve dic age men and womenen joyed equal op por tu ni ties for ed u ca tionand work. Women were el i gi ble for upa-nayana, or ini ti a tion, and brahmacharya, or thestudy of the knowl edge of Brah man. In laterpe ri ods of our his tory, ed u ca tion of womenwas sadly ne glected and women lapsed intoil lit er acy and su per sti tion.

This ar ti cle, which fo cuses on the im ageof women in de vo tional lit er a ture, is an at -tempt at sur vey ing the po si tion of women inIn dian so ci ety dur ing the last five thou sandyears, and to pres ent a ka lei do scopic pic tureof their dreams and vi sions, hopes and as pi ra -tions, through an il lus tra tive study of the livesand achieve ments of the more out stand ingamong them.

The Concept of Marginality

The po si tion of women in any so ci ety is atrue in dex of its cul tural and spir i tual at tain -ments. And the con cept of de vo tion is oneyard stick through which this can be mea -sured. The twen ti eth cen tury saw much ef fortto sur vey the po si tion, rights and role ofwomen. The pres ent cen tury too is giving

thought and con tin ued ar tic u la tion to the con -cerns of women liv ing in a pre dom i nantly pa -tri ar chal set-up. In the course of this pre oc cu -pa tion con cepts such as mar gin al ity and gen -der pol i tics have as sumed wide cur rency.Over the past two de cades the term mar gin al -ity has re ceived much crit i cal at ten tion fromfem i nist schol ars in var i ous dis ci plines. Acom mon mean ing de fines the term as some -thing that is on the mar gin or close to the limit,be low or be yond which some thing ceases tobe pos si ble or de sir able. It is es sen tially in thislat ter def i ni tion that the term mar gin al ity hasbeen ren dered use ful for cur rent fem i nist crit i -cism.

The ba sic idea be hind an at ti tude such asmar gin al ity is the ex clu sion or pre clu sion ofwomen from ac tive par tic i pa tion in so cial andcul tural ac tiv i ties. For in stance, the pro gres -sive de te ri o ra tion of the sta tus of women in In -dia in the post-Ve dic pe riod grad u ally re -sulted in their be ing de nied even the most ba -sic ed u ca tion; they were ex pressly for bid deneven from read ing the scrip tures.

The trend of mar gin al ity could not, ofcourse, pre vent some ex cep tional womenfrom mak ing a place for them selves in spite ofthe male-dom i nated struc ture in which theywere born. One of the most sig nif i cant coun -ters to this prac tice of mar gin al ity wasthrough de vo tion—de vo tion and com mit -ment as is am ply il lus trated in de vo tional lit -er a ture. Women of ex cep tional de vo tionaltem per a ment down the ages have come to oc -cupy cen tre stage in pa tri ar chal so ci ety andhave con sol i dated their pre car i ous mar ginalsta tus im mensely by the ex er cise of de vo tion.For in stance, nu mer ous mod els of In dian

35 PB - JULY 2005

women who have moved to the ‘cen tre’ byaban don ing their mar ginal space have left asig nif i cant stamp of their per son al ity on thecul ture of our coun try. I would like to men tion a few of these.

Two Epic Figures

First in the list is Savitri. Born a prin cess,Savitri, the be loved daugh ter of the Madraking Ashwapati, was brought up amid lux u -ries and given a lib eral ed u ca tion. She wasasked to choose a hus band wor thy of her, andshe went on a long ex cur sion to the woods and vis ited the her mit ages of the royal sages. Ayoung man named Satyavat cap tured hersoul. The king bowed to the will of his daugh -ter and all ar range ments were made for themar riage. Sage Narada was over whelmed towit ness such de vo tion, chas tity and strengthof will in one born on earth, and gave Savitrihis bless ings, though he knew that she wouldlose her hus band within a short pe riod. Af terthe mar riage Savitri put away all her costlythings and lived like a daugh ter-in-law of aher mit. She was to tally de voted to her fam ilyand at tended to the needs of her old mother- in-law and served her blind fa ther- in-law.Amid her busy daily rou tine she pon dered onthe om i nous words of Narada that she wouldbe a young widow.

Then the fate ful day of Satyavat’s deathdawned. She ac com pa nied her hus band to thewoods. Yama drew out the soul from Satya-vat’s body and pro ceeded to wards the south.Savitri fol lowed Yama. He was sur prised tosee her and to hear her re lent less words of wis -dom and love for her hus band. Yama of ferednu mer ous boons to Savitri in or der to stop herfrom fol low ing him. The last boon she re -quested of Yama was: ‘Grant that I may have,through Satyavat, one hun dred sons, strongand wise, who would per pet u ate our race.’

Yama, hav ing al ready granted a se ries ofboons, agreed to the last one too with out giv -ing a thought to it and asked her to de part. ButSavitri hum bly said: ‘Un less my hus band

Satyavat co mes back to life, your prom ise can -not be ful filled.’ The di vine dis penser of jus -tice, de lighted to be de feated by one who wasso pure, so loyal and so fear less, said: ‘O wor -thy lady! Here is your hus band, freed by me.’In this way, Savitri could free her hus band’ssoul from the lord of death, thus be com ing anem bodi ment of the ideal of de vo tion. She hadabid ing faith in the dharma of the uni verse. Itis through her un flinch ing de vo tion that shemoved to the cen tre of this story from the mar -ginal space that would have been her al lot tedplace as a woman. And her con tri bu tion to thecul ture of our coun try is marked by her help in the es tab lish ment of a struc ture for In dianwomen to em u late.

Draupadi is an other great woman of In -dia, an im por tant char ac ter from the Maha-bharata and em bodi ment of cour age and for -ti tude. In a sense, she is the cen tral fig ure of the great epic and her char ac ter has been de pictedwith won der ful skill. The very cir cum stancesof her birth made it abun dantly clear that shehad come to this world to ful fil a great des tiny.

As a wife, she be came the ideal mis tressof the house hold. She was a woman pos sess -ing cour age and a sense of dig nity. One of themost strik ing events in the Mahabharata isDraupadi’s plea to Lord Krishna for an un -end ing stretch of ma te rial to cover her shamein the pres ence of all the mem bers of the as -sem bly. It is in deed a re mark able in ci dent inde vo tional lit er a ture. The loft i ness of her soul,her un fail ing cour age in the face of di sas ters,her spirit of self-sac ri fice, and above all, hermoral ear nest ness and spir i tual in teg rity haveshed a lus tre on the an cient In dian ideal ofwom an hood.

Some Medieval Hindu Saints

An other model from among the greatwomen of In dia, who aban doned her mar -ginal sta tus and moved to the cen tre, is ayoung girl of eigh teen, Muktabai, the il lus tri -ous and de voted sis ter of Jnandev, the sage ofMaharashtra. The story of her life is bound up

PB - JULY 2005 36


no doubt with that of Jnandev; no sep a rate lifeof hers is known. But in times of con flict shewas the one who guided her saintly brother.Muktabai was all along with her broth ers andre ceived her share of ad mi ra tion and hon our.She was also pos sessed of su per nat u ral pow -ers like her broth ers. She turned into a saintand ini ti ated oth ers into spir i tu al ity throughher deep de vo tion.

A leg end high lights her cen tral ity. It issaid that on Jnandev’s re quest she be came aspir i tual guide to Changdev. An other storygoes like this: Once Jnandev was an noyedwith some peo ple and locked him self up.Muktabai had an ap ti tude for com pos ingverses. When she came to know of this shecom posed abhangs (verses) to re mind Jnandevthat a saint is pure in mind and for gives the of -fences of peo ple. In this way she en light enedher brother. Hers was a very strik ing per son al -ity pos sessed of the many qual i ties that alsomade her broth ers great. It was very un for tu -nate that her life on earth was ex tremely brief.

Some North In dian women made im por -tant con tri bu tions to wards the en rich ment ofthought and lit er a ture. One of them was Lalla(Lal Ded), the po et ess of Kash mir who livedap prox i mately in the four teenth cen tury. Shehas been rightly de scribed as ‘a pre de ces sor ofthe me di eval re form ers of In dia such asRamanand and Kabir’. Lalla adopted a fa -mous Kashmiri Shaiva saint as her spir i tualguide and her self be came an ar dent dev o tee of Shaivism. She was also a yo gi ni, a men di cantas cetic who wan dered about preach ing yogicdoc trines as the best means for ul ti mate ab -sorp tion into the Su preme. She taught that hu -man be ings should have ab so lute de pend ence on the will of the Al mighty. She zeal ously ad -vo cated the wis dom of be ing ‘all things to allmen’. She in sisted on the per for mance of dutyfor duty’s sake. She said:

Whatsoever thing I do of toilBurdens of completion on me lie;

Yet unto another falls the spoilAnd gains he the fruit thereof, not I.

Lalla’s verses in fact form an ex cep tionalstream of In dian de vo tional lit er a ture, in -spired by lofty re li gious thoughts, and in thisre spect she ranks with some other womenthink ers and po et esses of me di eval In dia, asfor in stance Mirabai.

Mirabai was one of the fore most ex po -nents of the bhakti cult and an in spired po et -ess. She sang in praise of Krishna in Braj- bhasha. Krishna was her lord and the sov er -eign De ity for whom she de vel oped the mostin tense love and de vo tion. She mixed freelywith holy men, not de terred in the least by un -mer ited pub lic crit i cism. She had to face thecon se quences of her un or tho dox be hav iour.

Mira in deed oc cu pies a sa cred place inthe his tory of In dian thought and cul ture forher deep and pas sion ate re li gious de vo tion asalso for her po etry, in which her ge nius is re -vealed. Her odes and hymns are rich, sweetand in spir ing be cause they are char ac ter izedby a ten der ness and sim plic ity of feel ing thatare gen u ine out pour ings of a heart com pletely ded i cated to God.

The the is tic move ment that swept overSouth In dia pro duced a large num ber ofwomen saints. Once the saint Vishnuchitta,go ing round his gar den, found an in fant of ra -di ant beauty ly ing on a tulasi bed. He took herhome and brought her up as his daugh ter. Shewas named Kodai and her neigh bours calledher Andal (‘ruler’). She im bibed her fa ther’sde vo tional fer vour and ded i cated her self toRanganatha (Vishnu). In her di vine love forHim she un der went many hard ships of vowsand pen ances for thirty days, and the thirtysongs that she sang dur ing that time—theTiruppavai—are among the most charm ing de -vo tional lyr ics of Tamil lit er a ture.

As art and de vo tional lit er a ture in SouthIn dia at tained full ness and free dom of ex pres -sion, an other un sung model from Karnataka,Honnamma, a shudra woman, be came muchre puted as an au thor of socio-po lit i cal com po -si tions in Kannada. She was a maid ser vant inthe pal ace of the My sore king Chikka Deva -

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Devotion as Counter-marginality 375

raja and a fa vour ite of his queen Devaj-ammanni. The queen ar ranged for Hon -namma’s ed u ca tion un der a well-knownscholar pro fi cient in the Vedas and Vedanta.The teacher was so pleased with the abil ity ofthe pu pil that he called her a ‘god dess ofcharm ing lit er a ture’. This praise so im pressedthe king that he told his queen to get a lit er arypiece writ ten by Honnamma. Ac cord inglyHonnamma wrote an im por tant book calledHadibadeya Dharma, which deals with the du -ties of a chaste woman.

Muslim Women

Some women mod els from Is lam alsomoved to the ‘cen tre’ through de vo tion. RaziaSul tana, the daugh ter of the great Slave kingIltutmish, has the unique dis tinc tion of be ingthe only woman to oc cupy the throne of Delhi.She was well versed in the read ing of theQuran and had a fair knowl edge of sev eralother sci ences and pos sessed all the qual i tiesnec es sary for a ruler. She had ac com pa niedher fa ther on sev eral cam paigns, and car riedon the ad min is tra tion of her vast king domwith skill and wis dom.

Jahan Ara Be gum, daugh ter of Em perorShahjahan, was an other great woman of In diadur ing the Mughal pe riod. Her life wasmostly spent in de voted ser vice to her dis con -so late fa ther and am bi tious broth ers. Her fa -ther’s love for her and her fil ial de vo tion tohim is in deed a re mark able chap ter in Mughalhis tory.

Un der the in flu ence of Is lam, women and their var i ous ac tiv i ties in the man i fold as pectsof na tional life gen er ally came to be as signed aplace in the back ground. The old maxim, ‘Awoman’s place is in her home’, found re -peated and em phatic sup port from Mus limsaints and phi los o phers.

A Modern ExemplarSome mod els from the east ern part of the

coun try have also found a place among thegreat women of In dia. Sarojini Naidu is one ofthem. She was an ar dent, ver sa tile and dy -namic ge nius, and an ideal pol i ti cian. She wasan ex cel lent poet too. In her po etry we find anex qui site mel ody and a fine del i cacy of feel -ing, de vo tion and ex pres sion blended with afresh ness and ex u ber ance of spirit. Af ter com -plet ing her ed u ca tion in Lon don, she re turnedto In dia and mar ried Dr Govindarajulu Naidu break ing the bar ri ers of caste. She grad u allywith drew her self from writ ing po etry and ac -tively par tic i pated in the In dian women’smove ment along with Ma hatma Gandhiji forIn dia’s free dom. She was the first woman tobe come the gov er nor of a prov ince in In dia,namely Uttar Pradesh.

Conclusion

The story of women’s self less de vo tion to their fam i lies, of their no ble deeds of self-sac ri -fice and con tri bu tion to spir i tual wel fare re -mains largely un told in our pre dom i nantlypa tri ar chal ori en ta tion. In spite of such im -ped i ments, some mod els have left their in del i -ble foot prints on the sands of time.

Thus, among the many great women ofIn dia from dif fer ent are nas of life and dif fer -ent pe ri ods of his tory, in tro duced so far in thefore go ing para graphs, some com mon el e -ments may be no ticed, namely, spir i tualstrength, pu rity, hu mil ity, de vo tion, self-con -trol, moral cour age, self less love—qual i tiesthat go to adorn spir i tual life. Through thesees sen tially fem i nine traits, which find theircom plete man i fes ta tion in some sig nif i cantmod els, we can con clude that through de vo -tion the op pres sion of ‘mar gin al ity’ has beencoun ter acted by women. �

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Stri-rajya: The Suvarnagotra coun try [pres ent Kumaon-Garhwal re gion] was ruled by a suc ces sion

of women. The hus band of the queen was king but he did not ad min is ter the gov ern ment. The men at -

tended only to the sup pres sion of re volts and cul ti va tion of the fields. —Yuan Chwang

Steps to Women’s Empowerment

SWAMI SHASHANKANANDA

It is largely held that women all over theworld have been made to suf fer dis crim i -na tion and de pri va tion of var i ous kinds

since the be gin ning of time, that they have allalong been de nied even such ba sic rights as ac -cess to lit er acy and prop erty. This global con -cern has steadily grown through the past fewde cades and has re sulted in ef forts to bringwomen into the main stream of life, mainlythrough socio-eco nomic ac tiv i ties aimed atem pow er ing them and thus re stor ing equal -ity be tween the sexes.

Though the con cept of women’s em pow -er ment, as it is now un der stood, and themove ment to achieve it are fairly re cent West -ern phenomena, In dia has not es caped theirin flu ence. Women’s em pow er ment was oneof the pri mary ob jec tives of the Ninth FiveYear Plan, and the Gov ern ment of In dia evende clared the year 2001 ‘Women’s Em pow er -ment Year’. Backed by the gov ern ment, pol icyplan ners and im ple ment ers are now con cen -trat ing on the task of re mov ing gen der dis par -i ties. The Tenth Five Year Plan re flects thisendeavour in a big way. The chal lenge of mak -ing ed u ca tion and le gal and prop erty rightsac ces si ble to womenis be ing met, andsteps are be ing takento en sure their fi nan -cial se cu rity. Be sidesthese fun da men talrights, res er va tion ofjobs and seats forwomen in Par lia ment, Leg is la tive As sem -blies and gram pan-cha yats have be comethe burn ing is sues ofthe day.

The Indian Woman: Decline in Her StatusIn an cient In dia, how ever, woman was

never an ob ject of pity—ne glected, weak andneed ing help. The pages of our cul tural his -tory are aglow with ide als like the schol arlyGargi and Maitreyi, the chaste Sita and Savitri,the de voted Parvati and that par a gon of moth -ers, Madalasa. Far from be ing treated as a‘com mod ity’, woman en joyed the high est re -spect in so ci ety—that ac corded to a ‘mother’.As a mat ter of fact, she was looked upon as thever i ta ble rep re sen ta tion of Shakti, the sourceof all power, while to day we are re duced totalk ing about em pow er ing her. How strange!Even me di eval In dian his tory is full of sto riesof he roic and learned women, not to speak ofwomen saints.

The de cline of In dian women’s so cial sta -tus be gan with the ar rival of for eign in vad ers.The pur dah sys tem that came into be ing thenwas de vised with the best of in ten tions, that ofkeep ing them from vul gar gaze. But alas, theroad to hell is paved with good in ten tions!Stopped from step ping out of their houses,women had to go with out ed u ca tion—andthat gave birth to dis par ity. Il lit er ate and un -

ed u cated, womengrad u ally came to belooked down uponby men. So great wastheir suf fer ing thatthey be gan to be lieve that they were bornto suf fer. And thingscame to such a sorrypass that when adaugh ter was bornthe par ents grieved!This was the po si tion of women in nine -

39 PB - JULY 2005

Women’s meet

teenth-cen tury In dia.

The Indian Woman: Her Rise

At a time when some so cial re form erswere still think ing of re in tro duc ing ed u ca tionfor women, Sri Ramakrishna dem on stratedthe great ness of women and thus sowed theseeds of women’s em pow er ment. He wor -shipped God as Shakti, ac cepted a woman ashis guru, de vot edly served his mother un tilher last day and wor shipped his own wife asthe Mother God dess. Not only that, he left herbe hind to com plete his mis sion of lib er at inghu man ity from bond age of ev ery kind. Whereelse will we find a better ex am ple of women’sem pow er ment? The re la tion ship that ex istedbe tween Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Deviwas ideal in all re spects. But it also shows thatgen der dis par i ties are well and truly re movedonly when both men and women are ‘ed u -cated’ in the real sense of the word, when bothhave a sound un der stand ing of inter-hu manre la tion ships, and when both strive for spir i -tual unfoldment.

Women’s em pow er ment aims at equalpart ner ship and joint re spon si bil ity, with fam -ily du ties distributed equally be tween manand wife. How ever, for the ex per i ment to besuc cess ful, at least in the In dian con text, onemore vi tal el e ment needs to be kept in fo cus:the en tire ex per i ment should be based on anaware ness of the cul ture and spir i tual val uesof the land. And moth ers be ing the ar chi tectsof their chil dren’s lives, their ed u ca tion has to

be given pri or ity. Women are teach ers as wellas moth ers. As the prov erb goes, ‘If you ed u -cate a man, you ed u cate only one per son; but if you ed u cate a woman, you ed u cate a wholefam ily.’

This was just the con clu sion SwamiVivekananda came to af ter his trav els in theWest. There he saw women ed u cated and free, and he dreamed of bring ing ed u ca tion to thewomen of In dia. But his idea of women’s ed u -ca tion was slightly dif fer ent from the ‘mod -ern’ ap proach that we see to day. Prac ti cal thathe was, In dia’s spir i tual tra di tions formed theba sis of his scheme of ed u ca tion. It was hisfirm be lief that any programme of ed u ca tionthat ig nored na tional ide als was doomed tofail ure. Said he: ‘Ideal char ac ters must al waysbe pre sented be fore the view of the girls to im -bue them with a de vo tion to lofty prin ci ples ofself less ness. The no ble ex am ples of Sita,Savitri, Damayanti, Lilavati, Khana, and Mirashould be brought home to their minds, andthey should be in spired to mould their ownlives in the light of these.’ Ob vi ously,Swamiji’s feet were firmly planted on the cul -tural soil of In dia.

Ramakrishna Mission in Women’s Welfare

Women re ally do not need to be em pow -ered by men. In one of Swami Vivekananda’scon ver sa tions we come across his strongviews on the is sue. He did not think it was pos -si ble for men to solve women’s prob lems.

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Education

Capacity-building course

Their duty lay in pro vid ing ed u ca tion and op -por tu nity to women, and once that was donewomen would au to mat i cally be come ca pa bleof look ing af ter them selves. This has been theRamakrishna Mis sion’s ba sic at ti tude towomen’s wel fare and the phi los o phy un der -ly ing all its ac tiv i ties in this sphere. Let us nowlook at the work done by Ramakrishna Mis -sion Ashrama, Morabadi, Ranchi, one of theMis sion’s model in sti tu tions, which has, oflate, been giv ing more at ten tion to gen der sen -si ti za tion in or der to fight ru ral pov erty.

The cen tre was started in 1927 and for thefirst four de cades of its ex is tence con fined it -self to some ba sic pub lic-wel fare work on ahum ble scale. But se vere spells of drought inthe 1960s gal va nized its monks, who, not re -main ing con tented with re lief work, en gagedthem selves in se ri ous at tempts at evolv ing alast ing so lu tion to the prob lem. It be came clear to them that un less the re source-poor farm ersof the area were em pow ered with need-basedtech nol ogy sup ported by group ac tion, theywould never be able to coun ter sim i lar ad -verse con di tions. It was by way of ful fill ingthis re quire ment that Divyayan (‘the di vineway’), an in te grated ru ral de vel op ment in sti -tute, was es tab lished in 1969. In this story, weshall see how Divyayan’s in te grated ap proach has been cen tral to its suc cess in se cur ing eco -nomic se cu rity and self-re spect for the weakersec tions of so ci ety, how the for ma tion of itswomen’s self-help groups, with their knowl -edge, ef fort and skills, have been ba sic to

strength en ing the wider com mu nity.

Education among Women

In the vil lages the monks ob served that alarge num ber of chil dren, es pe cially girls,were com pelled by cir cum stances to re main at home to help their par ents, ei ther with do mes -tic chores or out in the fields. In or der that such chil dren may avail them selves of ba sic ed u ca -tion, the Ashrama started a chain of nightschools and nu tri tion cen ters with the help ofex-train ees of Divyayan. On com ple tion oftheir course at the night school the girls wereen cour aged to join reg u lar schools. To day thecen tre runs 70 such ru ral night schools.

The year 2000 brought gov ern ment rec -og ni tion. The Na tional In sti tute of OpenSchooling accred ited the Ashrama for its work in pro vid ing Open Ba sic Ed u ca tion (classes 1 to8), Ac a demic Ed u ca tion (sec ond ary and se niorsec ond ary lev els) and Vo ca tional Ed u ca tion(sec ond ary and higher sec ond ary lev els). Bythis time the cen tre was al ready run ning study cen tres and con duct ing ex am i na tions for stu -dents of classes 1 to 8 in the can di dates’ ownvil lages. Till date, 333 stu dents have bene fitedfrom these schools, with 500 more due to ap -pear for the class 8 ex am i na tion this year.Num bers aside, it is the pen e tra tion of theAshrama’s ed u ca tional programmes that isnote wor thy. A six-year-old girl who wasobliged to be with her jailed mother took the

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Steps to Women’s Empowerment 379

SHG formation

Group discussion

class 3 ex am i na tion in the jail it self—andpassed!—thanks to the programme’s com mit -ment.

The Sarvashiksha Abhiyan (‘mass ed u ca -tion drive’) is an other im por tant pro ject. TheAshrama now has 340 Sarvashiksha cen tresspread over three blocks of Ranchi dis trict. Itis their aim to en sure that no girl be tween ages6 and 14 re mains il lit er ate.

Capacity Building for Women

The Ashrama had launched its ru ral de -vel op ment programmes at a time when ba sicne ces si ties of life such as food, shel ter andhealth care, not to speak of ed u ca tion, weredif fi cult of ac cess to peo ple of the sur round ing ar eas. The con di tion of women was ap pall ing,

as they were quite ne glected. Ideas like pro -vid ing women op por tu ni ties for skill trans for -ma tion, and such other ser vices— in dispensiblene ces si ties in the de vel op ment pro cess of acom mu nity—were still un dreamt of. Thoughthe cen tre saw that the qual ity of life of thewom en folk needed to be im proved on a pri or -ity ba sis, it was dif fi cult to ad dress the prob -lem forth with. Since it had adopted an ag ri cul -ture-ori ented de vel op ment ap proach, em pha -sis was placed on disseminating tech nol ogymostly among the men folk. How ever, it soonmade up for lost time.

Some time in 1998, I vis ited Obar vil lageto have an in ter ac tion with the farm ers. That

day a few young women met me and ex -pressed their griev ances. Why were all the ac -tiv i ties in the vil lages be ing done only formen? Women wanted some thing to be donefor them too—so that they too could do some -thing for the com mu nity in turn! Im pressed by their en thu si asm and ea ger ness, I agreed to do some thing to mo bi lize the women throughfor ma tion of self-help groups. In course oftime, ar range ments were also made to trainwom en folk in bee-keep ing, in cense-stick mak -ing, towel weav ing, tai lor ing, mush room cul -ti va tion, poul try-farm ing and flori cul ture.

Self-Help Groups (SHG)

In 2001, the Swashakti Pro ject, as sisted by the In ter na tional Fund for Ag ri cul tural De vel -op ment (IFAD) and the World Bank through

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Incense-stick rolling

Bee-keeping

Soap making

the Jharkhand Women’s De vel op ment So ci -ety and later through the Pro ject for For ma -tion of Self-Help Groups as sisted by the Coun -cil for Ad vance ment of Peo ple's Ac tion in Ru -ral Tech nol ogy (CAPART), was launched. It was com mit ted to em pow er ing women in the areaadopted by the Ashrama. SHGs were formedto strengthen en tre pre neur ial skills amongmar ginalized women and em power them inor der to sus tain group ven tures for mi cro en -ter prises. The idea was to even tu ally im provetheir eco nomic and so cial sta tus.

Un der this plan, like-minded women liv -ing be low the pov erty line come to gether todis cuss their com mon prob lems and try tosolve them by form ing an SHG. De spite theirlow-in come/low-sav ing ca pac ity, they makevol un tary con tri bu tions to a com mon fund ona reg u lar ba sis. This has en abled them to freethem selves from de pend ence on and ex ploi ta -tion by pri vate fi nance agen cies; for them, lifein per pet ual debt is over. Not only that, thesegroups now use their pooled re sources tomake small in ter est-bear ing loans to theirmem bers to meet their emer gent needs, or toother in come-gen er at ing programmes. Link -ages are also set up with banks to give loans toSHGs in cer tain mul ti ples at mar ket in ter estrates.

All this de mands a good deal of train ing(called ‘ca pac ity build ing’) for mem bers. Be -tween Jan u ary and Sep tem ber 2002, 691 mem -bers in 24 batches were trained by theAshrama in lead er ship, con duct of group pro -

ceed ings, panchayati raj, re cord-keep ing andbook keep ing. The num ber of these SHGs hasnow reached 285.

The Impact of SHGs

More than help ing de velop mi cro-sav -ing, mi cro-credit and mi cro-en ter prise hab its,the SHG meth od ol ogy has proved to be a ho lis -tic ap proach. Its suc cess has brought about tre -men dous change in women’s out look atgrass-roots level. Af ter un der go ing theabove-de scribed train ing in ca pac ity build ing, their aware ness of so cial is sues has in creased,they have grown in self-con fi dence and de ci -sion-mak ing abil ity, and they are also con -scious of their so cial re spon si bil i ties. In justfive years these women, mostly tribals, haveout grown their ear lier at ti tudes. They are now bold enough to speak for them selves and toplace their right ful de mands be fore the con -cerned gov ern ment of fi cials. They are con -scious of their strength and dig nity. In short,they are now a voice to reckon with.

Here is the proof. In a re cent in ter ac tivemeet ing, an SHG mem ber re vealed: ‘Be forejoin ing the group we used to feel very lonelyand dis tressed, but now we are many andunited. We can rely on the group in times ofemo tional or fi nan cial cri ses. It steps in like afam ily to help us out. My hus band used tobeat me af ter con sum ing al co hol. One day Itold him I would dis close it to our group. He

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Pisciculture

Poultry farming

has given up drink ing since then and be haveswell with me now. We have gained self-dig -nity within the fam ily as well as in so ci ety.’

Promotion of Self-reliance

Af ter their course in ca pac ity build ing,SHG mem bers are given in come-gen er a tiontrain ing in var i ous skills. Dif fer ent SHGs areen gaged in dif fer ent ac tiv i ties. As of now, 70groups are en gaged in di verse self-re li ancepro jects like in cense-stick roll ing (5), pisci-culture (7), mush room cul ti va tion (11), cat tlebreed ing (14), poul try and dairy farm ing (8),vermi-com post mak ing (8), soap mak ing (3),weav ing (3), tai lor ing (3), seed mul ti pli ca tion(2) and food pro cess ing (6).

The Ashrama has plans for teach ingsome more skills in the near fu ture. These in -clude cane-work, health work, in te grated pestman age ment, rice mill ing, spice grind ing, lacpro duc tion and silk pro duc tion.

Achievements/Highlights

· In cense-stick roll ing: A 10-mem ber SHG

that be gan as a small pro duc tion unit over -came mar ket ing prob lems by man u fac tur ingac cord ing to de mand and has it self be come atrain ing cen tre now.

· Pisciculture: Divyayan has con structedover 20 tanks in its adopted vil lages in or der to in tro duce fish breed ing based on sci en tif i callyproven tech niques. The ven ture has been soprob lem-free and lu cra tive that four SHGs

have even taken tanks on lease from the gov -ern ment.

· Poul try farm ing: What be gan on an in -di vid ual ba sis has now grown into a com monphe nom e non. Four SHGs, each mem ber of thegroups own ing 10 birds of the spe cialDivyayan Red breed, have earned a net profitof Rs 20,295.

· Food pro cess ing: An abun dance of fruits and veg e ta bles in Jharkhand en cour agesmem bers of Mahila Swayam Sahayata Samuhto re ceive train ing in hor ti cul tural food pro -cess ing. They have now started pro duc ing ava ri ety of pick les, sauces and jel lies.

· Weaving: On pass ing a six-week in ten -sive course at Divyayan, 15 women linked upwith De vel op ment of Women and Children in Ru ral Areas (DWCRA) and ob tained Rs 25,000as run ning cap i tal for open ing a weav ing cen -tre. Dis trict Ru ral De vel op ment Agency (DRDA),Ranchi, sanc tioned Rs 3,77,400 to wards in stal -la tion of looms and a workshed.

· Non-con ven tional-en ergy ap pli ance re -pair ing: A re cent train ing programme for re -pair ing so lar lan terns, dri ers and cook ersdrew en thu si as tic re sponse.

SHGs in Health Care

The ac tiv i ties of the SHGs are not re -stricted to the eco nomic as pect of wel fare.Reg u lar health camps are or ga nized ex clu sively for women where treat ment and med i cines

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Food processing

Solar-lantern repairing

are given free of charge. The Ashrama has alsoformed vil lage health com mit tees and trainedhealth work ers to con duct healthprogrammes for tu ber cu lo sis, ma laria andlep rosy con trol. A six-month accupressurecourse was or ga nized at Divyayan, as a re -sult of which 146 girls re ceived train ing inthis sci ence. Vil lage women are quite taken with this novel, low-cost ther apy.

The Basis of Empowerment

Real em pow er ment of women, how -ever, lies in help ing them un fold the spir i -tual as pect of their per son al ity, build uptheir char ac ter and man i fest their pu rityand moth er hood. It is these that make upthe char ac ter of the ideal In dian woman;earn ing ca pac ity and pub lic sta tus are sec -ond ary. All women are parts of the same in fi -nite di vine Power, and hence di vine. Fully re -

al iz ing the im por tance and ur gency of the up -lift of women, if we are to save our cul tural tra -di tions and spir i tual val ues and coun ter theneg a tive trends that are now af fect ing ourbody pol i tic, Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama,Morabadi, Ranchi, has been putt ing in muchef fort to promote spir i tual val ues in ru ralwomen’s lives. It con ducts reg u lar con ven -tions for them to make them aware of theirtrue power. SHGs too or ga nize cul tural andvalue-ori en ta tion programmes and othermeet ings on their own for their all-round de -vel op ment. Re cently, one such con fer ence was at tended by 1700 mem bers.

Em pow er ment is com plete only when agiven com mu nity takes full con trol of its own

de vel op ment and the im ple ment ing agency,much like a cat a lytic agent, re mains in theback ground af ter ini ti at ing the pro cess ofchange. This is ex actly what the Ashramadoes: once the ma chin ery it has set up is inwork ing or der, it hands over the man age mentof af fairs to the grass-root or ga ni za tion or SHG,and it self re mains in the back ground to pro -vide mo ti va tion and guid ance from time totime.

As Swami Viveka nanda said, ‘Our dutyis to put the chem i cals to gether, the crystal -lisation will come through God's laws. Let usput ideas into their heads, and they will do therest.’ �

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Educational tour

Health meet

Convention

The Prose Style of Swami Vivekananda

PROF. U S RUKHAIYAR

(Continued from the previous issue)

Antithesis and Balance

Vivekananda has made fine use of an tith -e sis and bal ance: ‘When I eat food, I doit con sciously; when I as sim i late it, I do

it un con sciously’;6 ‘Na ture is try ing all around to sup press us, and the soul wants to ex press it -self’ (4.240); ‘The lower the or gan ism, thegreater is its plea sure in the senses. … Thehigher the or gan ism, the lesser is the plea sureof the senses’ (4.242); ‘It is better to die seek inga God than as a dog seek ing only car rion’(7.45); ‘Gifts of po lit i cal knowl edge can bemade with the blast of trum pets and themarch of co horts. Gifts of sec u lar knowl edgeand so cial knowl edge can be made with fireand sword. But spir i tual knowl edge can onlybe given in si lence like the dew that falls un -seen and un heard, yet bring ing into bloommasses of roses’ (3.222). In the last pas sage,mark the harsh sounds that sug gest harsh ac -tion. It is to be noted that herein the con trast insense has been sug gested through con trast ofsounds.

Paradox

We have ear lier taken note of Viveka -nanda’s use of the par a dox. Some more ap pro -pri ate ex am ples may be cited: ‘To be re li gious,you have first to throw books over board’(4.34). And again, in a sim i lar vein: ‘But, in myopin ion books have pro duced more evil thangood. They are ac count able for many mis chie -vous doc trines’ (4.44).

Fol lowers of all re li gions say that God isone. But the books of dif fer ent re li gions dif ferin de tails. Fol lowers mis take the de tails for the es sence and for get the sub stance of re li gion. Ithas rightly been said that more blood has beenshed on ac count of dif fer ences be tween re li -

gions than any thing else. Per haps it is this thatled Swift to ob serve: ‘We Chris tians have justenough re li gion to hate, but not enough tomake us love, one an other.’7

Vivekananda says: ‘Lib er a tion means en -tire freedom—freedom from the bond age ofgood, as well as from the bond age of evil. Agolden chain is as much a chain as an ironone’;8 ‘The gods did not cre ate man af ter theirtype, but man cre ated gods’ (2.325); ‘Goodand evil have an equal share in mould ingchar ac ter, and in some in stances mis ery is agreater teacher than hap pi ness’ (1.27). There is no need to men tion that these par a doxes arenot only witty but also con tain great truths.

Indignation, Sarcasm, Irony

Vivekananda has also made use, thoughspar ingly, of in dig na tion, sar casm and irony.For in dig na tion, we may look at the fol low ing: ‘So long as the mil lions live in hun ger and ig -no rance, I hold ev ery man a trai tor who, hav -ing been ed u cated at their ex pense, pays notthe least heed to them’(5.58); ‘They ask us forbread, but we give them stones. It is an in sultto a starv ing peo ple to of fer them re li gion; it isan in sult to a starv ing man to teach him meta -phys ics’ (1.20). And fur ther: ‘If one of ourcoun try men stands up and tries to be comegreat, we all try to hold him down, but if a for -eigner co mes and tries to kick us, it is all right’(3.300). Note the sar casm in the fol low ing: ‘Be -fore we can crawl half a mile, we want to crossthe ocean like Ha nu man!’ (3.301).

For irony we may look at the fol low ing:‘Well has it been said that the masses ad mirethe lion that kills a thou sand lambs, never for a mo ment think ing that it is death to the lambs’(2.65). Stronger is the irony in the fol low ing

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pas sage: ‘And in its (spir i tu al ity’s) place willreign the du al ity of lust and lux ury as the male and fe male de i ties, with money as its priest,fraud, force, and com pe ti tion its cer e mo nies,and the hu man soul its sac ri fice’ (4.348). HereVivekananda has used the mock-epic de viceby pair ing the triv ial with the sub lime, a de -vice com mon in Dryden and Pope. Here sat irecon tains a strong cau tion. It is free from thecon tempt of Dryden, the ha tred of Pope, thedis gust of Swift or the dev as ta tion of Vol taireand Rab e lais. That may be be cause Viveka -nanda’s be lief in the es sen tial di vin ity of manfor bids him to rid i cule man out right; Viveka -nanda is not an ironist or sat i rist but rather are li gious hu man ist.

Interrogation

Vivekananda makes fre quent use of in -ter ro ga tion. This helps him in arous ing the cu -ri os ity of the reader as also in in vit ing his par -tic i pa tion in the de lib er a tions. ‘By what power is this Akasha man u fac tured into this uni -verse? By the power of Prana’ (1.147). It is to be noted that the words akasha and prana havebeen left un trans lated into Eng lish, be causenei ther ‘sky’ nor ‘life’ can cover the rich con no -ta tion of these two San skrit words. This shows his aware ness of the nu ances of lan guage.‘Can re li gion re ally ac com plish any thing? Itcan. … Take re li gion from hu man so ci ety andwhat will re main? Noth ing but a for est ofbrutes’ (3.4); ‘Is man a tiny boat? … Is there nohope? Is there no es cape?’(1.10); ‘What is thefoun da tion of so ci ety? Mo ral ity, eth ics, laws.… What is mar riage but the re nun ci a tion ofun chas tity? The sav age does not marry. Manmar ries be cause he re nounces’ (4.243). Suchin ter ro ga tions serve sev eral pur poses: first,they make the tone in for mal; sec ond, theyarouse the cu ri os ity of the reader; third, theyadd force to the state ment.

Repetition

Vivekananda uses rep e ti tion to stress hispoint. In his fa mous Chi cago speech of 11 Sep -

tem ber 1893 he re peats ‘I thank you’ threetimes in a para graph of seven lines. And he be -gins the next para graph with ‘My thanks’. Inthat para graph he says ‘I am proud to be long’three times and ‘I am proud to tell you’ once.

Look at the force of all and ex tinct in thefol low ing pas sage: ‘Shall In dia die? Then from the world all spir i tu al ity will be ex tinct, allmoral per fec tion will be ex tinct, all sweet- souled sym pa thy for re li gion will be ex tinct, allideality will be ex tinct’ (4.348). It gives an im -pres sion of waves ris ing upon waves.

Verbs

Vivekananda of ten uses verbs to lit er allysug gest ac tion. ‘They have filled the earth withvi o lence, drenched it of ten and of ten with hu -man blood, de stroyed civili sa tion and sentwhole na tions to de spair’ (1.4). All four fi niteverbs used above are stressed. They sug gestthe in ten sity of the acts. ‘Work in ces santly, butdo not do slave’s work. Do you not see how ev -ery body works? … Work through free dom!Work through love!’ (1.57). Here all the verbsare in the im per a tive and stressed. The rep e ti -tion of the word work sug gests per sua sion orex hor ta tion. ‘Fight and rea son and ar gue; andwhen you have es tab lished it in your mindthat this and this alone can be the truth andnoth ing else, do not ar gue any more; close yourmouth’ (3.27). These lines com bine a bib li calsim plic ity with a per sua sive tone. The im per a -tive mood has been very ef fec tively used tocom mu ni cate pow er ful ideas.

Alliteration

Vivekananda is also alive to the need forsweet ness in lan guage. This he cre ates by sev -eral means, chief among them be ing al lit er a -tion and as so nance. But he also uses harshsounds, when called for, to sug gest harsh nessof ac tion. For the al lit er a tion of k we may notethe fol low ing: ‘calm the qualms of con science’(1.292); of l: ‘lust and lux ury’ (4.348); of s:‘sweet-souled sym pa thy’ (4.348); and of w:‘weep and wail’ (2.357).

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The Prose Style of Swami Vivekananda 385

It is to be noted that Vivekananda has anaware ness of eu phony and ca coph ony too.Per haps that is why he uses soft sounds whenhe has to sug gest a good thing and harshsounds when he has to sug gest evil. Sincesym pa thy is a vir tue he uses the soft s, butwhen he has to sug gest ug li ness he uses aharsh sound in stead. For ex am ple: ‘dasheddown’ (1.10) in the pas sage al ready cited; ‘Sec -tar i an ism, big otry, and its hor ri ble de scen -dant, fa nat i cism’ (1.4), where most of thewords are poly syl labic and jar ring; ‘Gifts ofpo lit i cal knowl edge can be made with the blastof trum pets and the march of co horts’ (3.222),where the sounds are al most on o mato poeic;‘One sin gle soul pos sessed of these vir tues cande stroy the dark de signs of mil lions of hyp o -crites and brutes’ (5.127), where the vir tu oussin gle soul has the s sound whereas dark de -signs, hyp o crites and brutes show their harshchar ac ter by their very sounds.

Assonance

As so nance re fers to the sim i lar ity ofvowel sounds, and Vivekananda’s prose usesit to gen er ate po etic ef fect. For the as so nanceof the e and ei sounds we may look at the fol -low ing pas sage: ‘The pres ent con ven tion,which is one of the most au gust as sem bliesever held, is in it self a vin di ca tion, a dec la ra-tion’ (1.4). For the as so nance of the ou and osounds: ‘The soul will go on evolv ing’ (1.10).For the as so nance of a:i ai and ju sounds: ‘Whywaste valu able time in vain ar gu ments?’ (3.27).This line also con tains the al lit er a tion of w andv sounds. For the as so nance of i sound:‘ideality will be ex tinct’ (4.348). The last threewords are con tig u ous and this cre ates agreater de gree of har mony.

But the mat ter does not end there. It isgen er ally be lieved that short vow els like i andu sug gest near ness and long vow els like a: ande:, dis tance. A good crafts man uses them ac -cord ingly. When Keats wants to say that thesong of the night in gale leads the lis tener to a(nat u rally dis tant) fairy land, he uses long

vow els to say it: ‘Charm’d magic case ments,open ing on the foam of per il ous seas, in faerylands for lorn.’ Sim i larly, de la Mare opens hispoem ‘Ara bia’ as fol lows: ‘Far are the shades of Ara bia.’

Vivekananda is also alive to this ar ti fice.When he ex horts the youth to march ahead, heuses long vow els, and to wards the end lon gerones, that too con tig u ously, a fea ture that sug -gests march ing a long dis tance: ‘Have faith inyour selves, great con vic tions are the moth ersof great deeds. On ward for ever! Sym pa thy for the poor, the down trod den, even unto death—this is our motto. On ward, brave lads!’(5.30).

Let us look at the fol low ing pas sage: ‘InSri Ramakrishna there has been an as sem -blage of ideas deeper than the sea and vasterthan the skies’ (7.411). It shows a master strokeof crafts man ship. ‘Deeper than the sea’ sug -gests a ver ti cal move ment and so the sound i:suits it. Shel ley uses this sound in the thirdverse of his ‘West Wind’: ‘Thou/For whosepath the At lan tic’s level pow ers/Cleave them -selves into chasms.’ The west wind is to go deepinto the ocean and so there is cleave with thelong vowel i: And when it goes deep it will cre -ate a chasm, which has the long a:. Sim i larly,‘vaster than the skies’ in the given pas sage, bythe use of the long a:, sug gests hor i zon tal ex -pan sion or ex ten sion.

Such fe lic i tous use of sound ef fects sug -gests that Vivekananda had a very high de -gree of aware ness of sound—alliteration, as -so nance, eu phony, ca coph ony, long and shortvow els, and so forth—as also of how to usethem ap pro pri ately.

Rhythm, Harmony, Cadence

One of the most re mark able qual i ties ofVivekananda’s prose style is its fine rhythm,ca dence and har mony. Northrop Frye hasclas si fied rhythm into prose rhythm, po eticrhythm and as so cia tive rhythm. The fact isthat none of these three is ever found in its pu -rity. Each gets mixed with an other and one or


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the other pre dom i nates at one time or an other. Vivekananda gen er ally uses as so cia tiverhythm, which some times turns into po eticrhythm and some times into prose rhythm. As -so cia tive rhythm is the com mon con ver sa -tional rhythm. The il lus tra tion of rhythm, ca -dence and har mony calls for a long ish ci ta tion. The fa mous Chi cago ad dress il lus trates sev -eral of the afore said fea tures:

Is man a “tiny boat in a “tem pest, ‘raised onemo ment on the “foamy crest of a ‘bil low anddashed down into a ‘yawn ing ‘chasm the next,roll ing ‘to and ‘fro at the ‘mercy of ‘good and‘bad ac tions—a “pow er less, “help less wreck inan “ever-rag ing, “ever-rush ing, “un com pro -mis ing ‘cur rent of ‘cause and ‘ef fect; a “lit tlemoth ‘placed un der the “wheel of cau“sationwhich ‘rolls on “crush ing ev ery thing in its wayand “waits not for the “widow’s tears or the or -phan’s cry? The ‘heart sinks at the idea, “yet‘this is the law of Na ture. ‘Is there no ‘hope? ‘Isthere “no ‘es cape?—‘was the ‘cry that ‘went upfrom the “bot tom of the ‘heart of ‘de spair. It‘reached the “throne of ‘mercy, and “words of‘hope and conso’lation ‘came down andins’pired a ‘Ve dic sage, and he “stood up be forethe world and in ‘trum pet voice pro claimed the‘glad ‘tid ings: “Hear, ye ‘chil dren of im“mor talbliss! even “ye that re”side in ‘higher s’pheres! Ihave ‘found the ‘An cient One who is be“yond‘all ‘dark ness, ‘all de”lusion: know ing Hima“lone you shall be ‘saved from death “overa“gain (1.10).

The first thing that strikes us here is thatthe move ment of the lines looks like that ofwaves on the ocean go ing up and down, nowmov ing this side, now that, mix ing with otherwaves, and tak ing new shapes. This has ad di -tional sig nif i cance here since the con text is also of a boat sail ing in the sea. It may well be saidto be an ex am ple of the fu sion of feel ing andform, one of the es sen tials of good cre ative art.The al lo ca tion of stress, as in di cated by themark ings, dif fers from sen tence to sen tence. Itdoes not have the reg u lar ity or mo not ony ofreg u lar ac cent, metre or rhyme but yet it has anat u ral rhythm. In the very first sen tence, thefirst stress is on the fourth syl la ble, ti, and the

sec ond on the ninth syl la ble, tem, that is, at asep a ra tion of five syl la bles. Then it is on raised,which co mes af ter a gap of only oneunaccented syl la ble. Next there is an al ter ation of sin gle stress and dou ble stress, the more im -por tant words hav ing dou ble stress as themark ings in the pas sage sug gest. But the twocon tig u ous words dashed down both have dou -ble stress. This en hances the ef fect of dash ing,d be ing a hard sound. Fur ther, in the stress pat -tern, tiny cor re sponds with tem pest. Their sizeand sound also sug gest the dif fer ence in theirna ture and power. An other sub tle ef fect to benoted in the first few lines is the as so nance of eand ei in tem pest, raised, mo ment and crest, ofou in boat, mo ment, foamy and bil low, and of i:and i in foamy and bil low.

Thus, sev eral of the con tig u ous syl la blesare stressed, some of them strongly and withonly a lit tle gap of un stressed words. For ex -am ple, ‘pow er less, help less wreck in anever-rag ing, ever-rush ing’ pro duces a vi sualim pact of waves. It is an ex am ple ofphanopoeia (vi sual ef fect). Thus un com pro mis -ing densifies the ever-rag ing and ever-rush ingcur rent of cause and ef fect. The ad di tion ofhelp less densifies pow er less. Un com pro mis ing isan ex am ple of per son i fi ca tion and car ries aspir i tual over tone. All three words end with‘-ing’. This cre ates melopoeia (au di tory ef -fect). James Suther land, in his book On Eng lishProse, says: ‘Prose, it may be said, should beheard and not seen.’ Somerset Maugham also,in his book The Summing Up, says: ‘Wordshave weight, sound and ap pear ance; it is onlyby con sid er ing these that you can write a sen -tence that is good to look at and good to lis tento.’ Thus, these two to gether stim u latelogopoeia (in tel lec tual or emo tional as so ci a -tions that have re mained in the re ceiver’s con -scious ness in re la tion to the ac tual words orgroup of words em ployed).

We may look at the ca dence—the riseand fall of the fol low ing units in flected at ‘rolls on’ and ‘waits not’: ‘… which rolls on crush ing ev ery thing in its way and waits not for the


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widow’s tears or the or phan’s cry’. All threeef fects are there in just one sen tence. The sen -tence is long but not clumsy: it does not havetoo many clauses, ei ther co or di nate or sub or -di nate.

It may not be out of place here to say thatAurobindo’s prose, though it has sev eral vir -tues, of ten lacks the ease and flow ofVivekananda’s. Let us take a rep re sen ta tivepas sage from Aurobindo: ‘In the right viewboth of life and of Yoga all life is ei ther con -sciously or sub con sciously a Yoga. For wemean by this term a me thod i cal ef fort to wardsself-per fec tion by the ex pres sion of the po ten -ti al i ties la tent in the be ing and a un ion of thehu man in di vid ual with the uni ver sal andtran scen dent Ex is tence we see par tially ex -pressed in man and in the Cosmos.’9 The clut -tered clauses in the sec ond sen tence of the pas -sage make it a bit clumsy.

To re vert to the pas sage we have beendis cuss ing, we mark that the first long sen -tence is fol lowed by a very short one: ‘Theheart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Na -ture.’ This sug gests the feel ing of the heart be -ing ar rested by the law of na ture. The length of the sen tences mimic the fall of a wave and itsbreak ing up into smaller parts. Next, there is aris ing move ment, and that in short bursts: ‘Isthere no hope? Is there no es cape?’ Soon the in -ter rog a tive turns into the as ser tive. Doubt israised so that hope may soothe it, and so itdoes.

Vivekananda pre fers to give his sen -tences mono syl labic end ings, in gen eral. Butmono syl la bles need to be han dled with care.Their merit lies in im part ing em pha sis, buttheir ex ces sive use makes for jerky prose, as itof ten does in Carlyle. As has rightly been said,‘The mono syl la ble is one of the char ac ter is ticsof Eng lish as com pared with the clas si cal lan -guages, Greek and Latin, and is used chieflyfor em pha sis. … Full ness of sound is also valu -able be cause mono syl la bles not only ar rest at -ten tion by em pha sis but also re tard the move -ment of the sen tence, thus caus ing the at ten -

tion of the reader to lin ger over them.’10 Itseems Vivekananda was aware of this. It canbe seen even in the pas sages quoted in this ar -ti cle that he suc ceeds in lay ing em pha sis bygiv ing mono syl labic end ings to his sen tences.The en tire cor pus of his prose shows a pref er -ence for mono syl la bles. But, when called for,Vivekananda makes gen er ous use of poly syl -labic end ings too. This vari a tion makes for abetter rhythm. Saintsbury rightly says that‘va ri ety’ is the prin ci ple of prose rhythm.11

Prof. Elton also says that in good prose ‘ca -dences’ do not ap pear as a fixed sys tem (as dorhymes in po etry) be cause this would in duceex pec tancy and tend to make the com po si tionmet ri cal.12 Though Vivekananda had no for -mal train ing in these sub tle ties of art, yet hisge nius and in tu ition seems to have known itmore thor oughly than so many pro fessedprac ti tio ners of this art.

Thus we find sound match ing sense,rhyth mic rise and flow, con trolled ca dence,and har mony cre ated by var i ous lin guis tic de -vices, all har mo nized into an or ganic whole.Romain Rolland rightly com pares Vivekanan-da’s prose style to a sym phony, a mu si calcom po si tion of a high or der. There are sev eralsuch pas sages in Vivekananda’s speeches andwrit ings which show a fine rise and fall ofrhythm, har mony and ca dence. We may lookat one more such pas sage:

“Thou “blessed ‘land of the ‘Aryas, thou wast“never de“graded. ‘Scep tres have been “bro ken and “thrown away, the “ball of “power has“passed from ‘hand to ‘hand, but in ‘In dia,“courts and “kings al ways ‘touched only a ‘few; the “vast mass of the ‘peo ple, from the ‘high estto the ‘low est, has been ‘left to pur sue its ‘ownin“evitable course, the ‘cur rent of ‘na tional life‘flow ing at times ‘slow and ‘half-con scious, atoth ers, “strong and a“wak ened. I “stand in‘awe be fore the “un’broken pro’cession of“scores of ‘shin ing ‘cen tu ries, with here and‘there a “dim link in the “chain, only to ‘flare upwith “added ‘bril liance in the ‘next, and “thereshe is ‘walk ing with her own ma’jestic‘steps—my “moth er land—to ‘ful“fil her “glo ri -ous des’tiny, which “no ‘power on earth or in


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‘heaven can “check—the “re gen er a tion of ‘manthe “brute into ‘man the “God.

13

The mark ing of stress in the above- quoted pas sage shows the rise and fall of ca -dence—the al ter na tion of love and re solve,pride and shame, and so on. The last sen tencehas po etic im ag ery and rhythm that ends in acre scendo. A de tailed anal y sis of the pas sagewill re veal many more beau ties of style.

Conclusion

So we see that Vivekananda’s style has al -most all the qual i ties of good prose. It alsoshows how ex pos i tory prose is of ten en richedby per sua sive and emo tive prose with out im -pair ing its pri mary vir tue, which is clar ity. Ifwe com pare his style with that of other greatmas ters, we may say that he has com bined theease and grace of Dryden with the rac i ness ofHazlitt. He does not have the or nate ness of Pa -ter or Ruskin, but he has the sim plic ity ofHem ing way and the force, col our and mu sicof Law rence. Among the In dian mas ters ofEng lish prose, we may say that he has the nat -u ral flair of Nehru and the mu sic of Tagore.His re li gious and philo soph i cal pre oc cu pa -tions in vite com par i son with Aurobindo. Butas shown ear lier, Aurobindo’s prose of ten be -comes heavy or clumsy de spite its other vir -tues. What a happy co in ci dence it is that thisgreat cham pion of the har mony of re li gionshas writ ten in a prose which is it self one of the

fin est ex am ples of har mony! Here thoughtand lan guage match each other. His prosewell il lus trates the dic tum: ‘The style is theman’.

It will not be an ex ag ger a tion to say thatVivekananda’s prose style has few par al lels.We find therein a blend of so many el e mentsthat it is dif fi cult to re duce it to any neat or me -chan i cal clas si fi ca tion. Vivekananda’s prosestyle de serves to be a sub ject of de tailed studyor full-length re search. It is hoped that crit icsand schol ars will wake up to this no ble taskand bring to light the myr iad shades of the lit -er ary style of this great mas ter. At pres ent, itstill is ‘a gift un opened’. �

References

6. The Com plete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9

vols. (Cal cutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989; 9,

1997), 1.179.

7. Jon a than Swift, Thoughts on Var i ous Sub jects.8. CW, 1.55.

9. Sri Aurobindo, The Syn the sis of Yoga(Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashrama, 1971), 2.

10. Norton R Tem pest, The Rhythm of Eng lish Prose(Cam bridge: Cam bridge Uni ver sity Press,

1930), 38-9.

11. George Saintsbury, His tory of Eng lish ProseRhythm (Lon don, 1912).

12. Ol i ver Elton, ‘Eng lish Prose Num bers’ in ASheaf of Pa pers (Liv er pool, 1922).

13. CW, 4.314.


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Style

Noth ing is so dif fi cult as the ap par ent ease of a clear and flow ing style; those graces, which

from this pre sumed fa cil ity en cour age all to at tempt an im i ta tion of them, are usu ally the

most in im i ta ble. —Colton

When we see a nat u ral style, we are quite as ton ished and de lighted; for we ex pected to see

an au thor, and we find a man. —Pascal

No ar ti fi cial lan guage can ever have that force, and that brev ity and ex pres sive ness, or ad mit

of be ing given any turn you please, as that spo ken lan guage. Lan guage must be made like

pure steel—turn and twist it any way you like, it is again the same—it cleaves a rock in twain at

one stroke, with out its edge be ing turned. —Swami Vivekananda

A New York Times Report on Swamiji

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Swami Vivekananda on Meat-eating

About veg e tar ian diet I have to say this—first,

my Mas ter was a veg e tar ian; but if he was

given meat of fered to the God dess, he used to

hold it up to his head. The tak ing of life is un -

doubt edly sin ful; but so long as veg e ta ble food is

not made suit able to the hu man sys tem through

prog ress in chem is try, there is no other al ter na -

tive but meat-eat ing. So long as man shall have to

live a Rajasika (ac tive) life un der cir cum stances

like the pres ent, there is no other way ex cept

through meat-eat ing. It is true that the Em peror

Asoka saved the lives of mil lions of an i mals, by

the threat of the sword; but is not the slav ery of a

thou sand years more dread ful than that? Taking

the life of a few goats as against the in abil ity to

pro tect the hon our of one’s own wife and daugh -

ter, and to save the mor sels for one’s chil dren

from rob bing hands—which of these is more sin -

ful? Rather let those be long ing to the up per ten,

who do not earn their live li hood by man ual la -

bour, not take meat; but the forc ing of veg e tar i -

an ism upon those who have to earn their bread by

la bour ing day and night is one of the causes of the

loss of our na tional free dom. Ja pan is an ex am ple

of what good and nour ish ing food can do.

—Complete Works, 4.486-7

All lik ing for fish and meat dis ap pears when

pure Sattva is highly de vel oped, and these are

the signs of its man i fes ta tion in a soul: sac ri fice of

ev ery thing for oth ers, per fect non-at tach ment to

lust and wealth, want of pride and ego tism. The

de sire for an i mal food goes when these things are

seen in a man. And where such in di ca tions are ab -

sent, and yet you find men sid ing with the non-

kill ing party, know it for a cer tainty that here

there is ei ther hy poc risy or a show of re li gion.

—Ibid, 5.403

Fac sim ile of re port in

The New York Times2 May 1894

Glimpses of Holy Lives

Rani Ahalyabai: Centred in Yoga

Through her many qual i ties, this di vine ladywas an or na ment not only to Maharashtra,

but to en tire hu man kind. … Her vir tue was soall-em brac ing that in ev ery as pect of dharmaand con duct she had her fame im mor tal ized.Her mu nif i cence was so great that till to day itre mains un par al leled in Hindustan. Her jus ticewas so cor rect that both busi ness men andthieves blessed her. Her hu mil ity was so nat u ral that she never al lowed any one to praise her.Her su per vi sion was so strict that no state func -tion ary could act with out her per mis sion orbring her to dis re pute. … She was so un-avaricious that she never as pired af ter otherstates nor tried to in crease her prop erty hold -ings by bur den ing oth ers. Her kind ness to liv -ing be ings was so broad that her con cern ex -tended even to an i mals and birds.

Al though this ap praisal of Rani Ahalya-bai’s excellences by Chintaman V Vaidya wasmade over a hun dred years af ter her death in1795, this was an as sess ment that her con tem -po rar ies, both friendly and hos tile, wouldhave un grudg ingly at tested to. For Ahalyabai,un like the pro ver bial proph ets, was an ob jectof ven er a tion even in her own times.

At a time when de gen er acy and des po -tism were the rule, Ahalyabai built up a gen u -ine wel fare state through her wis dom and sa -gac ity. Her bi og ra pher, Mukund W Burway,ob serves:

Light as sess ment was the great boon she con -ferred on the ag ri cul tural classes gen er ally. Itwas the ba sis of the pros per ity and con tent ment of the whole class of kirsans (peas antry) whowere un doubt edly happy un der Ahilyabai’s re -gime. She never en cour aged forced la bour, thebane of all bar ba rous or un en light ened rules.She re spected the rights of vil lage of fi cers andpro pri etors of lands, whereby the Rayat hadcon fi dence in the good faith of her ad min is tra -tion and re garded her al most with re li giousven er a tion. … Ahilyabai’s treat ment of her of fi -

cers and ser vants was sym pa thetic and lib eral,com bined with mild se ver ity and stern jus tice.

The nu mer ous petty Rajput Chiefs, trib u tar -ies and neigh bours were treated fairly and am i -ca ble set tle ments were made with them in sucha man ner as to en able them to main tain them -selves de cently. This led to the peace and con -tent ment of the Rajput neigh bours, who blessed Ahilyabai for her dis in ter ested and gen er ousbe hav iour to wards them, and al ways re mained at tached to her side. Ahilyabai’s set tle mentwith the crim i nal tribes of Gonds and Bheels …were as sat is fac tory as her other ar range ments.Con cil ia tory mea sures were tried at first, andwhen they failed, she had re course to a morerig or ous sys tem, in cor ri gi ble of fend ers be ingput to death, though … such in stances of se verejus tice were very rare …

No per son of her time was more re spectedthen Ahilyabai. The Mahomedans vied withtheir Hindu breth ren in do ing hon our to herand ad mir ing her ex traor di nary vir tues andchar ity. To in cur her dis plea sure was suf fi cientto en sure a so cial deg ra da tion and a loss of rep -u ta tion. Such was her hold on the In dian mind.

In his cel e brated work Mem oirs of Cen tralIn dia Sir John Malcolm writes: ‘Among thePrinces of her own na tion, it would have beenlooked upon as sac ri lege to have be come heren emy, or, in deed, not to have de fended heragainst any hos tile at tempt. She was con sid -ered by all in the same light. The Nizam of theDeccan and Tippoo Sul tan granted her thesame re spect as the Paishwah.’

But Ahalyabai was not born with a sil verspoon in her mouth, and her per sonal life waspunc tu ated with trag e dies. Born into the fam -ily of a petty vil lage patil in Aurangabad shewas mar ried at the age of eight to KhanderaoHolkar, the non de script son of Malhar RaoHolkar, who him self was then ris ing from be -ing a small-time horse man to the founder ofthe Holkar state of Malwa. Khanderao was ac -

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ci den tally killed by a can non ball while on anex pe di tion with his fa ther near Bharatpur.Ahalyabai was then only nine teen and waspre vented from be com ing a sati only by theear nest im por tu ni ties of her par ents-in-law,who, hav ing lost their only son, now lookedupon Ahalyabai as their son.

If Ahalyabai im bibed the de vo tion, pi ety, and spir ited na ture of her mother-in-law,Gautamabai, she was trained in ad min is tra -tion by Malhar Rao. When the lat ter was awayon mil i tary ex pe di tions, it was Ahalyabai whoman aged the house hold af fairs as well as thejagirs. She also su per vised the cast ing of can -nons and small fire arms, the prep a ra tion ofam mu ni tion, and such other func tions, andover saw the ar til lery. All this was done un derex plicit di rec tions from Malhar Rao, who used to reg u larly com mu ni cate with her even fromthe bat tle field.

Malhar Rao died in 1766 and his suc ces -sor, Ahalyabai’s son Malerao, too died thenext year af ter a spell of in san ity. Ahalyabaiwas now left alone fac ing a schem ing min is ter, Gangadhar Chandrachud, who was backedby Raghoba Dada, the un cle of the Peshwa,Madhav Rao I. Chadrachud wanted Ahalya-bai to adopt a mi nor son, so that he couldwield de facto power, whilst Raghoba wantedthe Peshwa to at tach Ahalyabai’s es tate.Ahalya bai would not give in to such mach i na -tions. She es tab lished per sonal con tacts withthe Peshwa and his no ble wife, Rama bai, andthe for mer soon is sued an or der rat i fy ingAhalyabai’s suc ces sion to the Holkar state.

Ahalyabai main tained very cor dial re la -tions with the Peshwas, with Mahadaji Scindia,who was at the height of his pow ers then, andwith other neigh bours. She also had her ownvakils in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Srirangapatta-na, Lucknow, Pune, and Nagpur to co or di nate her busi ness, pub lic re la tions and di plo macy.But it was not mere dip lo matic soft power thatshe wielded. The mod est but ef fi cient Holkararmy per formed cred it ably un der TukojiHolkar, Ahalyabai’s trusted com man dant.

She even raised a women’s reg i ment to con -front Raghoba when the lat ter as sumed athreat en ing stance. Once when theChandrawat Rajputs an nexed Rampura andthreat ened the Scindia ter ri tory, the la dies ofMahadaji’s fam ily wanted to move over toAhalyabai’s cap i tal at Maheshwar for the sakeof safety. Ahalyabai wrote back that al thoughthey were al ways wel come, their pres tigewould suf fer if they came over at that time. In -stead, if need be, she would be with them innine hours’ time even as her own army wasmov ing to tackle the men ace.

Fate struck an other cruel blow onAhalyabai when her only daugh ter Muktabaicom mit ted sati in 1791 af ter her lone son andhus band died in quick suc ces sion. ThatAhalyabai could with stand all these shocksand con tinue her min is tra tion speaks vol umes for her cour age and for ti tude. Her deep per -sonal faith and a dis ci plined spir i tual life werethe wellsprings of this for ti tude. Her day be -gan an hour be fore sun rise with prayer andpuja. And these, along with scrip tural read -ings and char i ties, oc cu pied the en tire morn -ing, in ter rupted only by a light break fast. Herdur bar from two to six in the af ter noon wasfol lowed by two to three hours of de vo tions, afru gal sup per and then busi ness again fromnine to eleven. She main tained this rou tine tothe last days of her life till she gave up herbody ‘very care fully’, ‘hav ing re cited the di -vine name’ (as re corded in the Holkar Kaya-fiyat) on the banks of the Narmada.

The tem ples of Vishwanath, Somnathand Vishnu at Varanasi, Saurashtra and Gaya,the Manikarnika Ghat at Varanasi, the Kolkata-Varanasi high way, the daily abhisheka of Shivaat Rameshwaram with Gan ga wa ter broughtall the way from north ern In dia, and the en -dow ment for pil grims at Kedarnath in the Hi -ma la yas are all si lent wit nesses to the yoga ofac tion, in which was cen tred the be ing of thisre mark able queen, for whom de vo tion to thedi vine had be come in sep a ra ble from en light -ened rul er ship. �

PB - JULY 2005 54


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55 PB - JULY 2005

� Reviews �

The Mes sage of the Bìhadáraîyaka Upa -niøad. Swami Ranganathananda. AdvaitaAshrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata700 014. E-mail: [email protected]. 2005.740 pp. Rs 150.

Swami Ranganathanandaji’s ex po si tion of theBrihadaranyaka Upanishad starts off where his

Bhagavadgita left off—both tem po rally and in spirit.In the last class on the Gita he re marks that in thenext class he will take up the Upanishad un der re -view. In spirit too, there is a marked sense of con ti -nu ity. If the Gita deals with the tech nol ogy of spir i-tual en quiry (in terms of method), the Brihad aranya kadeals with the sci ence of spir i tu al ity. Here, the fo -cus is not so much on spe cific prac tices or meth odsas on the anal y sis of, and the at ti tude be hind thespir i tual quest. The ex po si tion com bines in it thebest el e ments of sci ence and Vedanta. The methodof en quiry is that of sci ence—ob jec tive and uni ver -sal, through im par tial ob ser va tion and de duc tionguided by a deep long ing for Truth. This is the sci -en tific method at its best. The ob ject of en quiry, onthe other hand, is the sub jec tive or depth di men sion of man, which in turn is Vedanta at its most sub -lime. In ef fect ing this syn the sis, the author hasmade prac ti cal the syn the sis be tween sci ence andVedanta that Swami Vivekananda en vis aged, andhe has also brought to gether the breadth and depthdimen sions of the Ramakrishna- Viveka nanda Ved-anta phi los o phy. He has thus pi o neered a ho lis ticap proach that can not but meet with ea ger re cep -tion amongst se ri ous sci en tific minds—phi los o -phers and spir i tual as pi rants alike.

The In tro duc tion and Chap ter One of the bookset the tone for what is to come. The au thor urges usto push the sci en tific quest be yond the senses. Heclearly brings out the fact that the re stric tion of ourfield of en quiry to the phys i cal world is un war rant -ed, and that an ex pan sion of this field is es sen tial,first to the field of hu man val ues and then to thefield of the spirit, if sci ence is to hope to en com passall of hu man ex pe ri ence within its ambit.

While dis cuss ing man tra 1.4.7, he shows clearly

the tran scen dence of mind over the brain, quot ingneu rol o gist Wilbur Pen field’s ob ser va tional find -ings in his sup port. The au thor’s ac count of brahma-vidyá is novel, em brac ing both pará and aparávidyá—a line of thought he re turns to at the end ofthe book while sum ma riz ing the main themes.Again, in the ex po si tion of man tra 1.4.10, the man -tra that con tains the mahávákya ‘ahaó brahmásmi’, he in di cates how an en quiry into the At man is, in es -sence, an en quiry that tries to tran scend all lim i ta -tions. ‘Ataë kim, ataë kim? What next, what next?’ isthe un der ly ing mu sic of the quest. The At man liesbe yond the senses, and hence the frame work ofphys i cal sci ence is in ad e quate for it. The At manalso lies be yond the cog i ta tive mind, and hence tra -di tional scho las ti cism with its po lem i cal ar mourycan not cir cum scribe it. This feel ing of ‘not just this,not just this’ is at the ba sis of the neti-neti vicára ofthe jnana yogi—a fact that is more than ad e quatelyex em pli fied in the ear nest en quiry into Truth thatformed, along with sol i dar ity with all hu man kind,the twin pil lars of Swami Ranganathanandaji’s lifein gen eral, and Vedantic ex po si tions in par tic u lar.

The sec ond chap ter fo cus ses on the na ture ofthe sub ject, but the ba sis is scrip tural. Hence it takes up, one by one, the tra di tional un der stand ing of the hu man psychophysical sys tem, which com prisedthe ac cepted wis dom of the age, and points out theway be yond. Hence there is an en quiry into thethree states of aware ness (avasthá-traya)—wak ing,dream and deep sleep—with a view to find ing outthe real na ture of the At man which lies be yond. The fa mous ‘Yajnavalkya-Maitreyi Di a logue’ is given amod ern treat ment and the fo cus of love traced tothe At man—the Self of man. Uni ver sal sol i dar -ity—a fa vour ite theme of Swami Vivekananda’s—is dealt with in the mantras that seek to unify allknowl edge and all ex pe ri ence. One ex am ple is theuni fi ca tion of all en ergy in Prana. The au thor takesthis uni fi ca tion to a deeper level and finds the fo cusof all hu man ex pe ri ence in the At man. This is the ra -tio nale, the rai son d’etre be hind the en quiry into the avasthá-traya. In the ‘Madhuvidyá’, the con clud ingsec tion of the sec ond chap ter, the in ter de pen dence

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of all cre ation and the uni ver sal na ture of the At -man, that is to say, its na ture as un der ly ing all ex is -tence—both in di vid ual and cos mic—is de lin eated.Thus the iden tity of the At man with Brah man is es -tab lished.

In Chapters Three and Four—the ‘Muni Káîõa’or ‘Yajnavalkya Káîõa’—the em pha sis is more onra tio nal en quiry than on scrip tural ev i dence. Chap -ter Three con sists of a se ries of di a logues be tweenschol ars in King Janaka’s court and Yajnavalkya.This can be thought of as the an a logue of a pres -ent-day sci en tific con fer ence. In the di a logue withUøasta, the ex pe ri en tial na ture of Brah man isstressed. Hence the state ment: ‘This is Brah man.’Here, This re fers to the deeper na ture of all ob jec tive re al ity, just as I re fers to the real na ture of the sub -ject. The au thor deals with the ‘science of spiritualdevelopment’ or the ‘inner science’, or, in the words of Huxley, the ‘science of human possibilities’. Thereader is urged not to re main sat is fied with hispres ent un der stand ing of things but to probe to -wards a more com pre hen sive pic ture. In the nextdi a logue with Kahola, the ‘Psy chol ogy of De sire’ isin ves ti gated. Our own in fi nite na ture is wait ing tobe ex plored. It does not be hove us, there fore, to re -sort to beggarli ness, to be slaves to the lit tle ob jectsof de sire. In the ‘Antaryámæ Bráhmaîa’, the au thordeals with the theme of bhakti, or de vo tion to the‘In ner Ruler’— the ruler of both the in di vid ual andthe cos mos. Thus, bhakti, the dom i nant theme ofVishishtadvaita is un der stood against an Advaiticback drop. In the ‘Gárgi Bráhmaîa’ the fi nal tran -scen den tal na ture of Brah man is ex posed. Thoughim ma nent and inter pen etrat ing all, it has a tran-scen den tal di men sion, which can only be grasp edby shed ding our in di vid ual or phe nom e nal lim i ta -tions. The au thor con cludes the chap ter with an ex -po si tion of the terms viøaya and viøayæ—sub ject andob ject—the two pos si ble fields of any pro cess of en -quiry, and shows that they are the dual di men sionsof the same field of knowl edge, brahmavidyá, whichhas Brah man as its ba sis.

Chap ter Four starts with the one es sen tial qual -ity or value that marks off the knower of Brah -man—fear less ness. Once the fear of death is con -quer ed, all fear is con quered, for this fear orig i natesin the fear of los ing the body, through which weiden tify with ev ery ob ject we re gard as me or mine.It is knowl edge that de stroys this fear. Sci en tificknowl edge gives us power over na ture and con se -quently re moves the fear of ex ter nal na ture. But it

also makes us dimly aware of sub tler pow ers work -ing within us and in so ci ety. Hence, par a dox i cally,it in creases fear by push ing it into an in cho ate andhalf-un der stood twi light. Ig no rance of our sub jec -tive di men sion lies at the ba sis of this ex is ten tialfear. Spir i tual knowl edge alone can de stroy it. Spir -i tual en quiry, ef fected here by the two fold pro cessof avasthá-traya prakriyá and neti, neti, re veals thedeeper na ture of the sub ject and com pre hen sivelyde stroys fear. In this chap ter the au thor uses thecom men tary of Sri Shankaracharya and his anal y -sis of the three states to ef fec tively coun ter the ma -te ri al is tic chal lenge. This chal lenge is pow er ful to -day be cause of the sci en tific hy poth e sis that mat teris enough to ex plain, at least in prin ci ple, all phe -nom ena. But the en quiry into the three states, es pe -cially deep sleep, re veals a di men sion of the sub jectthat no ma te ri al is tic anal y sis can hope to en com -pass. This anal y sis forms the ba sis of the pro cess ofAdvaitic en quiry.

In Chap ter Five, the au thor gives an ac count ofthe well-known story of ‘da, da, da’—Prajapati’s in -struc tions to gods, men and de mons. The au thorlinks it to the shloka of the Gita that says lust, an gerand greed are the gates to hell. Hence the need toprac tice self-con trol, char ity, and com pas sion. Therest of Chapters Five and Six, deal ing with cer tainrites and med i ta tions, is not dis cussed.

The ex po si tion of the Upanishad con cludeswith a sum mary of the prin ci pal themes dealt within the book. These lec tures were given in the eight -ies and the pas sage of time has only made us feelmore keenly the need for such ex po si tions. Whilenot com pro mis ing a whit on scho las tic depth, theelu ci da tion pen e trates deeper into the ex pe ri en tialrel e vance of Vedanta. It is this alone that can en no -ble and up lift us in these days when we can no lon -ger hope for the good for tune of ben e fit ing di rectlyfrom lis ten ing to the lec tures of the doyen ofVedanta that Swami Ranganathanandaji was.

A Monastic

The Var ie gated Plum age: En coun terswith In dian Phi los o phy. N B Patil andMrinal Kaul ‘Martand’. Sant Samagam Re -search In sti tute, 37/4 Pandoka Col ony,Paloura, Jammu 181121, and Motilal Ban-arsidass, New Delhi 110007. 2003. xxviii +387 pp. Rs 595.

Since 1953 Kash mir has gained a po lit i cal mile age

Reviews 395

57 PB - JULY 2005

due to the di vi sion of the Land of Par a dise by thetwo pow ers of the In dian sub con ti nent. It is truethat the fron tiers of the earth are chang ing fast dueto the rapid strides of sci ence and tech nol ogy. Theday is not far away when we may try to reach otherplan ets through inter-plan e tary com mu ni ca tion.But do we not re quire a launch ing pad for ourflights into in fin ity? Can we af ford to lose the mon -u men tal work of our an ces tors who have built upour tra di tion, cul ture and phi los o phy of eter nal val -ues? Looking around, are we not sad dened to seethe state of af fairs even af ter fifty-eight years of in -de pend ence? Long be fore we at tained our po lit i calfree dom, Swami Vivekananda gave his clar ion callto the youth of our coun try to go to the masses andcare for them in a spirit of wor ship. But to day weare in the midst of a so ci ety where con sum er ism isram pant and al most ev ery body is fight ing overtrivi ali ties, thereby bid ding good bye to all moraland spir i tual val ues.

The book un der re view pro vides wel come re -lief in the con text of the pres ent sit u a tion. It is aFestschrift vol ume cel e brat ing the life and work ofa scholar and sa vant of Kash mir, Pandit JankinathKaul ‘Kamal’, who did re mark able work in the field of Kash mir Shaivism and Vedanta. Com mem o ra -tive vol umes are gen er ally of very var ied char ac terand qual ity. So is the pres ent vol ume. Some es saysare col lec tions of trib utes to and rem i nis cences ofthe per son hon oured; other sec tions con tain col lec -tions of ar ti cles on Indology (with a spe cial chap teron Kash mir Shaivism) and spir i tu al ity by in ter na -tion ally re nowned schol ars, as well as by less knownau thors. So the con tent is un even.

The re viewer, how ever, is doubt ful about themerit of some es says that have found place in thebook, es pe cially the one on Bopadeva’s con tri bu -tion to the bhakti cult (which be trays a lack of se ri -ous ness) and an other on Ramana Maharshi (which, though brief, draws freely from Osborne’s book onRamana and of fers lit tle that is the con trib u tor’sown).

In con trast, we have Dr Sarada Natarajan’s il lu -mi nat ing and highly in for ma tive ar ti cle on the lifeand teach ings of Ramana Maharshi. Dr KaranSingh’s ar ti cle ‘Some Thoughts on Vedanta’ is richin sug ges tive ness. ‘The Vedas,’ he says, ‘are like theHi ma la yas.’ They have the maj esty, the solidity, the gran deur and the sta bil ity of the Hi ma la yas, andlike the in cal cu la ble riches that flow from them inthe form of pe ren nial rivers, the great Upani shads

have flown from the Vedas down to the pres ent day en rich ing the thought pro cesses of the coun try. DrSingh has rightly pointed out that the mes sage ofthe Vedas and Vedanta have no room for sec tar i an -ism and communalism. Taken to gether, they pro -vide a ho lis tic par a digm and a global phi los o phy(vasudhaiva kuôumbakam) that can sus tain us in thispe riod of in tense tran si tion. Dr G Mishra’s ‘Jivan -mukti and Jivanmukta’, Dr C Rajendran’s ‘In flu -ence of Nyáya-Vaiùeøika Phi los o phy on Alaïkára-ùástra’, Dr T Devarajan’s ‘Her me neu tics and In dian Poetics’ and Dr N B Patil’s ‘Value Ed u ca tion for theNew Mil len nium’ are re ally ex cel lent.

For all its un even ness of qual ity, the book isworth read ing, cher ishing as it does the mem ory ofa most er u dite Kashmiri pandit. Pandit JankinathKaul’s in ter est in Vedanta and Kash mir Shaivismare fully re flected and the ed i tors de serve con grat -u la tions for the trou ble they have taken to make thebook com pre hen sive. A wide cir cu la tion of the bookwill give a new fil lip to re search-minded schol ars onIndology, and In dian phi los o phy and re li gion.

Prof. Amalendu ChakrabortyFormer Head, Department of Philosophy

Presidency College, Kolkata

Átma Vidyá Vilásam of Ùræ SadáùivaBrahmendra Yogi. Kalluri Suryanarayana.Sankhyayana Vidya Parishat, 2-12-34Annapoorna Col ony, Uppal, Hyderabad500 039. 2003. 46 pp. Rs 36.

The book un der re view is a trans la tion of the sixty-two verses on Self re al iza tion by Sri Sada-

shiva Brahmendra, a sev en teenth-cen tury yogi ofSouth In dia. The verses throw light on the na tureand es sence of the At man and on atmavidya, whichis ob tained through the grace of a sadguru andthrough spir i tual prac tice. The traits of a God-re al -ized soul, the jivanmukta, have also been de scribed.

The main text com prises the shlokas in Deva -nagari, fol lowed by a word-for-word trans lit er a -tion and trans la tion in Eng lish. A brief bio graph i cal sketch of Sadashiva Brahmendra has also been pro -vided by the trans la tor.

Many ty pos and gram mat i cal er rors make theread ing cum brous, and call for more care ful ed it ing.

Dr C S Shah (late)Aurangabad

Reports

In MemoriamSpe cial puja and bhandara were held at

Belur Math on 7 May in mem ory of our latePres i dent Srimat Swami RanganathanandajiMaharaj. De votees thronged the Math in largenum bers from the early hours of the day.Prasad was served to about 45,000 dev o tees.Swami Smarananandaji Maharaj, Gen eralSec re tary, Ramakrishna Math and Ramakri-shna Mis sion, pre sided over the me mo rialmeet ing held in the af ter noon. An es ti mated2,00,000 peo ple vis ited Belur Math that day.

Ramakrishna Mis sion, New Delhi, or -ga nized a pub lic meet ing in mem ory of SrimatSwami Ranganathanan daji Maharaj on 15May pre sided over by Prime Min is ter DrManmohan Singh. Swami Smarananandajigave a wel come ad dress. Sri I K Gujral, for merPrime Min is ter, and Sri L K Advani, for merDep uty Prime Min is ter, rem i nisced abouttheir as so ci a tion with Re vered Maharaj. Theen tire one-hour programme was tele cast liveon Doordarsh an’s na tional chan nel.

Speaking about Re vered Maharaj, SriAdvani said: ‘When ever Maharaj talked aboutIn dia, he used to speak about the unity of In dia.… It had be come a reg u lar prac tice for prom i -nent men, in clud ing prime min is ters and other

na tional lead ers, to go to him for in spi ra tionand ad vice.’ In his pres i den tial ad dress DrSingh ob served: ‘Swamiji’s schol arly es sayshelped mil lions of young peo ple to im bibe thetrue val ues of all the great re li gions of this an -cient and sa cred land of In dia. Be it in Kerala orin Kolkata, in Hyderabad or in New Delhi or inKarachi, wher ever Swamiji lived, he left be hind sev eral gen er a tions of en light ened peo ple whohave ded i cated their lives to the ser vice of manand the wel fare of our peo ple.’

News from Headquarters

Swami Smarananandaji vis ited Rourkelaon 1 and 2 April 2005 in con nec tion with thesil ver ju bi lee cel e bra tion of the foun da tion ofthe Sri Ramakrishna tem ple at an un af fil i atedcen tre there.

News from Branch Centres

Sri Sudarshan Agrawal, Gov er nor ofUttaranchal, par tic i pated in the an nual cel e -bra tion of Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama,Chandigarh, on 3 April.

Srimat Swami Gitanandaji Maharaj, VicePres i dent, Ramakrishna Math and Ramakri-shna Mis sion, in au gu rated a new char i ta ble

dis pen sary and a cot tage-in dus try build ing atRamakrishna Mis sion, Kamarpukur, on 13April.

Sri Jaibeer Singh, Min is ter of State forHealth, Uttar Pradesh, in au gu rated a new in -

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The charitable dispensary and cottage-industry building

at Kamarpukur

Swami Gokulanandaji, Swami Smarananandaji,

Dr Manmohan Singh, Sri I K Gujral and Sri L K Advani

at the memorial meeting

ten sive-care unit at Ramakrishna Mis sionSev ashrama, Vrindaban, on 16 April.

On the eve ning of 18 April, af ter hand ingover the keys to the Dilaram Bun ga low (see‘Re ports’, June is sue) to Srimat Swami Atma-sthanandaji Maharaj, Vice Pres i dent, Rama-krishna Math and Ramakrishna Mis sion, Sri

Narendra Modi, Chief Min is ter of Gujarat, in -au gu rated a per ma nent ex hi bi tion dis play ing36 large-size pho to graphs of Swami Viveka -nanda in the Bun ga low premises.

Sri Pradeep Kumar, Min is ter for Hu manRe source De vel op ment, Jharkhand, vis itedRamakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Morabadi,on 23 April and par tic i pated in a sem i nar on‘Ed u ca tion for Self-re li ance and Char ac terBuild ing’ or ga nized by the cen tre.

Three stu dents of the pri mary school runby Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Barana-g ore, stood first in the state-level sci ence quizcon test or ga nized by Birla In dus trial andTech ni cal Mu seum, Kolkata, in April.

Ramakrishna Mis sion Hos pi tal, Itana-gar, started a mo bile med i cal ser vice in Bathvil lage near the town on 2 May. Sri C C Sing-pho, Min is ter of Health and Fam ily Wel fare,Arunachal Pradesh, in au gu rated the ser vice.

Ramakrishna Math, Mumbai, con -cluded its cel e bra tion of Holy Mother SriSarada Devi’s 150th birth an ni ver sary with asem i nar, dis cus sions, a japa-yajna, a spir i tualre treat and cul tural programmes from 20 to 22May.

Relief and RehabilitationIn the af ter math of two sep a rate fire ac ci -

dents that oc curred in Bihar in June, twoRamakrishna Mis sion cen tres pro vided helpto fam i lies whose houses were gut ted by thefires. Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Chap-ra, dis trib uted 157 sa ris, 30 dho tis, bam boopoles, gal va nized tin sheets and large quan ti -ties of fod der among 97 fam i lies of GautamSthan and Naini vil lages of Chapra dis trict;Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Katihar,dis trib uted 265 kg rice, 53 kg dal, 265 kg flour,106 kg chira, 264 kg chhatu, 106 kg salt, 27 kgmus tard oil, 53 bis cuit pack ets, 63 sa ris, 62dho tis, 10 lun gis, 53 mos quito nets, 53 pack -ages of can dles and match boxes to 53 fam i liesin Katihar.

Ramakrishna Mis sion Ashrama, Cherr -apunji, dis trib uted 100 blan kets to the poorand needy peo ple of nearby ar eas.

Un der a ‘Build Your Own House’scheme, Ramakrishna Mis sion Cal cutta Stu -dents’ Home, Belgharia, pro vided build ingma te ri als for 52 houses to peo ple ren deredhome less by a re cent storm in Nadia andNorth 24-Parganas dis tricts.

Con tinuing their re lief and re ha bil i ta tionwork in tsu nami stricken ar eas, RamakrishnaMis sion, Port Blair, dis trib uted 450 kg dal,651 sa ris, 476 women’s gar ments, 12 dho tis, 28lun gis, 1,040 shirts, 60 shorts, 70 vests, 284 chil -dren’s gar ments and 36 bed sheets in nearbyar eas; and Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, dis -trib uted 42,569 shirts re ceived as do na tionamong 33,440 peo ple in Cuddalore, Kanchi -puram, Nagapattinam and Tiruvallur dis -tricts, in May.

The Chennai cen tre also gave, dur ing thesame pe riod, 24 mech a nized boats, 14 sets offish ing nets, 2 bi cy cles and an un spec i fiednum ber of wooden boards for house build ingin the above-men tioned ar eas. Be sides these, it has un der taken to con struct 104 houses inCuddalore dis trict and 40 houses and aschool-cum-shelterhouse in Nagapattinamdis trict.

59 PB - JULY 2005

Reports 397

Swami Nikhileswaranandaji, Swami Atmasthanandaji and

Sri Modi viewing the exhibition

The Batticaloa sub-cen tre of Ramakri-shna Mis sion, Co lombo, pro vided 23 sew ingma chines to tsu nami vic tims in and aroundthe town.

‘Women’s Power!’

Let there be light—and may it spread ev -ery where! Out of 23,000 vil lages in Jharkhand,only 8,000 have elec tric ity. On 30 Jan u ary 2005 avil lage called Murungtoli in creased the num berof elec tri fied vil lages in the newly formed stateby one, thanks to the ef forts of RamakrishnaMis sion TB San a to rium, Ranchi.

Murungtoli is not too far away from Ran -chi. Al though other neigh bour ing vil lageswere en joy ing elec tric ity, this par tic u lar vil -lage con tin ued to lan guish in dark ness. Fouryears ago the women of the vil lage—most ofthem un let tered house wives with no in de pen -d ent source of in come—came to gether to form the Jyoti Mahila Samity. Since the group’s for -ma tion, it has brought many so cial changes,al beit im per cep ti bly, with the ac tive sup portof the San a to rium. The Samity ap proachedRamakrishna Mis sion TB San a to rium to helpthem get elec tri cal con nec tions for their vil -lage. Taking up the work in right ear nest, thecen tre with the help of Sri M Chandra Mohan ,one of its dev o tees who is a re tired of fi cer ofHeavy En gi neering Corporation, Ranchi, fi -nally suc ceeded in bring ing elec tric ity to thevil lage. The success, how ever, was due in nosmall mea sure to the en ter prise of Samitymem bers.

A pub lic meet ing was ar ranged by thevil lag ers to cel e brate the ar rival of elec tric ity,and Swami Vimokshanandaji, Sec re tary of the San a to rium, and Sri Chandra Mohan were in -vited to speak. In his speech, the swami un der -scored the im por tance of women’s groups like Jyoti Mahila Samity and ap pre ci ated their ac -com plish ment—some thing which even thework ing men of the vil lage had failed at. Atthe same time, he ex plained to the womenhow im por tant it was for them to en cour agetheir chil dren to read good books and de velop

good ten den cies. Only then would the light ofknowl edge dis pel the dark ness of ig no rance.The swami then dis trib uted booklets con tain -ing the teach ings of Swami Vivekananda, in -spired by which some youths of the vil lagecame for ward to help the Samity. Sri ChandraMohan, who had gone to great pains to meetthe of fi cials of the elec tric ity de part ment andget the whole work done, ad vised the vil lag ers to put the elec tric ity to good use and pointedto the Samity as an ex am ple of unity for vil lage de vel op ment. Smt Anna Linda, Pres i dent ofthe Jyoti Mahila Samity, nar rated the strug glethe group went through be fore achiev ing suc -cess. She heart ily thanked Sri Chandra Mohanand Swami Vimokshanandaji, whose helpand en cour age ment were vi tal to the Samity’sef fort.

The Jyoti Mahila Samity draws in spi ra -tion from Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi.

Helping Hill Women

Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, ob servedHoly Mother Sri Sarada Devi’s 150th birth an -ni ver sary by serv ing poor peo ple, mostly girlsand women, in neigh bour ing vil lages. Be -tween Oc to ber 2004 and March 2005 it pro -vided sweat ers, uni forms, shoes, note booksand sti pend worth Rs 34,290 to 273 stu dents,of whom 196 were girls. It also gave goats to 67 families at a cost of Rs 68,000, sew ing ma -chines worth Rs 5,400 to 3 women, anddistributed 500 kg rice, 200 kg dal, 200 kg flourand 184 blan kets amount ing to Rs 32,840. �

PB - JULY 2005 60


Distribution of goats at a village near Mayavati

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