Why do the Vedas give all rights to men and no rights to women, who simply have to obey men?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Gandhari, she covered her eyes when she got married to Dhritarashtra. So women were expected to do just whatever the men told them to do. So this is not right.
And was it that men were in control and women had no choices in the Vedic literature? Every culture has its own nuances. And when we superimpose our perspective on another culture, it becomes very, it’s actually unfair. What I mean by this is that we live in a culture today where there is, where there has been exploitation of women.
And actually because of that, women have tried to and have succeeded in many ways in gaining power and autonomy over their lives. If you consider traditionally, there is a natural complementarity, complementation among the genders. And each gender is specially equipped to do certain things.
If there is say a group of 10 small children, 5-6 year old, there is one man or one woman. Now who is likely to be better able to control those 10 kids? It’s naturally a woman. So there is by nature’s arrangement, women have been given certain strengths, men have been given certain strengths.
And there is a division of labor. So women were quite often the controllers of the homes. I grew up in a traditional Indian Brahminical family.
And I saw, not just my father, but my grandparents, their generation. Yes, the husband would earn the money and the husband would have a lot of say in the world outside. But the home, the wife would be the control.
So there was a division of power which harmonized with the natural strengths of each gender. This is a whole big subject. I don’t want to get involved in that subject, but I’ll just broadly answer your question.
Yes, in that system, men did have more power than women. But then at that time, men were also chivalrous, men were protective of women. But over a period of time, as the age change, as Kali Yuga came up, then one result of that, that men, instead of being protective, started becoming exploitative, started becoming domineering.
And when that happened, naturally, women were controlled because of that and then women reacted to it. So one side of the coin is male chauvinism. The other side of the coin is feminism.
Feminism, aggressive feminism is actually a reaction to male chauvinism. And from today’s perspective, when we look back at history, we may see history simply as largely being male chauvinistic. But that’s not the case.
At least in the Vedic culture, there is a clear understanding that we are not the body, we are the soul. So the soul who is in a male’s body today can go in a female’s body tomorrow. So the bodies that we have are temporary.
But based on the bodies that we have, there are particular roles that we are meant to play. And if we work cooperatively, we all play our roles. If we think that worldly prosperity, worldly power, worldly success is life’s ultimate goal, then it will appear as if yes, men had more power, more control, more position, and women were deprived.
But then men were also expected to renounce the world, they were expected to take sannyas. And the important thing is that if we see the Vedic culture from the bodily perspective, we’ll misunderstand it. The point was that we are not men, we are not women, we are souls.
And all of us have to use the bodily vehicle we have in the best possible way for making both social contribution and spiritual evolution. One of the defining differences between pre-modern times and modern times is that in the modern times, the idea that there is some world beyond this world, which is life’s ultimate destination, that was rejected. This world is all that is, or this world is all that matters.
When we make this world as the measure of everything, then a worldview which was centered on pursuing another world as life’s most important goal, that just becomes incomprehensible. So the idea that a woman should follow her husband, that did not mean that the husband was the controller and the woman was the servant. No, the husband was meant to follow the Guru.
The Guru is meant to follow Krishna. So it’s a chain where everybody is led spiritually upwards. Now today we have rejected Krishna.
Society may not be officially atheistic, but it’s functionally non-theistic. It is functionally non-theistic. God is a non-entity for most people.
So in such a worldview, a worldview where God was life’s ultimate goal, doesn’t make sense. So we have to see, if we want to actually understand the Vedic worldview, if we see it through the worldview of the filter of feminism, it will appear as male chauvinistic. But that’s not the purpose.
The purpose was that because there is understanding that we are not the body, we are the soul, that spiritual realization is the ultimate goal of life. So in the female body, playing the domestic role was the most congenial way by which the females, the soul in the female body could make an invaluable social contribution while also pursue spiritual evolution. Now in today’s world, because that spiritual goal was forgotten both by men and by women.
So when men forgot it, they think that, okay, we are here, we want to enjoy. And they control women and try to enjoy. Women say, why should we be controlled? So then the society that we have today has its own issues.
Many times children are neglected because both husband and wife are working. And women sometimes they have to work and take care of home. The pressure on them becomes too much.
I’m not in favor or against any of this. That’s not my point here. My point here, I’m simply making here is that we cannot view, evaluate the traditional Vedic worldview, which was based on the foundation understanding that another world is life’s ultimate goal.
The relationship with God is the most important relationship. That we are essentially souls. We cannot evaluate it with the filter of gender roles as we have envisioned in today’s world through feminism, by through the categories of feminism or male chauvinism.
So both husband and wife, man and woman, are meant to work cooperatively. Now exactly how that cooperative role will work, that will vary depending on time, place, circumstance. So in today’s world, the world is much more different from what it was in the past.
So we, every society, every family will have to find out its own way in which both can work cooperatively. As I said, two aspects, the social contribution, we play our roles as family, society and we progress in our spiritual evolution. Does that answer your question? Any other questions or comments?