Are the abuses against women in India due to the negative view of women in the Vedic tradition?

Question, how do we respond to people who say that, and Vedic culture made life so wonderful and all the problems of India are because of India having left the traditional culture. Now, sometimes, ISKCON’s presentation of Vedic culture may get lumped with these traditionalists.
But actually, Sri Prabhupada and the Gaudiya Vishnu tradition in general has been very sensitive to even the contemporary environment and has known how to present and adapt itself to contemporary situations. So, with this background, let us look at the specific question now. What are the primary sources for whatever happened to India during traditional Indian history and whatever is happening today? Now, there is not much doubt from the statistical survey point of view that women do have a troubled position in Indian society today.
Female feticide, the way it is practiced in India, bridal burnings that happen over dowry, these are extremely regrettable, even perverse. And they deserve the strongest condemnation. Now, any child, whether male or female, is a gift of God.
So, leave alone a spiritual or a scriptural perspective, even from a basic moral perspective or human perspectives, to think is brutal, as is the burning of the bride for some dowry. So, now, this is not a defense of the situation that is there today, that certainly is wrong and deserves to be aggressively corrected. So, now, what is present in India today, where did it come from? We could say one source of it is the Vedic scriptures.
Second is the culture that emerged from the Vedic scriptures and which often changed over a period of time, because of either external influences or because of the people deviating from the correct understanding of the Vedic scriptures. Now, in the Vedic scriptures, you see, there is not much direct talk about women and their position in the epics or the Puranas directly, in the Bhagavatam or in the Mahabharata Ramayana. But there is no, what you could call, sociological analysis about what the position of women should be.
There are primarily stories in this book and stories women play certain roles. No doubt those roles are traditional. But if we infer from that, there are no instances of female piticide or bride burning or anything, any sort of oppression of that sort, which is so perverse.
Now, Manu Samhita is a primary book and for social laws. Of course, Manu Samhita is only one and there are several other books, several other legal books like that. In general, when Shri Prabhupada would refer to Manu Samhita as the standard law book for humanity, his reference was more generic than specific.
Generic means the idea that humanity has to follow the law of God and the law of God, one representative of that book is the Manu Samhita. So now, within the Vedic tradition, we will see that the statements about women will have two broad characteristics. Which correlate more or less with the two primary roles that women can play.
You know, women can do many activities in their lives, but the roles they can play will vary depending on their social and cultural circumstances. So, these two primary roles are maternal and sexual. In the maternal role, women focus on acting as mothers, not just for their children, but practically speaking for the whole house and society treats them as mothers in general.
And as sexual, they are objects of temptation and lust and similar passions. So, among these two roles, the Vedic social cultural model encourages women to take up the first role. And the whole social cultural system is made in such a way that women, soon after their marriage, assume this particular role.
It is not just in terms of begetting children, but it is also in terms of their own conduct and their own contributions and their own activities. So, this is not to say that women can only do these things, they can have various challenges and they can do various activities. But the predominant function which acts as the basis for their performing various roles is either maternal or sexual.
So, when the women are shown in the maternal role, then they are glorified. And we will see a lot of statements about how in a house, in Manu Samhita, there are quotes, which I have put over here, some of the quotes. When women in a house are happy, then the gods give their blessings.
If the women are displeased and if they curse, then Lakshmi will leave the house and women need to be cherished. So, these kinds of quotes are many, which talk about how women need to be cared for. There are another set of quotes, which seem to speak negatively about women.
These may talk about how women are temptress and women are extremely lusty and then there will be some analogies, which you will consider very negative from the modern point of view. There will be sexist put downs. But then these have a purpose.
The purpose is that if men try to treat women as just sex objects, then they will get seduced by them and they will be endlessly distracted by them. And in the end, the consequence of that will be women will also be abused by that. So, the portrayal of women as temptresses is not so much to condemn women, but as to alert men.
Now, all the past writings in general were written from the male perspective. So, in the scriptures are telling that women are temptresses. That is primarily meant to help men not see them as sex objects, to keep a distance from them.
And in the Some scriptures also say that women are, as mothers should be respected. So, if you look at this two dynamic of these two kind of statements, then we understand that what is actually happening is that both women and men are being encouraged, prodded to see women as mothers and not as sexual objects. And in this way, this maternal non-sexual vision of women is the primary legacy of the Vedic literature.
If we take only one part of it and just focus on the statements about, which we talk about women as temptresses and all the associated statements that come with them, then we will be misunderstanding the whole situation because that’s only one side of the story. And this is what many Hindu folks take. And there are other traditionalists who just said that, take the other side of course, you see how exalted was the position of women.
And that is true, but it is also recognized that in the Vedic literature that the male-female attraction can be a source of bondage and trouble and in that to restrain that, there are certain descriptions that are given, which also cannot be denied, whose presence in the Vedic scriptures is repeated and we have to recognize that, but they need to be contextualized by understanding the purpose for which they are there. Now, historically speaking, the scriptural perspective was integrated within the social cultural system of India for a long time, but over a period of time, like everything else, things became degraded. That over time, things become depleted, degraded, Krishna says in 4.2 in the Bhagavad Gita.
So similarly, this degradation that happened over time was primarily the materialistic view of things. So, because of this materialistic view of things, the original Vedic system, which was Varanashram, which basically was meant for cooperation and facilitation of people to engage according to their talents, became a system of discrimination and deprivation of people just based on their worth. So, that is a perversion of the original system and that happened because the higher caste people became not spiritually oriented, but became materialistic and wanted to use their higher caste privileges for their own selfish purposes.
Same way, when people wanted to, when men wanted to, when men became more materialistic and wanted to dominate women for their materialistic ends, then that materialism started creating problems. So, when women are just seen as seen from the material perspective, then the material perspective will see them not so much from the maternal perspective as from the sexual perspective, the utilitarian perspective and if we see female fetish side, that is primarily because of financial considerations, which are essentially material considerations. Parents who do this ghastly activity, they often feel that they don’t have the resources to take care of their child, their girl child and therefore they will abort it selectively.
So, now one response is that in the West, in westernized countries, even males are being, all children are aborted irrespective of their gender. Now, this response as a rejoinder, as a repository is good, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s very heartbreaking that such a gender discrimination is there in society today, that is sex selective abortion. Now, why are women seen as financial burden, girls seen as financial burdens? Because of the whole idea that the girls eventually will have to get married and the time of marriage, a dowry has to be given, the marriage has to be arranged and the marriage expenses have to be taken care of and various things like that.
So, now this understanding of dowry has to be given is also a perversion. Originally dowry was a voluntary gift that was given by the parents to their daughter as she was departing. The traditional Vedic word for dowry is Tridhana.
So, according to the Vedic laws of inheritance, the parents’ property would normally go to their sons. So, what would the daughters get? They would get the dowry. So, the dowry which the mother would get when she came from her father that would be her property and even the husband could not take it without permission.
Even today, it might be in some small, it might be there in the sense that women have their jewellery and when there is extreme financial crisis at home and the woman may stake her jewellery also and then the husbands or the elders of the family request the woman that can we mortgage your jewellery. So, just as the jewellery that women have is considered their property, similarly in a stronger sense, the Tridhana was the property of the woman and the men, the husbands and the in-laws could not touch that property unless in times of extreme financial crisis when it was absolutely essential. So, when the gifts were given, the gifts were given to the daughter and she had possession of them, normally speaking.
But that system has become perverted into a business, first of all. This much dowry must be given and secondly, it has also become perverted into the idea that one should, that money should be with the in-laws, not with the woman who is actually tormented emotionally and sometimes tortured physically to get more and more money from the in-law or from her parent’s side. So, actually this has got nothing to do with Vedic culture directly.
It has just resulted because of materialism and materialism causing people’s values to get distorted. When people become materialistic, they will use any and every system to exploit others. So, in America, when the European settlers came and stayed in America, they basically took those Native Americans who were living there and they made them into like animals are kept in reserved communities, they kept them in reserved communities or they had their gun and they shot them down and millions and millions of people were killed.
Similarly, the history of America where the land of the free and everybody supposed to be equal, there were so many decades of, centuries of exploitation of the black people. So, why did that happen? That’s because of materialism. So, the problems that are there in modern Indian culture are not stemming from the Vedic scriptures, they are stemming from the materialism that has crept across our society over centuries.
Now, I’m not talking about here equating materialism with westernization that has come across in the last 50 or so years. Or last, broadly we could say for the western influence has been in Indian culture for the last 300, 400 years. But in terms of TV and media, it has swept across in the last half a century or less than that.
So, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about materialism, which spread, which has been on for several centuries now, maybe a millennia or so, because of the effects of Kali Yuga and because of which the caste system became perverted. Similarly, the system of dowry and others also became perverted.
So, therefore, the point of emphasis here will be that it’s materialism that is the problem. And certainly, the kind of malpractices against women that are happening today, vigorous action has to be taken to stop them. At the same time, whether the adoption of westernized culture, where women are treated primarily as sexual objects are depicted through the media and otherwise, whether that is a solution to the problems that bigot, that beset Indian society is a serious question.
It’s a question mark, in fact. Because that is also materialism in another brand. So, materialism can give people a vision of women from either a financial perspective or from a sexual perspective.
So, from the financial perspective, women are seen today as a burden in India. And that’s how there are so many persecutions against them that happen. And from the westernized culture’s perspective, women are largely seen as sexual objects.
And that leads to exploitation that way also. And actually in India today, because India is rapidly westernized and commercialization in terms of financial considerations is still there. So, women are getting the brunt of both these visions.
They are seen from a financial perspective as well as from a sexual perspective. And that is extremely unfortunate in many ways. As India is getting westernized, India is getting not the best of the East and the West, but the worst of the East and the West.
Why the worst of the East and the West? The worst of the East because the traditional scriptural philosophical understandings of the Vedic wisdom are not known. And on the other hand, because Indian culture is so radically different from the West. So, when things are brought from the West to India, often the worst part of the western culture gets integrated into India very quickly.
For example, simply we have the Indian metropolis with their congestions. So, the socio-economic model of having concentrated economic activity within the urban centers is largely a western model and that to a recent model. Traditionally in India and certainly in all over the world and especially in India, India was primarily made of self-sufficient village communities, which were the sources of the financial strength and prosperity of the whole country.
So, India because of its bid for industrialization discouraged agriculture post-independence and encouraged industrialization. And the result is that we have cities, which are filled with what we can call as development refugees. Development refugees because of the government’s not giving incentive and facilities for agriculture.
Agriculture has become unviable for these people and they rush to this, they come in hundreds and thousands of the cities, not just out of financial necessity, but with fantasies of prosperity and Bollywood and things like that. And then they live in terrible slums. So, we see the crowded the congested, the polluted lives in the cities, especially in the poverty stricken areas.
This is an example, prime example of India getting the worst of the east and the west. And similarly, culturally also the position of women today is an evidence of say India getting the worst of the east and the west to some extent. The distorted Vedic view that was prevalent in India for many centuries of seeing women from a financial perspective is still there.
And additionally, the Western view of seeing women from a sexual perspective has been added. So, things have become worse. And trying to reduce the financial perspective and adopting Western culture, which is heightened emphasis on sexual perspective is not at all a solution.
Actually, both the financial and the sexual perspective, visions of women are primarily resulting from a non-spiritual vision. And there has to be a return to spiritual vision, which will come through a spiritual education and a spiritually conducive culture. This doesn’t mean that necessarily women have to be relegated to traditional role in society.
As society changes, their cultural roles will also change. But the point is that just thinking that the traditional Indian culture is the cause of all problems and best adopting of Western culture as a solution to all problems is a complete illusion. And the problems are much, much more complex than that.
And the real solution is re-spiritualization of society.