Gender Injustice in Hindu

Studying the status and condition of women in several world religions such as in Islam, in Christian, and in Hinduism, I wonder how can women in those religions have same condition that is also caused by the same problem. Women in Islamic culture, Christian culture, and Hinduism culture is presumed and treated as marginalized and subordinate people.

Those conditions, in my opinion, by intention are constructed by male supremacy. Realizing women power, men have been trying to control women. They fear that it will become problem for them, so that they oppressed women to make women doubt of their power. Those conditions are also supported by patriarchal system.

Furthermore, to be clear, I would like to focus on the practicing gender injustice in Hinduism. In Hinduism, the core element of marginalized and subordinate women is when presumed to have value and significant because of their instrument role in society as daughters, wives, and mothers. This condition is legitimate by quoting one of sacred texts in Hinduism.

Women have never been independent and women’s happiness was considered dependent on male control, as mentioned in The Code of Manu, one of Hinduism’s oldest foundational texts. (John Raines: 2001, p.1)

By a girl, by a young woman, or even by an age one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a women must never be independent. (Texts of Manu mentioned in John Raines: 2001, p. 1)

Day and night women must be kept in dependence by the male (of) their families, and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyment, they must be kept under one’s control. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a women is never fit for independence. Manu, 9:2-3. (Denise Carmody, 2002, p.51)

The married woman is always under the control of her husband; she must to show docility and even worship. Moreover such official ethical codes of Manu (from about 100 C.E) stipulated that wives were to be loyal and faithful even if their husbands were deformed, unfaithful, drunk, debauched, and abusive. (Denise Carmody, 2002, p. 51).

Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere), or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshiped as a god by

Faithful wife. No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart (from their husband); if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that (reason alone) be exalted in heaven. (Texts of Manu mentioned in John Raines, 2001, p.1)

Furthermore, in a recent and popular tract titled How to Lead a Household Life, Swami Ramsukhdas gave advice to Hindu women facing an abusing husband:

Question: what should the wife do if her husband beats her and troubles her?

Answer: the wife should think that she is paying her debt of her previous life and thus her sins are being destroyed and she is becoming pure. When her parents come to know this, they can take their own house because they have not given their daughter to faces this sort of bad behavior. (John Raines, 2001, p. 2)

It is still the general cultural expectation that a woman’s main task is producing sons and providing her husband a comfortable home. The best way for Hindus women to gain prestige and honor was to bear male sons. Bearing daughters was an ambivalent venture, since they would not be able to carry out the parental funeral rites necessary for a peaceful after life and they would require dowries for their marriages. Indeed the announcement of the birth of a female child could be made in the pathetic disappointed words: “nothing was born”. (Denise Carmody, 2002, p. 52)

Treatment to the widow is also one of gender injustice in Hinduism. The widow was the sorriest figure in Hindu society. A widow was suspected that her bad karma had contributed to her husband’s death. She was expected to wear mourning garb, do penance for her sins and never think of a lover other than her deceased husband, moreover, this unhappy state contributed the practice of suttee; widow burning. Supposedly this was a voluntary practice, a widow throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, however, sometimes unwilling widows were compelled to commit such ritual suicide. (Denise Carmody, 2002, p. 51)

A faithful wife who desires to dwell (after death) with her husband must never do anything that might displease him who took her hand, whether he is alive or dead. (Texts of Manu in John Raines, 2001, p. 1)

Including gender injustice is the idea that the female body becomes polluted during menstruation and childbirth. According to me, it is wonderful. How can they treat the process of reproduction that is very important for the survival of the universe is pollution? They did not realize that it was the highest power to be human being, or actually they realized about it, so that by doing so, they want to make women not to realize and doubt of their power.

In addition, according to Carmody, the most poignant summary of the official status of Hindu women throughout the past thirty-five hundred years has been the core conviction in gaining moksha, to gain moksha women would have to be reborn as a man. Even women had some access to the religious devotions; their effort could only improve their karma sufficiently to give them the opportunity of taking serious aim at moksha in a future life, when they had become upper-caste men. In this case means that moksha as the highest or most noble aim conceived by traditional Hindu culture has been closed to women as women, and so female Hindus have not been full participant in their culture’s symbol of ultimate perfection, despite the many goddesses who personified divinity in female garb. (Denise Carmody, 2002, p. 41)

Understanding the treatment of women in Hinduism that most of them are in contexts of gender injustice, like in other religion, even it was based on the sacred texts, the male domination and supremacy also take part on that. In later period, because of lack education of women, men dominate the access to the texts. Moreover women were not allowed to access the texts. So that in constructing the social role men bias is seen.

I agree with Anant’s argument that such religiously sanctioned patriarchal and androcentric views, embedded in sacred texts, are the mayor problem facing in Hindu tradition. Most of sacred texts that is exposed only those which supported male supremacy and domination, while there are many texts that honor women are not announced.

Women have to have good education to do resist and to find spaces for liberation and gender justice. Hinduism has positive resources for addressing injustice and working toward the empowerment of women’s live. Hindus women have tried to get the empowering arts of resistance and battle to insert their own narratives within the heritage of sacred texts to seek justice in gender relation. There are many sacred texts that was announced more promising discourse concerning women can be used, even in The Code of Manu:

Women must be honored and adorned by their father, brothers, husband and brothers-in-law, who desire (their own) welfare.

Where women are honored, there are gods are pleased, but where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields. (Texts of Manu mentioned in John Raines, 2001, p. 5)

As I mentioned above that subordinate position of women in Hinduism because of treatment as their instrumental role in society, to get liberation and gender justice women should be understood to have value and significant because their being. Legitimacy for that according to Anant can be conclude from the passage:

You are a woman; you are a man; you are a boy or also a girl. As an old man, you totter along with a walking stick. As you are born, you turn your face in all directions. You are the dark blue bird, and the oceans. You live as one without a beginning of your pervasiveness, you from whom all beings are born. (Texts of Svetasvatara Upanishad mentioned in John Raines, 2001, p. 7).

From this passage understood that all human being equally bear and embody the divine. Women are also atman Brahman. There is no reason to make them subordinate. In the Svetasvatara Upanishad is already mentioned that the divine is consciously identified with women (stri) and unmarried girls (kumar)i as well as with men and boys. (John Raines, 2001, p. 7).

Bibliography

John. C. Raines, The Justice Men Owe Women; positive resources from word religions, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001

Denise Carmody, Women in World Religions, (Hand out of Gender and Religion, 2002)