MALE AND FEMALE

 MALE AND  FEMALE

There is a concept in Hindu mythology about Lord Siva depicting him as “ARDHANAREESWARA”.   The concept is that  Lord Siva and Parvathy are one and the same like two sides of the same coin.  Have anybody thought about this concept of equal importance to the female as that of the male ?  We don’t know when this concept has formulated since it is a very very ancient concept.  It means that even from such ancient days,  women are considered equal to men.

Then how come it happened that the society considered women as inferior to men ?  The Indians with the help of Manusmrithi regarded women as inferior to men.  Somehow or other, it was the same  all over the world.  Let us have look at Manu’s version of women.  It says like this:

PITHRO RAKSHATHI KAUMARE

BHARTHRO RAKSHATHI YOWANE

PUTHRO RAKSHATHI VARDHAKYE

NA STHREE SWATHANTHRIAMARHATHI

This was explained by scholars that “women are protected by -  father at their childhood, by husband at their youth, by sons at their old age , and as such women does not deserve freedom”.

This was widely quoted to point out that women are inferior to men.  But I think Manu was not such a meager personality to think of women as inferior to men.  In my opinion Manu’s quotation has to be interpreted like this:

Manu points out only at the masculine and feminine structure of the male and female.  “As men are more masculine in body character, they are bound to protect women during all the stages of life.  And women are not free from this protection since this a protection of love and kindness”. 

But what about position of the women folk now a days ?   We can see that there are reservations for women in all the three tier system  of Panchayats and even in the assembly and the parliament.  What is the meaning of these reservations ?  It means that we are not ready to see women as equals to men.  There is no question of reservation when  we men are ready to accept women as equals to us.  This quality is lacking in men even in this century and hence we make only reservations for women.  

What we have to do is give up this so called feeling of superiority over the women folk and then there will not be any need to offer reservations to the women.

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