"THOU SHALT FOLLOW SUIT," SAYETH THE MAN AND THE WOMAN ABIDETH BY THE LAW

"THOU SHALT FOLLOW SUIT," SAYETH THE MAN AND THE WOMAN ABIDETH BY THE LAW

The Hindu race has long lost character. Swamiji says that a thousand years of subjugation by foreign powers has made the race a mass of slaves, the masses having lost their individuality and bordering on utter oblivion of identity. The present population in every phase is the bearer of that legacy that has servility as its hallmark and dependence on the superior's stronger will as common characteristic. In other words Indians have not only lost individuality and identity with their glorious heritage but also their independence with their feudal mindset that makes much of the master-servant relationship, a la dāsbhāva in retrograde order. This is a debilitation driven into Hindu society by a protracted punishing alien rule that forced Hindus to go on the defensive while constantly making inroads into their culture perforce. The Hindus, ancient race as they are and, so, suffering the fatigue of ages and ever struggling to survive under fresh tyranny whenever power changed hands within the alien ambit, became ultraconservative out of the sheer desperation to preserve their person and their cherished Dharma. The lustful culture of the genetically predisposed and circumstantially conditioned  invading Arabs, backed by theological justification, launched an unprecedented sustained attack on the modesty of Hindu womanhood which forced them out of the need of sheer survival to go into purdāh (the woman's long veil). Women's education came to a halt and she became now just a mother, a baby-producing human machine with little substance to her in terms of culture born out of universal experience that necessarily comes with the light of knowledge, both temporal and spiritual. Thus, the Hindu woman became dependent on her man more than ever before and with the darkness of ignorance dawning in, she lost her individuality, independence and inspiration for higher living. Life became burdensome for her and she took solace in her ritualistic religious observances besides conducting her routine family chores. When contact with modern Europe, courtesy colonisation took place, the Hindus were en masse transported from medieval modes to progressive modern thinking. Women, mummified for ages, courtesy the excesses of Mohammedan rule and Hindu reaction thereof, could not pick up the new current as fast as their better placed male counterparts could. Hence, the Hindu men progressed and Hindu women, barring some outstanding exceptions, largely lagged behind in every phase of national life which even today shows up in their ultradependance on their male counterparts. This, perhaps, is the reason why even today, as if by inertial flow, the Sarada Math and the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission feel so dependent on the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Who knows?

Written by Sugata Bose