Contextualizing Female Identity in the backdrop of Ancient India: A Critical Estimation
Dr. Arundhati Dutta Choudhury
Associate Professor
Department of English
Radhamadhab College, Silchar
Re-fashioning and re-making of myths, images and representations of women set in the ancient world often homogenizes with contextualizing the predicament of modern women. The vibrant Indian mythology is packed and thronged with such luminous female figures from bygone days who, on the one hand, make the readers feel proud of their strength but on the other, fill the hearts of the readers with remorse as the readers perceive the exploitation unleashed upon women by the patriarchal order while imprinting women in the fixed patterns of ancient models. Remaking of myths and contextualizing the predicament of modern women move along side by side whenever we examine images and representations of women set in the ancient world.
Ancient Indian literature has prolific details regarding women’s intrinsic relationship with nature, her vibrant correspondence with the spirit of Mother earth and so the organic unity of nature and women has been celebrated in the pages of Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads and other ancient scriptures and myths. The cultural wing of the discourse called ecofeminism attributes immense value and significance to this correspondence and the cultural ecofeminists tend to observe a link, a sense of bonding between women’s deepest emotional outburst with the simultaneous similitude with nature. Apart from justifying women’s biological construction with that of nature, in ancient Indian literature, be it mythology or classical Indian texts, a cluster of women figures may be re-explored from an eco-feminist perspective. The relevance of ecofeminism gives them a space to be re-assessed as women for whom nature stands both as restorer from the harsh apathy of the patriarchy and again for whom nature provides relevant survival strategies. The sense of contradiction is disturbing when we relocate the human positions of ancient female figures like Ahalya or Sita being sensitive to the resonances from the Vedas where Mother Earth has been spiritually visualized and revered as nature feminine.
The modern re-exploration of Ancient Indian literature in the context of the stated nature-woman bonding, women’s intrinsic correspondence with nature, her vibrant correspondence with the spirit of Mother Earth can still be found in myriads of female rituals and customs around the societal norms and dogmas predominantly performed and observed by Indian women irrespective of region and culture. In ancient Indian literature, both in mythological as well as classical Indian texts, an eco-feminist perspective may succinctly study the existence of a number of female characters, be it the fire-born Draupadi, the earth-begotten Sita or the rock-turned Ahalya whose entire sphere of life revolved round symbolic clusters of Nature. The relevance of ecofeminism may be felt justified when the modern societal space for women consciously or unconsciously tries to determine women’s human position in such backdrop of ancient legacy of sacrifice and suffering. In the ancient Indus Valley civilization of India, evidences show the worship of the mother goddess. In the Vedic stage women enjoyed a heightened spiritual status which in post-Vedic class bound social structure crushed down to a deplorable extent. The ancient Scripture thus venerated women:
ocean.
Thence I pervade all existing creatures, as their Inner Supreme Self, and
manifest them with my body.
I created all worlds at my will, without any higher being, and permeate and dwell
within them.
The eternal and infinite consciousness is I, it is my greatness dwelling in
everything.”
The proposed paper seeks to explore the feminine positions of a few women figures emerging from ancient Indian literature whose domination under patriarchy under an all-pervading reverence for the earth and environment fairly pronounced in the perspective of Indian consciousness becomes an enterprise to be re-explored and re-analysed. In ancient Indian texts it was customary for women to be blessed or cursed according to the patriarchal will of the sages and the saints. As eternally accentuated, women had to give extreme justification to her chastity as desired by the patriarchy. Still today, the austerity of women is similarly questioned as it was set against Ahalya’s identity as woman. In such a context, the figure of Ahalya demands both an explanation and attention. In Hindu mythology, Ahalya has been depicted as the wife of the sage Gautama Maharishi who had to pay for her seduction by Lord Indra being titled as an infidel who in turn was cursed by her husband to transform into a rock later on liberated by Lord Rama. Ahalya was victimized twice by the patriarchal structure of ancient social rule and her representation does not establish a comfortable zone for Indian women as to be nurtured by a highly celebrated eco-sustained social perspective of that period of time. In today’s context, Ahalya becomes an interesting character sketch not because of her victimization which is eternally prevalent across countries and cultures across the globe, but her transformation. It was nature that she turned into. Her denigration of virtue as determined by the elite patriarchy perhaps turned her into a symbolic hardened structure or perhaps it was nature’s solid refuge in which she had to succumb herself. A historical understanding of status of women in early Indian society shows a declining trend in the position of women.
From an ecofeminist perspective the juxtaposition of Ahalya with nature stands not upon the organic correspondence between nature and women but the patriarchal outlook towards a female’s entity that ironically again links her with nature. In ancient Indian literature we come across women characters that are specifically nature born like Sita or Draupadi. Their emergence allows them to be integrally connected to a never faltering connection with nature as from nature they are shown to be originated. In the perspective of Indian literature, the space of ecofeminism interprets women along with her exploited status to receive her final benediction from nature.
Since the paper intends to contextualize the issue of female identity in the backdrop of ancient anecdotes and tales, Draupadi’s status surely indicates that during the period of Sutras and Epics “ a woman was considered to be a commodity which could be kept on bet and could be sold or purchased.”4 The fact becomes highly contextual when we witness the similar subordination of women even in today’s mechanized patriarchal culture where women are objectified as mere profitable sexual objects to be traded and bargained. Ahalya’s denigration does not remain a singular event rather we feel the world to be too much burdened with the traumas of rape-victims who hardly receives solace from the human world after encountering the worst physical torture.
In the epic, The Ramayana, Sita’s final journey to submerge inside the bosom of Mother Earth brings a harmonious conclusion but a traumatic culmination to her birth upon the surface of the same Mother Earth. Indian patriarchal tradition does not permit Lord Rama to offer Sita her identity as a woman. But again like Ahalya, Sita had been re-surfaced by nature, and as such ecofeminism creates a strong domain in the perspective of Indian literature. The dearth of noble nature, the deficiency of a compassionate social order everyday perhaps crushes the sanctity of innumerable Sitas who after advocating the highest example of commitment towards family, husband and the community obliterate causelessly.
Sita, the daughter of the Earth (Bhūmi) and believed to be the adopted daughter of King Janaka and Queen Sunaina, appears in the Ramayana as an embodiment of nature. As Janaka reveals in the Ramayana:
“A treasure and a pride for eye.
Once, as it chanced, I ploughed the ground,
When sudden, ‘neath the share was found
An infant springing from the earth,
Named Sitá from her secret birth.”
Thus Sita is not born from a womb rather emanates from the earth, from a furrow of the field. Nonetheless, most naturally, Sita’s final journey mirrors that she returns back to the earth again. The Earth did absorb her and thus, Sita went back to the same place from which she was born. In today’s techno-civilized, mercantile patriarchy women are more vulnerable to be more and more brutally trapped, ransacked as items profitable, seduced and violently tortured. Even today Draupadis are born to be bargained in the dice-game of life, Sitas are tired justifying their purity of intention and Ahalyas are at the mercy of strong masculine feet.
. But the speculation becomes immensely crucial when we see the crumbling edifice of female epitomes insufficient to grab the position of female identity in the context of modern India. Reputed activist novelist Mahasweta Devi’s two short stories, ‘The Breastgiver’ and ‘Draupadi’ orient their chief thematic concerns around figures titled as Jashoda and Draupadi where if on one hand the ancient sacrifice of motherhood is shown crippled in the first narrative then in the second, Draupadi has been ruthlessly victimized by the order of the master patriarch, Senanayak.
Yet, before concluding the speculation, it should be remembered that women are that strong force of nature which, when unleashed, can change the face of the world. They are so much more than just a definition, a name, a face, or a relationship. They are not defined by societal norms put upon them forcefully. They are free, fierce, beautiful, and strong.
REFERENCES
2. Translation from Ṛigveda Saṁhitā, 4 vols (Delhi: Parimal, 2001
3. Manon Ramesh. The Ramayana: A Modern Translation. Harper Collins, 2010
4. Spivak, Gayatri Chakraborty. Trns .Breast Stories. Mahasweta Devi. Seagull, 1997
