Feminism and Women - An Indic Perspective

Introduction

As I hear my feminist friend, my activist friends and the womenfolk around me, I wonder. I wonder about the way they perceive not just the current socio-cultural and socio – economic status of my country and its influence on the women here. I wonder about how our perceptions and understanding of the problems and the solutions are different. While all of us agree on the basics and the facts from the news, the way we envision the solutions are very different.

It is during some of our brainstorming sessions that I discussed all of these ideas with Bharat Ji, a mentor, a friend and a professional I look up to. I was amazed to see his clarity about these issues and was surprised to a great extent when I realized he and I were on the same page regarding the way we approached this subject.

Our initial discussions, led us both to put in more research, read more references and look for literature that we could relate to. Surprisingly, we didn't find many precedents. We didn't find many contemporary texts that highlighted how the Indian woman was not supposed to be traditionally battered or the second sex.

We found that the sub-altern and Indic / Vedic understanding of the importance, empowerment and self – awareness of women was lost in the long discourse of the western definition of feminism and gender study. The very fact that the Indic way of life is less about the body and more about the soul, should be a clear indication of how women are ideally supposed to be perceived. But we don't live in an ideal world, do we?

Bharat Ji and I discovered, that as the world changed, as our education system changed, as 'India' changed, we as a society, ended up losing a lot of that essence. We forgot the way we discern between the 'Jeeva Dharma' and the 'Sharira Dharma'. As a result, our pseudo-intellectual understanding of women got distorted.

This small book is an attempt to bring out the narrative of some of the exemplary women in the Indic history; not just women who were sacrificing, or feminine, or manipulated or exploited, but women who were powerful! This is the narrative of strong women with freedom and strength that was theirs to the core of their beings.

We wish to share with you, the narrative of the Freedom and strength no one gave an Indian woman, but that which she had by the very virtue of being an individual soul. Freedom and strength that she found not by competing but by doing what she's best at - being a woman!

As you read further, you will have more questions, you will wonder, you will relate with what you read and you will also evaluate and discard some of our thoughts. It is as fine to do so, as it is your right to. After all,

No matter what path one chooses, it is important to stay true to the path of self fulfillment.