PAST AS THE PRESENT PART IV----OUR WOMEN—THEN AND NOW OUR WOMEN

   OUR WOMEN—THEN AND NOW OUR                          WOMEN

                 THEN AND NOW: AN INTRODUCTION 

Religion and caste have been taken as central aspects of the social ethic. But even more crucial to its practice is the way our society treats its women. This awareness is of recent vintage in societies everywhere, but the mindset that directs attitudes towards women has also been a presence in societies that have been viewed as advanced or less so. The mindset varies from that of groups that live off the given environment to those that attempt to bring the environment under their control in a variety of ways. In the former the subservience of women seems to be less marked, but gradually as conditions in the latter are strengthened, the gender status becomes more demarcated until patriarchy begins to determine the social codes. The kind of subservience and the degree to which it is required varies from groups in power and authority to subordinate ones. Women of upper caste royal families live well but can flout the social code only up to a point, whereas those some rungs down the social ladder can do so if the consequences are not too severe. The relative freedom at the lower levels and lack of it at the upper, is compensated by the wealthy life-style at the upper levels, denied to those lower down. But those at the still lower rungs of the social ladder had neither the wealth nor the freedom to choose the kind of life they wanted to live. In assessing the position of women, then and now, caste and wealth are indicators even where they do not necessarily coincide. Some social activities and institutions were open to women to express their independence but these activities and institutions, specifically for women, remained marginal to the society as a whole. Nevertheless, a small possibility did exist. It is true that the women of the elite were indulged and lived well. However, this good life has to be juxtaposed with the fact that even symbolically, they had an inferior status, encapsulated in their speaking Prakrit in the literature of high culture whereas the men spoke Sanskrit (barring the companion to the king). Those of middle status were the wives, the ideal wives or pativratas, and remained subordinate to the men. Those of the lowest status were household servants and slaves, or women working in artisan and peasant families, counted like chattel in numbers suggesting that they were treated with contempt by the upper castes. The occasional woman philosopher such as Gargi, who is often quoted to prove the high status of women in ancient times, is actually the proverbial swallow and does not make a summer. Women had few options other than becoming housewives and this was not unusual in other ancient societies as well. But the other options were two: a young woman could be trained as a skilled professional in the arts and in literature in preparation for becoming a respected courtesan; or else she could renounce being a housewife and take orders as a nun. Interestingly, sexuality in the first instance was enhanced and in the second it was denied. Patriarchy ensured that two options were open to a miniscule number of women. Perhaps, this was a safety-valve, since otherwise the need to observe the caste codes in arranging a marriage was a mechanism of the caste patriarchs controlling women, even if the control was tyrannical: a pattern that continues in many parts of the country. Caste and patriarchy are intertwined and patriarchy can survive if it can control caste—that means in effect if it can control the code of marriage connections within or outside a pattern of caste. ‘Honour’ becomes a euphemism for this control, frequently involving extreme violence against women. Yet the irony is that women are the only ones who know the true paternity of the child. And the mitochondrial DNA is also from the woman. In gender-biased societies like ours where women are treated as inferior, established religions do not demand gender equality. There is no condemnation of those organizations that pride themselves in murdering their women members who seek to be equal to men and take independent decisions about their marriage lives. If the shar’ia required that a woman suspected of adultery should be stoned to death, the Bhagvad Gita establishes a mindset by referring to women and low castes as sinfully born, and khap panchayats do the rest. In a recent diktat they required women to cover themselves from top to toe—virtually the same as wearing a burkha. The model of the mullahs is unmistakable. This is, they say, to prevent the male gaze from resting on revealingly tight jeans and churidars. Would it not be simpler to do something about the male gaze? In the past, there was a debate as to whether a woman of status should immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre in order to demonstrate the status of the family as well as her dedication to her husband. And, incidentally, it ensured the removal of at least one possible claimant to the inheritance of property. Some women who were better established or of a higher caste, were required to become satis. But even in the past this was a subject of debate with many disapproving of this requirement of women. In our times many women were set on fire if they brought an inadequate dowry. One could well ask if there is some subconscious link in the patriarchal mind between the agni-pariksha, fire-ordeal of Sita; the encouraging of women to become satis, the practice of entering the fire jointly in a jauhar when a Rajput raja was defeated in a campaign; and the frequency of dowry deaths in recent times. And it is not even curious that it is always the woman who has to burn; it is always the woman who has to burn to prove her chastity; it is always the woman who has to burn in order to protect the male honour of her husband. The violence and the brutality inherent in demanding that these acts be performed seems now to be diverted into the appalling number of rapes that are becoming apparent every day. When will there be real concern in practice, about our social ethic towards women? Perhaps this will come when women are given equal rights over property and inheritance, setting aside the Hindu Code Bill and the Muslim Personal Law; when there are no caste barriers to marriage and when claims to tradition and customary law do not determine the rules of marriage; and when the mindset of Indians, particularly of the men, accepts gender equality with its corollary of equal respect for men and women. 18 WOMEN IN THE INDIAN PAST Events of the nineteenth century reflected a disjuncture in Indian society in several ways. Colonization implied domination and subordination as evident in the relationship between the colonial power and the colonized. This also extended to relationships within the colonized. The existing dominance of the upper castes was underlined as was the subordination of lower castes. The middle-class that emerged in this period was initially largely drawn from the upper castes. This condition affected many aspects of living and thinking and the study of the past was no exception. The reconstruction of social and cultural history by colonial scholars, also gave direction to the identity of the emerging middle-class. It determined how we understood the past in what we regard as our tradition and inheritance, and this perception continues to this day. Colonial scholarship had defined Indian society as having been a static society registering no change, governed by despotic rulers and ground down into poverty. This depiction was rightly questioned. Indian historians, influenced by Indian nationalism, responded to these theories. However, the response was not questioning enough as some colonial interpretations were accepted. Despotism was opposed but Mill’s periodization was effectively continued. Historians influenced by nationalism contradicted the negative aspects of the colonial view. For example, they argued against the notion that all Indian rulers were despots or that the ordinary people lived in extreme poverty, and instead they maintained that the wealth of India was drained away to finance British industrial development. Such questioning advanced the discipline of history as it introduced a necessary debate. Nationalisms all over the world draw on a golden age of the past. The further back in time it can go the better so that it cannot be closely questioned. Some Indian nationalist historians did the same. Instead of continuing to analyse the data from the past they tended to project an idyllic and prosperous society for the ancient period. Ancient India became the utopian foundation of Indian civilization. It was thought that Indian society functioned as stated in the normative texts, the Dharmashastras. The social codes and obligations of the four varnas were observed according to these texts. This was viewed as a system by which everyone knew his or her place in society and abided by it. Indian scholars working on social history initially saw it as an acceptable way of organizing society. There was some, but not nearly enough discussion, on the inequities of a system that resulted in gross inequalities. The intention was primarily to contradict the negative features presented in colonial writing, and portray Indian society in a positive manner. Possibly part of the reason for this was that many historians of that period were themselves from the upper castes and for them the inequalities were normal to social functioning. Because social inequalities received less attention there were three groups whose actual social conditions remained vague. They were kept at the margins of history. These were, first, women at all levels of society; secondly, the lower castes—the shudras and Dalits and those not part of mainstream society; and thirdly, the ‘tribal societies’ who were mainly forest-dwellers. The neglect of these groups was augmented by the relative lack of texts written in ancient times by women and by authors from the lower castes. Such sections of society were not required to be literate and the contrast with the literate shows up when this lack is compared to the many by upper caste men authors. Early histories of any part of the world are generally constructed from the writings of elite groups, and an effort has to be made to look for sources from other groups or read the history of such groups from existing sources. Even more important, most historians themselves did not think it necessary to write the history of those regarded as socially inferior. The demand from feminists and Dalits that their history also be written was yet to come. On the subject of women in the Indian past the standard text was the wellknown study with which we are all familiar, A.S. Altekar’s The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, published in 1956. This summed up the way in which the subject was thought of up to that point. References to the activities of women were collected from the texts and put together in an attempt to suggest that women were uniformly respected members of society. It could not be otherwise, it was said, since those were the times of Vedic civilization in which women were venerated. Implicit in these descriptions was that the ideal woman, the pativrata—the one devoted to her husband—acted in accordance with the Dharmasastras. There was little attempt to investigate what women were doing and saying and what the reality of their lives was. This had to wait for two events. One was the advent of research and writing on social and economic history. Historians interacted with other social sciences and investigated theories of historical explanation, all of which were asking a different set of questions. The second change came with the beginnings of what is now called feminist history. The consciousness of this history came from societies in various parts of the world, and began to consider the centrality of women in both past and present societies. In India the movement began in the 1960s and gathered momentum in the 1980s with studies analysing this perspective in the Indian context. Historians began collecting data from various sources to try and fill out the picture of the social role of women, but it should be said here that the realization had by now dawned upon them than the accumulation of data in itself was not sufficient. New questions had to be asked of the data. A major change was that women were no longer treated as a single category defined by gender with little differentiation between women of different social classes and castes. Earlier generalizations had been made from the evidence of women of the elite and applied universally. This was misleading. In some texts there is adulation for women, in others contempt and they are referred to as a single category. The Gita, for example, speaks of shudras, vaishyas and women as one category, all being papa-yoni, born of sinful wombs. Other texts refer to only one group of women among many others. These references have to be differentiated. Regional variations, crucial in terms of kin-relations, tended to be papered over especially when it came to rights over property and inheritance. Customary law was sometimes contrary to the normative codes, yet was observed. And then there is the question of hidden patriarchy that continues to control society to this day, even where it is seemingly less visible. All these questions are inter-connected. Attitudes towards women were obviously conditioned by the social level of the women being discussed. In the past, as in the present, this varied according to their social and economic level. It is now recognised that when generalizations are made about women, their precise location in society should be indicated. The initial representation of women by historians was generally that women had a high status, going back to Vedic times of around 1000 BC. Much is made of the reference to Gargi, who debated with a leading philosopher of those times, Yajnavalkya, as recorded in an Upanishad. She is said to have asked many tough questions and differed from him. So much so that when her questions became really sophisticated and he probably could not answer them, he told her to stop asking them lest her head should split. This was a technique of ending the discussion. Such incidents need to be juxtaposed with others that speak of a different condition. Some women were educated but this was not expected of them. The hesitation to their being educated in Sanskrit is taken to such an extreme that in classical Sanskrit dramas, the women characters irrespective of whether their status was high or low, uniformly spoke the commonly used Prakrit, whilst the men spoke Sanskrit—the language of the educated. Quite evidently it was meant to be a putting down of the woman. The exception of course was the curious anomaly of the brahmana vidushaka, companion to the king, who spoke Prakrit. Despite this, there were queens who made substantial religious grants or held administrative office, or even ruled. One of the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka of the third century BC, states that all the grants made by the queen Karuvaki, the mother of Tivara, are to be recorded. This is an unusual document as kings seldom proclaim the donations of their queens. Possibly this was because the ambience at this time was Buddhist and Buddhism made more concessions to accepting the right of women to express themselves. There are other instances of queens making grants when they were politically in authority as individuals and therefore the need for endorsement by male rulers was not required. The daughter of Chandragupta II, Prabhavati Gupta, was married into the Vakataka family in the fourth century AD. She issued inscriptions and made grants when she was ruling as regent for her minor son after the passing away of her husband. Another regent and one of the most colourful of royal women, was the Kashmiri queen Didda in the tenth century. She was regent for her son and grandson and governed as a full-fledged Queen for twenty-three years. Her success lay in playing off the various political factions at the court, pitching one against the other. Some royal women were associated with making grants to religious sects, and to institutions such as monasteries and temples and later to brahmanas. The grants are frequently of villages and land. Such grants would have involved a clearance from the state administration, since the financing of the grants would have come from the royal treasury. This in turn would have involved assessing the grant in terms of the loss of revenue to the state, and balancing the loss against political gain to the king from the supporters of those receiving the grant. This would be particularly important to sects competing for royal patronage, which was a significant source of finance and status. Such substantial grants cannot be viewed solely as an exercise in religious charity. The activities that followed from the grant would have had wider implications. One may ask whether large religious donations were a sign of the intervention of royal women in the politics of the court, where patronage in some situations was a political statement in addition to being a religious activity. An interesting case of differentiation in patronage within the same royal family is that of the Ikshvaku royal women who made donations to the Buddhists at Nagarjunakonda, whereas the men were patrons of Vedic sacrifices. These were sects known to be often hostile to each other. This pattern of distribution of largesse to different religious groups suggests that some political calculation also went into determining patronage apart from religious sentiments. At the level of patronage, donations sometimes become an act of asserting choice within the limited independence on the part of women. Where they made the choice in opposition to prevailing patriarchy, such women have to be given credit, even if they represented a small minority. Women who belonged to the upper castes and to families of status had also to contend with another practice, that of having to become a sati, requiring them to immolate themselves on the funeral pyre of their husband. This was forbidden initially to brahmana wives and there are few if any references to lower caste women doing so. Possibly in many cases it was an assertion of higher caste status conveniently requiring only the women to burn. Because it occurred more often among those who owned property it may also have been a way of reducing the number of legal claimants to inheritance. The ritual has been traced to Vedic sources that associate it with a form of levirate. The widow could lie briefly on the pyre, but would then be married to her husband’s brother. Having been marked with the identity of the family on her first marriage, she as property, remained within the family. Views on immolation are controversial in many early texts such as the Mahabharata and Bana’s Kadambari. The earliest recorded case dates to a sixth century AD inscription. Memorials to satis, the sati-stones, often occur together with the hero-stone that commemorates the hero defending the village cattle in a raid. By modern times, the context changes as does its meaning. Gargi became the popular icon among those writing on the position of women in early India. But we should remember that she was exceptional, as she was individually gifted but was also from the more privileged section of society, and did not represent the majority of women. Similarly, the royal women who made grants were a small minority. The larger number among the better off were the wives of grihapatis, householders, and this determined their status. The concession to their role was that in most Vedic rituals the wife of the yajamana, patron of the sacrificial ritual, had to be present and participate in some of the ritual. It is difficult to provide data on the vast majority of women of early times, the women who were working partners in small households. These were peasant women and those that assisted their artisan-husbands in their professions. References to them are occasional and suggest that their aspirations were limited by their low shudra status. They are shadowy figures in the brahmanical narratives but more assertive in the Buddhist Jataka stories. They were not included in the category of the pativratas of the better-off households, but this in a sense encouraged the possibility for them of a greater degree of freedom. The substantial number of women were dasis, whose condition was unenviable. Until recently historians gave little attention to these women, as has been so eloquently pointed out by Uma Chakravarti, a contemporary feminist historian. This was the other side of the picture. Initially the term referred to the women of the dasa community, the community of the Other, to whom the arya was opposed. But gradually, it changed to meaning the women who were enslaved and worked in the households. These were the women who were treated as inferior, and who could be gifted as an item of property. Not only in the dana-stuti hymns but also in the Mahabharata when Yudhisthira gambles away his wealth, mention is made of large numbers of dasis as part of this wealth. Dasis were the main prop of every reasonably well-off household. The dasi was owned as property and therefore had no rights. Her status was the lowest but her work was the heaviest, and her wage was generally minimal. She had no authority over anyone. Quite the contrary, she had to submit to anyone who came her way, male or female. There was little recognition that there were some who protested against their role and did so out of a wish for independence from the social code. Some resented the labour they had to put in as part of household tasks. The poems of the women who became Buddhist nuns, the Therigatha, provide descriptions of the chores involved for women in running a household, even if they were not always dasis. That dasis were treated with scant respect is evident. For example, the story is narrated of Jabala in one of the Upanishads. He was a young man anxious to be taught by the rishis. When asked about his caste he said he did not know what it was. His mother had told him that she worked as a dasi in a household and men came and went, and she did not know who his father might have been. The teachers decided that since Jabala had told them the truth, his father must have been a brahmana, and accepted him as a student. Dasis were the polar opposite of the pativrata, the ideal being applied only to a higher social category. This is not altogether unconnected with a curious category of brahmanas, whom we have encountered earlier in this volume, the dasiputra brahmanas, almost an oxymoron, as its literal meaning is ‘brahmanas who are the sons of dasis’. At first they were despised because of their parentage, but when it was seen that the gods approved of them, they were accepted as ritual priests. Some of the more renowned Vedic rishis were of this mixed category. Among the better-known ones was said to be Kakshivant, the son of the priest of the Bharatas who married a dasi, Usij. The wife who was expected to be devoted to her husband and the household, needed to act according to the rules of the dharmashastras as laid down for women, rules that envisaged little else than patriarchy. This is only too evident in the verse quoted so often from Manu, that a woman is under the surveillance of her father when unmarried, of her husband when married and finally of her son when widowed. Where identity is determined by birth and is crucial as in caste, it is essential to know the parentage. In order to maintain the rules of caste it is essential to keep women under control. This is obvious because ultimately only a woman knows the biological father of her child. Caste and patriarchy are therefore inseparable. We see a demonstration of this in our own times in the socalled ‘honour killings’, where young women who break away from the caste laws of marriage, are brutally murdered in the name of maintaining caste purity, on the orders of the male elders of the caste. But there were other less obvious ways in which patriarchy was exercised. Among these were the diverse forms of marriage permitted in the Dharmashastras, some familiar and some strange. The explanation for the diversity may lie in wanting to include various ways in which women were exchanged and acquired, ways linked to caste practices. The Mahabharata has a fund of contradictory stories about these patterns of exchange. In the Pandava family itself, three consecutive generations observe three entirely different forms of family relations, a situation which would never occur now. These three are: endogamy—marriage within defined circles but excluding blood relations, as in the case of Pandu marrying Kunti and Madri; fraternal polyandry where one woman, Draupadi, is married to all five Pandava brothers; and the cross-cousin marriage of Arjun marrying his mother’s brother’s daughter, Subhadra. Polyandry and cross-cousin marriage are not included in the marriage forms discussed in the dharmashastras. Nevertheless, they are otherwise legitimate because they reflect the variations among the societies portrayed in the epic. This becomes a codification outside the dharmashastras that was doubtless legitimized as customary law. The legally acceptable forms of marriage, as in Manu, are supportive of the subordination of women. Whereas the social codes are particular about caste boundaries, there are nevertheless contradictions within the texts and between the texts. Eight forms of marriage are regarded as legal. In the much-lauded kanya-dana, the father with full patriarchal rights appropriate to the upper castes, gifts his daughter. As the recipient of a gift that does not call for a return gift, the groom’s family asserts superiority and can make further demands. We have seen this carried to an unacceptable extreme in the hundreds of dowry deaths where the bride is murdered, often burnt to death for not being able to provide more and more consumer commodities as part of the dowry. Husbands and in-laws are frequently held guilty of the death. The asura form involved a bride-price, where the value of the woman and the marriage alliance was weighed in terms of the wealth paid by the family of the man. The rakshasa form required the abduction of the bride by the groom and his family, as in the case of Arjuna marrying Subhadra in the Mahabharata, with Krishna having to cool the anger of the Vrishnis. The gandharva marriage is by mutual consent and motivated, Manu informs us, primarily by sexual desire, doubtless appropriate to the roving eye of kings. The context more frequently is when a king finds himself face-to-face with a desirable woman, as for instance Dushyanta and Shakuntala. The woman’s caste is of less concern although Dushyanta is relieved to hear that Shakuntala is of a high caste. The woman in such marriages is often an apsara, a semi-celestial being, so she is allowed to exercise her choice freely. When included in the genealogies of lineages such marriages become a device to give status to a new lineage or to plaster over a break in succession. The apsara was a liberated woman, coming and going as she pleased and not as ordered by the hero. The prototype is the famous Urvashi, who jettisoned the distraught Pururavas and agreed to visit him only once a year, and after each visit bore him a son. Myths are of interest to historians, not because they narrate events that have actually happened, but because they encapsulate the hidden assumptions of a society. They provide clues for instance, as to how a community disguises the breaking of normative rules. Deities and semi-celestial beings do not observe the norms. The apsara for example, contradicts the behaviour of the ideal human woman, but she is not condemned for doing so. Instead, she is the personification of the freedom of women. Was she a concession to the aspirations of those women who wanted greater freedom, or was she the fantasy of the upper caste male? Does she mark the demarcation between the liberated semi-celestial woman, and the limitations on the earthly woman who had no such freedom. Even if semi-mythical she could be claimed as an ancestress by families of considerable status. The apsara is more visible in the Mahabharata and the legends narrated in the Puranas pertaining to the past. In these narratives women tend to be outspoken and more independent, perhaps because patriarchy and caste rules were still flexible in the earlier period. Their actions are not invariably in conformity with the codes of caste behaviour. The women are the truly heroic figures and the motivators of events but not as the ‘tigers among men’, as the heroes were called. At every crucial point in the narrative it is the initiative of a woman that is pivotal. Kunti is the effective patriarch of the Pandavas, both in arranging for their birth from the gods and in their polyandrous marriage; Gandhari mothers a hundred sons providing the counterpoint of evil so essential to an epic narrative; and Draupadi questions the legality of her being staked in the dicing match and instigates revenge and war. Interestingly these are not the women usually held up as the role model in the society of today. The preference is for the more submissive Sita. A decline in the importance of apsaras, when clan society also declined, seemed to coincide with goddesses emerging as more powerful figures than before. But there is sometimes an overlap between the two that needs investigation. The worship of goddesses has been a substratum religion in India for a longer period than any other. Goddess figurines of terracotta go back to at least the Indus cities. These have continued to be made and worshipped to the present day, which gives them a history of five thousand years. Insistence on the subservience of women did not dull male ardour in worshipping female deities, encapsulating the quintessential female force. The goddesses were made the consorts of the major gods, or worshipped in their own right, but curiously despite their being icons of fertility, few bore children. By the mid-first millennium AD, some goddesses continued to symbolize fertility, others were associated with destructive force. A couple of centuries later, Shakti worship became more visible at all levels of society. Temples to the yoginis began to be constructed, many observing a circular architectural form, deliberately it would seem, to differentiate them from temples dedicated to male deities with or without consorts. With the emergence of Puranic Hinduism and Bhakti, devotional worship, taking the form that it did, there were women who were peripatetic singers of hymns to Shiva and Vishnu, who enhanced the Bhakti tradition and wandered through town and countryside, joined by large followings. From Lalla in Kashmir to Mira in Rajasthan to Andal in Tamil Nadu, they all wandered, singing and propagating the bhakti form of worship. These were women who broke away from the dharmashastra code on how women should live and behave. In the case of Mira, the legends about her life in the oral tradition, are fully aware of the tension in controverting the code. Another category of women partially reflect the freedom of the apsaras. These were the courtesans. But unlike the apsaras who made their appearance in forest habitats, the courtesans were part of the urban scene. The profession of the courtesan, ganika, was distinctly different from that of the prostitute, veshya, and the two should not be confused, as we often do today. The prostitute was an established institution of urban life in Kautilya’s Arthashastra and prostitution was recognized by the state as a profession. The prostitute was registered and paid a tax on her earnings, there being no qualms on collecting such a tax. There was awareness that she could be abused therefore she is said to have some degree of state protection. There is also a concern about rape victims and the degrees of punishments for various categories of rape are listed. These include physically branding the rapist. This suggests a greater degree of condemnation of the act, than is often forthcoming in our times. It is recommended that prostitutes be used in obtaining information from various sources and in state espionage. The woman who chose to be a courtesan was of a different category. She was not a professional sex-worker. She was more in the nature of a pleasurable companion for members of the elite and an accomplished performer in the arts. She could choose her clients and was therefore herself the patron. She had to undergo a rigorous training in music, dance, poetry and the arts. The profession was regarded as quite respectable and most courtesans lived well and were a recognised part of the urban scene. The more accomplished could be attached to the royal court and could become the concubines of kings. If they bore children to the king, such children or their descendants could be claimants to the throne. Such a descent was associated in one source with Kumarapala the pre-eminent Caulukya king of Gujarat. A much-respected courtesan, Ambapalli, gave substantial donations to the Buddhist Sangha, and was regarded as so special that she was treated as an icon of the city of Vaishali. In literary texts such as the Mricchakatika, the courtesan is highly accomplished and helpful to the family of the hero. Perhaps the absence of the notion of Satan and of ‘original sin’ in Indian mythology of pre-modern times, allowed there to be a sane attitude to sexuality as one of the components of a balanced life. The internalization of Victorian mores in the nineteenth century helped to unsettle this sanity. There is a tenuous link between courtesans and the later institution of devadasis, who were also well-trained in the arts but dedicated to the temple. This group was recruited through daughters being gifted to the temple, a better proposition than what is done today through female infanticide, and from the daughters of those devadasis who remained attached to the temple but could, in effect, be concubines of priest and patron. Free in theory, they were effectively subservient to various authorities, primarily those in charge of the temple. Justification of this system was sought by maintaining, ironically, that they were serving the gods! These various categories of women chose a profession but one that was conditioned by, and dependent on, the world of men. Nevertheless, in the articulation of their professional accomplishments they did shape the form of music and dance in ways that could be innovative and could advance the form. So much of our appreciation and enjoyment of these art forms today derives from the creativity of the ganikas and devadasis, and their successors in later times. These women were not required to maintain the boundaries of caste nor was it essential to their own identity. As women they could deny the centrality of procreation, not observe monogamy and have an independent income. Thus they opposed Manu’s rules regarding the subservience of women to fathers, husbands and sons. In addition, their profession drew on sexuality—enhanced, extensive, and breaking caste boundaries—the very thing that patriarchy wished to prevent through its control over women. In a sense, the courtesan could oppose patriarchy because she was well-connected to the life of the royal court and the urban rich. If such opposition is a response to power then the courtesan’s freedom lay in her access to power, although the access differed from the usual. But the courtesan was regarded essentially as someone who had opted out of observing the social norms required for the women of the household. Nevertheless, her freedom was circumscribed by a certain degree of social mores. There was another category of women, altogether different, that also asserted its relative independence. These were the women who became Buddhist and Jaina nuns and thereby broke the rules of the Dharmasastras. These women moved away from their role of being wives and mothers in perpetuity. Some did so out of a wish to lead a life dedicated to worship, but others probably just wanted to get away from the chores of a mundane existence. As a nun, the woman was required to live with other women of various castes, from shudras to brahmanas. In living off alms as food she had to eat food collected from people of diverse castes, some lower than her own. As a nun she negated caste. Judging by the votive inscriptions at Buddhist stupa sites, she could as a nun, make a donation to the Buddhist Sangha, so she retained some rights to income. These votive inscriptions carry information about women, some of whom became nuns, but made donations. Other women who did not become nuns, also make donations. They identify themselves by their kinsfolk—as daughter, wife, mother, sister, niece, and such like. They mention the occupation of the family, such as small-scale landowners, merchants, artisans, and the location from where they came, but seldom their caste. This information is interestingly complemented by the views expressed by some Buddhist nuns in the Therigatha. Initially, many nuns were from the upper castes, as were the monks, but gradually this changed with members of the lower castes also joining monasteries and convents. Nuns on entering the Order were asked a series of questions that related to their station in life. Did they have a sponsor if they were working somewhere, and if they were young then the consent of their parents was necessary, or presumably their husband if alive. In some cases where the husband was a member of a guild, permission was required from the guild. They had to establish that they were free of debt since the convent did not wish to be pursued by creditors. That the nun’s independence was relative was because she had to conform to the rules of the establishment, and of course the monk was always held in greater respect than a nun. Nevertheless it did in a sense reflect the woman’s freedom to choose an alternate life-style. This was an area where patriarchy had a more limited reach. The rules were broken but the affect of this on society was contained. Contrary to the courtesan, the nun had to deny her sexuality. Nuns, where they had some personal control over property, were allowed to use it to make votive gifts. The question has been asked whether these gifts were made from their stri-dhana—their personal wealth gifted to them from either the family into which they were born, or their mother. Or, did the wealth come to them from an inheritance? Or like the monks did they also invest in trade? That monks and nuns continued to have some personal income has been the basis of much recent discussion on the role of the Buddhist monastery as an institution, with links to commerce and land-ownership, and therefore not characterized by social isolation. Nuns as managers of the property donated to a convent, would have involved their having a status that goes with holding office, wielding power in a recognized institution—that of the convent. This brings in the wider question related to the rights of women to property where both law and custom had regional variations. In generalizing about patriarchy in pre-modern India it is as well to keep in mind that there were some pockets of matrilineal systems that continued for centuries. They even reformulated caste rules to accommodate the customary law and practices of the region. An example of this was the Marumakkathayam in Kerala and also that which prevailed among the Khasis of Northeastern India. What the effect of these systems has been on current society would be worth exploring further. A major initial difference in these societies related to inheritance and control over property. The rights of women although not absolute did concede more than their almost incidental rights to their own wealth, the stri-dhana, in the patriarchal system. The question of stri-dhana as exclusive to women is also tied to property rights among women of propertied classes. Stri-dhana was wealth over which women had exclusive rights and which they could pass on to their daughters. The question raised was whether this was a gift or an inheritance, in the context of women’s rights to property. The debate on these rights became controversial from the early second millennium. Some commentators on property law argue that stri-dhana disqualifies a woman from a share in the patrimony, particularly of immovable property, which was generally inherited in the male line. It is thought therefore that a woman’s personal wealth would have been largely movable items. Some tension is apparent between the son’s exclusive right to the patrimony or his having to share it with his mother and sisters, a question that continues in present-day litigation on this issue in many well-to-do families. The definition of sapinda, belonging to the same ancestry, became crucial in the context of inheritance, but there was a debate on the definition. These concerns applied to the well-off, since most families as even now, had little to inherit in the way of property. The social codes seem to vary according to the scheme of caste and of social custom of a region. Therefore the study of the customary law in various regions is important for the understanding of variations in the Dharmashastras dealing with inheritance, laws of ownership and partition of property. Women in the history of Indian society cannot be seen as a uniform group all conditioned in the same way and observing the regulations as laid down in the normative texts. They are from different castes and social classes therefore their activities are diverse, as are their aspirations. Some conformed to the social codes. Some observed customary law that was more pliable to meeting change. Yet others, not unexpectedly of a smaller number, sought alternative paths of self-fulfilment, given to pursuits of prevalent religions or of pleasure, or various combinations of both. There was a tendency among earlier historians to focus only on what was said in the normative texts and the evidence that we have of women conforming to this. Occasional deviations were noted. But now we have to consider other questions. Was there really such a strong conformity with the codes and if so, then why? The continued insistence that the code be observed, raises suspicion that perhaps it was not so meticulously observed. And how do we explain the many deviations and in varying contexts? As has been rightly said, where women resisted the norms, their resistance has to be recognized, else it would have been in vain. However much the orthodox social codes may have wanted to iron out and straitjacket their lives, there were women who questioned the codes, some to a greater and some to a lesser degree. As a consequence such women lived multi-faceted lives. We have to illumine these facets if we are to understand the women of the past. 19 BECOMING A SATI— THE PROBLEMATIC WIDOW P.V. Kane in his monumental work, History of Dharmasastra, dating to 1958, starts his brief chapter on sati with what can only be described now as a quotable quote. He states: ‘This subject is now of academic interest in India since for over a hundred years (i.e. from 1829) self-immolation of widows has been prohibited by law in British India and has been declared to be a crime.’ However, as we know only too well passing a law is one thing but having it universally implemented is another. Incidents linked to women becoming satis have declined and hopefully stopped, but there’s no certainty at all that there will not be another. The last one was when a woman was required to immolate herself on the funeral pyre of her husband at Deorala in 1987. This led to a considerable debate on sati, both as religious belief and as social ethic. The debate is not of recent origin as it has been a controversial subject since early times. There continues to be among some people a mindset that almost condones the act as a demonstration of the freedom of choice that a woman can exercise and as a demonstration of loyalty to her husband and a wish to follow the most extreme diktats of her religion. But those that became satis in the past rarely did so out of choice. What is of significance today is not just the incidence of widows becoming satis even in the last century, but the attempt to justify the custom by arguing that its prevelance in the past gives it historical legitimacy as a tradition. This overlooks the fact that even in the past it involved more than merely a funereal custom. It symbolizes an attitude towards women as a definition of what is regarded as ‘tradition.’ It has been defended as being a symbol of traditional values, especially those concerning the ideal relationship between husband and wife. It feeds into the cast of mind still current that women are inferior and vulnerable and therefore are assumed to be unreliable. They have to continually prove their devotion to their husbands even in ways that can only be called extreme. A prevalent view is that it was necessitated by the ‘Muslim invasions’ when upper-caste Hindu women had to defend their honour from Muslim marauders, a view that began to be propagated in the nineteenth century. But the historically recorded incidents of sati predate not only the arrival of Islam in India but even the emergence of Islam. The fact that there was a debate on the subject even from early times speaks of its not being a universally accepted custom. It was generally restricted to the families of the dominant castes where it became symbolic of status and that too not in all dominant castes. The woman through immolating herself established the status of the family. Today we require other ways of establishing status, so sati has become expendable. That some cannot bring themselves to condemn it outright, is curious. Is it an attempt to justify what are thought to be the preservation of Hindu values even if many Hindus opposed it in the past? Incidentally, it should be pointed out that a woman who thus immolates herself or is forced to do so, is not committing sati, but it is through the act, becoming a sati—a faithful wife, a virtuous woman. It is easy enough to take the stand that those who do not accept sati as part of the Hindu tradition are westernized Indians deracinated from the mainsprings of the Hindu ethos. They are therefore unable to understand either the concept of honour among those that approved of the act, or to appreciate the idealized relationship between a Hindu husband and wife, such, that it is sought to be perpetuated to eternity through sati; or to see that sati is a pure act of the ultimate in sacrifice (even if such an act is reduced to a public spectacle with a variety of entrepreneurs literally cashing in on it). Such arguments deny a discussion on the subject and the latter is necessary if we are to attempt an understanding of our traditions. Traditions in any case often arise out of contemporary needs but seek legitimation from the past by claims to antiquity. Therefore the past has to be brought into play where such legitimation is sought. There is no simple explanation for the origin of the custom of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. The Rajput connection is only of the last few centuries whereas references to the custom go back many centuries. References to the practice are scattered in various parts of the subcontinent. It would be helpful if these could be mapped to provide evidence of regions more prone to the practice as well as its chronological spread. It is said to be a symbol of aristocratic status associated with some early societies such as those of the Greeks and the Scythians. There is however no other society where it was practiced by variant social groups for different reasons at various points in time, and where the controversy over whether or not it should be practised was so clearly articulated over many centuries since early times. Because of this, in India it underwent changes in its meaning arising out of the reasons for its observance as well as the degree to which it was accepted. Its origin is generally traced to the subordination of women in patriarchal society. But in searching for origins, other factors might also be considered. If a woman is purchased as a bride, the logical termination may have been the requirement of her dying together with her husband, although this is not associated with such purchase. Perhaps a more acceptable explanation may relate to societies changing their systems of kinship and inheritance. In some circumstances the wife would be an alien who would have to be debarred from claiming an inheritance. A further reason could be that it demonstrated control over female sexuality. The practice may have originated among societies in flux and become customary among those holding property such as the families of chiefs and kshatriyas. Once it became established as a custom associated with the kshatriyas it was to continue to be so among all those claiming kshatriya status. The earliest hint of a ritual that might have been similar to sati comes from the Rigveda of the late second millennium BC. But it takes a different turn. The Vedic texts on the contrary endorse the system of niyoga or levirate where a widow is permitted to marry her husband’s brother if she has not borne a son to her husband. In the Rigveda the act was only a mimetic ceremony. The widow lay beside her dead husband on the funeral pyre but was raised up by a male relative of the deceased. Elsewhere there is mention of her being married to his brother. If she was lying on the pyre it would be just short of a sati ritual, but if she was subsequently married to the brother it became a niyoga. This would keep her identity tied to the family. The property of her husband remained intact within the family. Attempts were made in later times to seek Vedic sanction for the immolation by changing the word agre, to go forth, into agneh, to the fire, in the specific verse. But where the widow is not meant to immolate herself this change is spurious. The Vedic ritual, referring to families of high status, may represent the termination of an earlier practice when the woman had to immolate herself, or else, it could also have been symbolic of the death of the wife on the death of her husband. In some ways the idea of niyoga is the counterpoint to sati. Whereas sati requires the death of the wife, niyoga ensures her remaining alive and bearing children until she has a son, and being looked after by her husband’s family even as a widow. An impotent husband can allow his wife to have a son by another man, preferably his brother, which son is regarded as the son of the husband. But niyoga refers to the widow conceiving a son from her deceased husband’s brother. The necessity for a male child is to ensure that a son performs the ancestral rites, which enable the father to be saved from hell. This was an entirely acceptable custom discussed in the social codes as a practice or else described in narratives. Not that everybody resorted to niyoga but should it be required it was a possible solution. The choice between the two was of course not in the hands of the woman, but was dependent on the status of the family. The act of immolation is first described in Greek texts, quoting from earlier accounts referring to incidents of the fourth century BC. Widows are burnt on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands among the Katheae (Kshatriya or khattiya) in the Punjab. Unable to explain this practice the author remarks that it was an attempt to prevent wives from poisoning their husbands! According to the same sources bride-price was the prevalent custom in the Punjab. If bride-price was a factor then one would expect it to encourage the legitimacy of sati in other parts of India as well—wherever the kshatriya ethos combined with this form of marriage. But such references are absent. In the early dharmashastras, brideprice is not regarded as being on par with the giving of a dowry, required in the kanya-dana or gifting-a-daughter form of marriage, the latter being the favoured practice. The Mahabharata refers to some widows becoming satis such as Madri the wife of Pandu. On the death of Pandu there is a discussion on which of his two wives, Kunti or Madri, should become a sati. This is a partial reflection of the controversy over the observance of the custom, a controversy that continued throughout the centuries. The custom is not associated with the wives of those Kauravas who died in the battle at Kurukshetra. It was obviously not required of all kshatriyas. It has been argued that these references to sati are later interpolations. Madri however was from the Punjab. Abducting a woman to become a bride or paying a bride-price were ranked as legal forms of marriage and listed as such in the dharmashastras. The dharmashastras seem to hold contradictory views on sati. The Manu Dharmashastra dating to the turn of the Christian era, requires the widow to live a chaste life. However, if she has no son then she is permitted to try for one through niyoga. The later Vishnu Dharmashastra allows an option to the widow: she can either be celibate and live like an ascetic or else can become a sati. Medhatithi, the major commentator on Manu, writing in about the tenth century AD, is strongly opposed to widows becoming satis. He argues that the practice is adharma and ashastriya, against the laws of dharma and not conceded by the shastras. He maintains that it amounts to suicide and this is forbidden, since each person must live his/her allotted span of life. He even urges that in some situations a widow should be permitted to remarry. Medhatithi’s position was not unique and the discussion was controversial and continued to be so over the centuries. That Medhatithi felt it necessary to comment forcefully on sati unlike Manu, may indicate its wider prevalence during the post-Gupta period of the latter part of the first millennium AD. Nevertheless, there are also inscriptions from these times that record widows from royal families donating property to religious beneficiaries. More precisely dateable evidence comes from inscriptions. An inscription of AD 510 at Eran in central India refers to the wife of Goparaja who immolated herself when her husband died in battle. The practice was by now known in this area. Similar inscriptions from Rajasthan and Nepal date to the seventh and eighth centuries AD. Banabhatta writing the Harshacharita in the early seventh century AD does not condemn the mother of king Harshavardhana of Kanauj for becoming a sati, perhaps because the book was an official biography. But in his other work, the Kadambari, he objects strongly to the practice and lists many women of high status who did not become satis. This change is reflected in other sources as well. The Hitopadesha, a collection of stories, glorifies the act of becoming a sati, the argument being that it ensures for the wife and the husband an eternity of living together after death. The act is described in various texts as sahamarana (dying together), sahagamana (going together) and anuvarohana (ascending the pyre). This belief would contradict the notion of reincarnation since nowhere is it argued that the couple would be constantly reincarnated as husband and wife in every birth. Inscriptions from the peninsula refer to women becoming satis when their husbands died in battles fought between and among Hindu rulers such as the Chaulukyas, Yadavas and Hoysalas, in the period from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Many of these inscriptions are located in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The peak period of sati was prior to the invasion of these areas by armies of the Sultanates so ‘Muslim invasions’ were not the cause. Later, when faced by Sultanate armies from the end of the thirteenth century, the requirement or not of widow immolation would have been as prevalent or not, as in earlier times. The other interesting feature is that most of these late first millennium inscriptions refer either to families of kshatriya status or those seeking the same or an equivalent status. One oft-quoted inscription of the eleventh century refers to a shudra woman whose husband died in battle against the Ganga ruler and who, despite opposition from her parents, became a sati. Her husband held a high military position. Her insistence may have been occasioned, among other things, by the wish to establish status. Were members of lower castes who happened occasionally to hold a reasonably high position emulating the style of the kshatriyas? Another indication of the existence of satis is the sati memorial stones. These were known but only recently have they begun to be studied in some detail. The location, numbers, chronology and the statements both inscriptional and visual, of the hero-stones and the associated sati-stones have provided new insights into the history of these regions. Some of these areas were subject to raids by kingdoms in the vicinity, contesting territory. The sati-stones generally occur in the same locality as the hero-stones which commemorated death in the course of a heroic act of either defending the village or a herd of cattle during one of the frequent cattle-raids, or of killing predatory wild animals and so on. Sometimes the sati-stone and the hero-stone are on the same slab. The sati-stone has a standard set of symbols: the sun and the moon symbolizing the eternal memory of the person being commemorated; an upright, open, right arm and hand, bent at the elbow and clearly showing bangles intact (a woman’s bangles being broken when she is widowed, the bangles being intact would be an indication of her continuing marital status); and a lime held in the hand to ward off evil. Sometimes there may be a small representation of an icon that indicates a religious sectarian identity, such as a lingam-yoni for a Shaiva or a conch shell for a Vaishnava. The sun and the moon were commonly used to mean eternity, as in inscriptions recording grants of land made by kings to brahmanas, which often conclude with the statement that they should last as long as the moon and sun. On occasion a sati is indicated by a single standing female figure or a couple, where generally the right arm of the woman has the same features as above. Sati-stones like hero-stones occur more often, not in fertile agricultural areas but in ecologically marginal areas, where local conflicts and skirmishes would be frequent. These were often frontier areas between two ecological zones or areas where there was a competition for resources, or frontier zones between states whose boundaries would tend to shift at least a little and where there would be greater frequency of skirmishes. Possibly in marginal areas, the process of transition from tribe to jati may have required an underlining of the changing social code. Here the new norms would introduce a greater social hierarchy than before and the status of women would be gradually lowered. Tribal chiefs are also memorialized in hero-stones and this was part of the process of assimilation into the Sanskritic tradition. Doubtless by now, sati would also have been recognized as one among the many features associated with a kshatriya lifestyle, but resorted to only in exceptional circumstances. Inscriptional and archaeological evidence suggests that the greater occurrence of immolation as also hero-stones commemorating cattle-raids seems to date to the end of the first and the early second millennium AD. This was a time when new areas were being opened up to settlement by caste-based society and there were encroachments on a larger scale into tribal areas. New castes emerged in this background of a changing economy, some with antecedents in the earlier pre-caste society. In the competition for status various observances of upper caste society became current. Why the immolation of widows was introduced requires explanation. Apart from other things it may relate to a deliberate subordination of women in the newly emerging society where women had earlier had a significant role. As a ritual it was the most traumatic in underlining the subordination of women. Or, it could have been a reaction against the many growing socio-religious movements, associated with the Bhakti tradition, some of which disapproved of caste differentiations and supported the continuing participation of women in social roles whether as wives or widows, and which movements were not always regarded with favour by the upper castes. Again, was the immolation of widows seen as a method of demarcating status? It is interesting that there is little reference to the deification of the woman who becomes a sati at this time. The incentive to becoming a sati is accompanied by a list of rewards for the woman. She will dwell in heaven for as many years as there are hairs on the human body and will dwell with her husband served by apsaras. (In some Kannada texts the wife is said to be jealous of the apsaras and therefore insistent on dying with her husband!). Her act will purify not only her husband but also her parents and of course herself, of all sins. The inclusion of her parents was a shrewd move appealing to her filial emotions. The ultimate threat is that if she does not burn she will be reborn as a woman in many successive births. This was seen as threat enough to make any woman want to immolate herself ! The package of rewards is based quite clearly on the kshatriya view of the after-life. Only the hero went to Indraloka (or to the Shivaloka in some traditions), and lived eternally in heaven. The other view of after-life, as developed in the theory of karma and samsara, action and rebirth, did not necessarily apply to the hero. Heaven for the hero is a paradise land. The notion of sati therefore is tied to the heroic ideal, to claims to being kshatriya or following the model, and it is not surprising that up to this point in history it is generally not required of other castes. Brahmana women are not permitted to become satis in some texts such as the Padma Purana. But this was soon to change. In the early second millennium AD, the Mitakshara, a legal text treating of family law, argued that all women be permitted to become satis and that niyoga be prohibited. A very different point of view emerges from another category of people and texts. The followers of the Shakta sects were opposed to the practice even as an expression of religious belief. The Mahanirvana Tantra states, ‘A wife should not be burnt with her dead husband. Every woman is the embodiment of the goddess. That woman who in her delusion ascends the funeral pyre of her husband, shall go to hell.’ This contradiction of the other ethic has its own interest as a statement of opposition, particularly as it comes from those who were initially regarded as being of lesser status but constituting the larger percentage of people. Possibly this kind of opposition nurtured the compensatory notion of a sati being converted into a goddess, a notion which seems to have gained currency in the later second millennium AD. Madri in the Mahabharata, for instance, is not deified. But the cult of worshipping sati-stones and deifying a sati as a goddess became more common in medieval Rajasthan. As the idea developed it was said that the goddess entered the body of the woman when she resolved to become a sati. Deification was a compensation for what was otherwise seen by some as suicide. It acted as an incentive as well as an attempt to take the act onto another plane, where mundane considerations would not apply. But the deification was not individualized, for the women are often not worshipped as goddesses in their own name but as part of the generalized single sati goddess. There was less emphasis now on the continuity of living with the husband after death in heaven. Was this due to women, irrespective of their caste, being encouraged to become satis? It is also worth remembering that Buddhist texts did not support sati and widows were instead offered the option of becoming nuns if they so chose. Some of the votive inscriptions at Buddhist stupas record donations by widows. The later Jaina texts conceded that in special circumstances a Jaina muni could die through a formal routine of slow starvation, sallekhana. This concession may have discouraged Jainas from opposing other forms of seeming suicide. Moreover, judging by the number of Jaina widows who became nuns, sati does not seem to have been the prevailing custom. It has been stated that there was an extraordinarily large number of satis in south India at the time when the Vijayanagara kingdom was collapsing. In 1420, Nicolo de Conti visited Vijayanagara well before its peak period in the early sixteenth century and left an account that survives only through a series of translations. He describes the ritual of self-immolation and adds that three thousand wives and concubines of the king of Vijayanagara had pledged to burn themselves on the death of the king. We have only Conti’s word for the pledge and there is no other evidence to prove that it was carried out. The number seems highly exaggerated. Duarte Barbosa and Fernao Nuniz visiting in the early sixteenth century also refer to the ritual but again in general terms. These were Europeans, largely interested in prospects for trade and establishing commercial relations with the kingdoms of the peninsula. They were visiting India for the first time and anxious to write about quaint customs, unfamiliar to their readers. The lack of familiarity encouraged these authors to exaggerate what they had seen or heard. Descriptions of sati headed the list of curiosities. This perhaps gives the impression that it was more prevalent in Vijayanagara than elsewhere. There is in fact little evidence from other sources to suggest that there was a substantial increase in self-immolation in the south at the time of the collapse of the Vijayanagara kingdom in the late sixteenth century. State intervention to try and control incidents of widow immolation begins during the time of the Sultans and the Mughals. They could not prohibit it but indirectly attempted to reduce the numbers by insisting that it should not be forced on the woman. We are told that those wishing to become satis had to obtain a special license from the governors of the Mughal provinces. If this was actually so it might have acted as a deterrent. That the need for permission became part of the procedure seems evident from incidents occurring even among Indian communities living outside India. In 1723, the widow of an Indian merchant in Moscow asked permission to be burned alive alongside her husband on his funeral pyre. Her request was refused. Resenting the refusal, all the Indian merchants threatened to leave Russia, taking their wealth with them. Faced with this, the authorities gave in. The incident was repeated in 1767. That families of wealthy traders took to this practice in the eighteenth century was doubtless due to their close proximity to political power and desire to emulate the ways of those in power. This was particularly the case in regions such as Rajasthan where many kingdoms derived substantial revenue from traders. Possibly this association with commercial groups encouraged the emergence of the sati temples. Sati memorials in the past were simple memorial stones, but the more recent temples are substantial monuments such as the one at Jhunjhunu. Such temples were often constructed by wealthy patrons, where the Marwari talent for finance combined with Rajput notions of honour, for the material benefit of both. The appropriation of the custom by other upper castes was known in the eighteenth century, although there was no uniformity of attitude towards it within the caste or even within the extended family. Thus, whereas one Peshwa was opposed to it, the wife of another became a sati in 1772. It would seem that by the eighteenth century the icon of sati was more a ritual object of worship rather than one of the ideal wife. That sati became more prevalent among the upper castes is noticeable with the contrast of niyoga being more common at the lower levels of society. This makes good sense. In families where women worked alongside the men as among peasants and artisans, an extra hand was a help. Sati and niyoga are not juxtaposed in the texts but both practices are discussed and commented on right through the centuries. It seems to be the counter-posing of contradictory practices but which are in effect alternate solutions to the same problems. The practice of immolating widows took a turn in a new direction in eastern India. The overwhelming incidence was among the brahmanas of this area and particularly in Bengal. The major cause for this unprecedented rise in widow immolation, particularly in the early nineteenth century has been attributed to the legal system relating to inheritance. In areas where the Dayabhaga system prevailed, as in eastern India, women were entitled to a share in the inheritance of immovable property on the death of their husbands. Sati became a means of removing one among the claimants to inheritance. It is interesting that when brahmana widows in some areas were permitted to become satis, was also the time when brahmana property holders increased—both in numbers as well as in the size of their holdings—owing to the land grants that they received from royalty. Thus what was in origin a custom associated with kshatriya notions of heroism and honour was now converted into a convenient way of eliminating an inheritor in the context of landed property. It has been suggested that the largest occurrence was among kulin brahmana families where the ratio of male to female seems to have been severely out of balance, requiring that the kulin male marry many wives from several families. The effect of this on the ritual of widow immolation was self-evident. The movement for the abolition of widow self-immolation was hesitatingly taken up by the British Indian government and was supported by Ram Mohan Roy. Eventually in 1829 a law was passed prohibiting the practice in territories held by the British Indian government. The figures given for registered cases of sati in the early nineteenth century in the Bengal Presidency are quite staggering. In 1815 there were 378 cases. In 1818 the figure rose to 839 and in 1828 there were 463 cases. These figures make an interesting parallel to those of dowry deaths in recent years. If widow immolation is to be seen as significant to Hindu values, then it would seem that the culture had a propensity to encouraging its women to burn themselves. A magistrate of Hooghly describes the practice in 1818 as a religious act but also a choice entertainment for the neighbourhood. In areas where the Dayabhaga did not prevail and there was also an absence of kulin custom, the figures are substantially lower. The Madras Presidency in 1818 registers about 170 cases and the Bombay Presidency over the period from 1819- 1827, about 50. Here it was largely among the families of chiefs and rajas. This sharp variation in figures suggests that the appalling frequency of widow immolation in Bengal, cannot be attributed only to the disjuncture in society caused by British colonial domination. Apart from property rights there were doubtless other reasons. Given the wide popularity of Shakta and Tantric sects in eastern India, it is possible that the deliberate subordination of upper caste widows was also a reaction to the more equitable status given to women in the teaching of these sects. The Shakta sects, more than most, emphasizing the androgynous, both in belief and deity, were opposed to the self-immolation of widows. Viewed over time, the justification for widows becoming satis moved from the initial explanation that it was the virtuous wife following her husband into death to one that included the idea of the sati becoming a goddess. In some cases the wife followed her husband irrespective of how he died, as in the case of Madri. Here the question of honour was not centrally involved as Pandu if anything died an ignoble death, unable to contain his desire for Madri. And Madri gives this as one of the reasons why she should follow her husband into the realms of Yama Being virtuous in this situation seems theoretical since neither of Pandu’s wives had conceived sons through him. The memorial stones suggest a different situation, where the husband dies a hero’s death and the self-immolation of the wife is also memorialized. It is possible that immolation could have been enforced as a requirement to enhance the glory of the hero’s death. The question of honour becomes central to the explanation where there is the possible violation of the wife by the enemy. Who was perceived as the enemy would vary enormously. It would range from the brigand in the forest, to the neighbouring cattle raiders, to the armies of the conquering kingdoms. The reason in later times seems to relate to the elimination of a competitor for inheritance where both faithfulness and deification are emphasized. These situations refer to families of the upper castes commanding status and wealth. The act is supported by some persons of the upper castes, condemned by others of the same castes, but largely absent among those whose beliefs and values are said to have prevailed to a larger extent among the lower castes and persons of lesser status. The degree to which the motives conformed to the explanation given, or arose from other factors, needs to be analyzed. This is not to deny that on some occasions it may have been an act of genuine grief and the desire to follow a husband into death. That the act of immolation is a form of sacrifice seems to be a more recent interpretation. The widow’s life was not an offering or bali, since the motivation of the act in theory is that she continues to live after death with her husband in heaven. Furthermore it can only be an act of self-sacrifice if it is not enforced. In the case of sati in Rajput society it has been argued that it involves the question of Rajput honour and is deeply ingrained in all Rajputs. It is curious that a society’s honour should be dependent on women having to immolate themselves. The frequency of female infanticide in these areas today makes one suspect that it was less a matter of honour and arose from other concerns. The custom as is clear from the evidence, has not been limited to Rajputs alone in the past. The occurrence of such a custom in recent times needs to be viewed from the perspective of current claims to social class and political clout as well as to supposedly traditional ways of claiming these, apart from the fidelity of the wife in the context of competitive communities. It is also quoted as a symbol of an idealised husband-wife relationship. If so, this is an unbalanced manifestation, as has often been remarked, there is never any question of the husband immolating himself on the pyre of his wife. Nor is the immolation of the widow invariably voluntary. The widows of Bengal it is said had to be tied to the pyre and kept down by bamboo staffs. Claiming it as a Hindu inheritance from the past is to transfer a ritual associated with a small segment of upper caste society to the entire society with the claim that it is the rite/right of the Hindu community. It was never regarded as universally applicable to all Hindus and even its limited applicability has always been controversial. Neither among kshatriyas nor among brahmanas was there a universal adherence to the custom. When it is taken up arbitrarily by some members of castes other than kshatriyas it is in the context of demonstrating status or linked to the inheritance of property. To argue that the abolition of sati is a deliberately anti-Hindu act is to replay the debate of the nineteenth century where Ram Mohan Roy had maintained correctly that it does not carry the sanction of the Vedas and the Sanskrit scholar Mritunjaya Vidyalankar maintained that it was not enjoined by the shastras. If status has to be demonstrated today there are other ways of doing it. Sati and niyoga were both controversial but were practiced as customs although eventually by different social strata. Was niyoga the more common practice in the clan societies of the early period and did sati become more prevalent among the upper castes in the later period? Why was the brutal and gruesome act of sati pursued rather than the more humane and less violent niyoga? Sati is of course a more definitive control over a women’s sexuality since it is a terminal condition. Frequent references are made to the female as kshetra (field or land), and the male providing the bija (seed). Land of course is owned whereas seed is free. A rise in the number of women becoming satis would suggest that it was a period of crisis for upper caste social authority, perhaps due to lower castes moving up in social ranking. This would necessitate a greater control over upper caste women. These suggestions have yet to be examined for regions where records are available. The recent social demography of these areas could be one of the parameters in such an investigation. The extension of the symbolism of sati from the faithful wife to the goddess was not unrelated to the purposes of the social group endorsing the act. What many are now objecting to is that in today’s value system, the custom becomes an act of suicide, or when enforced it becomes an act of murder, but in either case it reflects a social ethic in relation to women that is objectionable. It endorses an inconsequential existence for a woman and her subordination to the vulgarity of a public spectacle, as well as to the manipulation of those claiming to be acting in defense of traditional values. It is not as if becoming a sati, or accepting the relationship that came with niyoga, were the only options. The majority of widows did not exercise either of these options. Their lives were dependent on how the family treated them, as they are to this day. In some cases they are the virtual matriarchal heads of a family, in others they are treated as inauspicious and reduced almost to the condition of dasis or left in widows’ homes at places of pilgrimage, such as Vrindavan or Varanasi, and in yet others they lead an acceptable life as part of the family. But what happened, and we now hope it pertains only to the past, should not be forgotten as it reflects on the making of what we sometimes describe as our ‘tradition’. If sati is to be properly understood it would require a tracking down of information on widow self-immolation involving a number of sources, pertaining to a range of social groups and with reference to various regions at different points in time. Only when we examine the juxtaposition of kinship, property relations, rights of inheritance, the approach to sexuality, the ethic of the hero, attitudes to deity and adjustments to social change in the context of our history, will we begin perhaps to understand why and how women were encouraged or forced to become satis, or why there were objections to doing so. That it is important to investigate this, is because its less visible social and psychological implications have not been exposed. 20 RAPE WITHIN A CYCLE OF VIOLENCE In 2011, the number of rapes amounted to almost one every hour, for the whole year. This is a horrendous fact and it’s something that should make us all think about what we can do. We have to understand how it is that we allow this to happen, and why it happens, and what can we as citizens do to make it happen less often. We cannot prevent it altogether so at least a decrease in numbers will be an achievement. To understand why rape is so prevalent in our society, perhaps we should discuss some of the more obvious aspects of the phenomenon—in particular two crucial aspects. : one, the creation of the general mindset in relation to women in our country, which is extremely important particularly in terms of how we use the past to create this mindset, and then in turn use it to influence the present; and the second is the present situation and what needs action. I would like to begin with discussing the mindset. Unfortunately, it requires repeating yet again, that the attitudes of those who claim to be the leaders of our society—politicians in high office and the so-called ‘god-men’ are often the most influential in creating an unacceptable mindset. And what some of them have said in public and in the media, about women being raped, was I think, outrageous. This is why I think that the mindset is extremely important and needs attention, in addition to whatever we choose to do about what is currently happening. I think the statements that were made again and again were bizarre, thoughtless, jejune and frequently inane. Examples of these are that young women must be incarcerated at home after dark, girls must be forced to wear overcoats to cover themselves from head to foot, girls must not be allowed cellphones because they can then contact boys, a woman about to be raped should recite the Sarasvati mantra, and women must observe the Lakshman Rekha to avoid trouble—and of course we all know who marks the Lakshman Rekha. The most disgusting was the statement that, a raped woman is like a ‘zinda lash’, a living corpse. Little in all of this was said about the kind of men that rape women, and how they can be stopped from doing this? It is almost as if the men are invisible and rape somehow happens on its own. These attitudes assume that rape is inevitable if women are liberated. So the best way to avoid rape is to oppress women. This is the prevalent view in a society that is conditioned by the belief that men make the rules and women cannot question them. There may be something ridiculous about this lopsided view of society, yet it is the mindset of many. How the mindset spills out into action was recently demonstrated in the riots of Muzaffarnagar. Ostensibly the call to rioting and violence was to object to ‘love jihad’, the fear that Hindu young women were falling into the clutches of and marrying Muslim young men. The other slogan was ‘bahu-beti-bachau’, but in the process of protecting the bahu and the beti, raping women was considered perfectly in order. Raping women is the age-old method of certain kinds of men asserting power over women, especially if the women belong to a community that they wish to humiliate. In communal conflicts it is resorted to as a weapon and a trophy of victory. Inevitably the easiest targets in situations of civil disturbance are Dalit women and those of the minority communities, since they have the least protection from the agencies of law and order, and belong to the subordinated sections of society. It is nevertheless crucial to the discussion on how we visualize the kind of society that we want. The oppression of women has been characteristic, let me add, of most pre-modern societies the world over. As far as the past is concerned this is not an unusual situation. But we now claim to be a contemporary, modern society. We are in a position today to understand why this mindset came about and to change it in favour of a society governed by the rights that we think are essential. So let me revert to the mindset. What goes into the making of a mindset? We refer to cultural traditions from the past. Do we even examine the implications and nuances of what we assume these traditions to be? Let’s just look at some of them in relation to attitudes to women, or of why they came into existence because of how society was constituted at a particular time. Or whether, given that social norms now endorse the equality of men and women, should we not change the mindset to accord with the new social requirements? If the norms of a tradition no longer hold, the question to be debated is why this is so, and if the norms need to be changed then this should be advocated, even if it means the earlier ones being jettisoned. We are told that in the Vedic period women as a general category had a high status and were greatly respected. The Upanishads are quoted which refer to brilliant women philosophers such as Gargi and Maitrayi, Vedic rituals are referred to in which the patron of the ritual had to have his wife beside him otherwise the ritual would not be effective, and so on. Such actions underline status. But historians, such as Uma Chakrabarty and Kumkum Roy, have asked pertinent questions about the other women so frequently mentioned. For instance, what happened to the Vedic dasi? Why does she never come into this picture? She was the slave woman, the servant in the household, who is mentioned frequently in the Vedas, Mahabharata and Ramayana, but seldom features in our current picture of the utopian past. What was her condition? She is repeatedly listed in these texts together with the animals—cattle and horses— as chattel. They are all the property of the owner to do what he likes with them. The larger numbers of women therefore are treated as commodities. Given the references to unnamed dasis who are the mothers of brahmanas—the dasi-putra brahmanas or students such as Jabala, mentioned in the Vedic corpus—it is clear that the dasi was expected to do more than just household chores. Such activities doubtless required of a dasi should at least be acknowledged wherever they apply, when referring to the pedigree of authoritative figures. The social values of elite groups in those ancient societies and the society of today are different. In earlier times the dasis are hardly visible. Modern society demands their visibility. We today maintain that all women have equal rights among themselves and with men, but this was not the prevalent ethic of ancient times. From the Valmiki Ramayana the most frequently quoted reference is to Sita and to the Lakshman rekha; when she inadvertently crosses it her troubles start. Because she was kidnapped, the onus is on her to prove her chastity. And this is the prototype pattern: a woman has always to prove her chastity. This Sita does by going through an agnipariksha, the fire ordeal. When she is asked to repeat the same thing a second time, consequent on some gossip about her, she decides that enough is enough. The Valmiki Ramayana is in origin an epic story that became a sacred book of the Vaishnavas and is a powerful text in the propagation of Rama bhakti, the worship of Rama. There are passages of exquisite poetry that give it a high literary status. But at the same time we have to keep in mind that it is a classic text of Hindu patriarchy. The man is a god and the woman has to repeatedly prove her chastity. And do we today consider what might have been the thoughts of Sita as she experiences the testing of her chastity? Have we really thought about her side of the story? Why do we also never refer to other versions of the story? Neither the Buddhist nor the Jaina version, for example, is centrally concerned with the chastity of Sita. Over the centuries there have been many versions of what has come to be called the ramakatha. Some followed the Valmiki narrative but others differed from it, as obviously his version did not appeal to them. And in some cases they even contested it. In medieval times, in what we today disparagingly call ‘feudal’ society, some people seem not to have approved of the fire ordeal because there was a well-known version in which that event was altered. When the fire was blazing forth Sita was made to step aside and the chhaya Sita, a shadow Sita, entered the fire and came out unscathed. The question one has to ask is why was a chhaya Sita invented? The answer usually given is that at this time the philosophy of maya, illusion, was at its height and illusory figures were popular. But perhaps one has also to see it more realistically. Why did the shadow Sita replace the earlier version of Sita in this rendering of the story? Did some people see the fire ordeal as craven, and as Sita having to submit to injustice? There were other popular versions of the story in which Sita asserts her rights and these versions are different from the Valmiki or the Tulasi Ramayanas. One of my favourite folk versions is the one in which Rama’s attack on Ravana is not going too well so Sita says to Rama that she will conduct the battle on his behalf and does so and is victorious against Ravana. This is an entirely different representation of Sita and would have an appeal for women who have, or would like to have, some command over their own lives. Such versions are common in the oral literature of regional languages and in folk literature and their survival attests to their popularity. Or at least that was so before the poorly constructed television version took over and ironed out the local variations, resulting in a predictable and somewhat banal uniformity. And yet despite the fact that there are differences in these versions, telling us different things about how people viewed the story, and what social and ethical values they gave to the story, we continue to generalize from the Valmiki version excluding others. The suggestion that alternate readings be discussed, at least at University level so as to familiarize students with their heritage, are dismissed and not permitted. Delhi University did just that. As we’ve seen, it removed a thoughtprovoking and sensitively written essay by AK Ramanujam on the many versions of the Ramayana from its syllabus, because a handful of Hindu students said it hurt their sentiments, since they believe there can be only one Ramayana, that of Valmiki. More specifically related to questions of gender and religious texts, a similar group of Muslims objected to Amina Wadud giving a lecture at Madras University on questions of Islamic texts and gender, and the lecture was cancelled by the Vice-Chancellor on the request of the police. Such actions are taking ‘hurt sentiments’ to an extreme, where the idea of religion as the articulation of co-existing sentiments of faith, is being belittled if not insulted by its conversion into political gamesmanship. At the same time we are allowing religious institutions and political parties that claim to be defending particular religions to increasingly dictate the content of our social and civic values. And yet at the same time, these cannot be freely discussed and if need be, questioned. The Bhagvad Gita, held sacred by so many, has a verse in which Krishna states that all those who worship him can through bhakti (devotion), achieve liberation from moksha (rebirth). He goes on to say that this applies even to those who are born in the womb of sin, papa-yoni. And who does he say are the people born in this womb of sin? As we have seen, these are the vaishyas, shudras and women. I suppose it is gratifying that women can also be freed from rebirth through devotion to Krishna. But the point is that all women, irrespective of their social origin, whether they are upper caste or lower caste, are said to be born in the womb of sin, implying thereby that their origin should be treated with contempt as was that of the lower caste shudras. It hurts my sentiments as a woman to be described as originating from the womb of sin, nevertheless the suppression of this verse would not assuage my feelings. On the contrary, I would argue that it should be discussed as that might give us a better understanding of the implications of this statement for women, for vaishyas and shudras, and for the society in which vaishyas, shudras and women, live. And this understanding would clarify the contribution of such statements to the creation of a mindset. In the early centuries AD, the worship of Shakti as the goddess became popular and her popularity increased over time. However, worshiping goddesses did not appreciably change the attitude of men towards women in daily life. Some Rajput clans regarded the clan goddess, the kuladevi, as the iconic center of their identity. Yet these clans could also be among those inculcating the need for women to burn themselves should their husbands die in battle. Needless to say, it was argued that the death of the women was required to save the honour of the male kshatriya. This was a strange equation! In some ways it was a variant on Sita’s fire-ordeal. The woman’s chastity was ensured by her death. As we have seen, becoming a sati was gradually idealized. But interestingly, this was also a subject of debate both in the commentaries of the social codes and in other kinds of literature. Today Sita is quoted as the role model for women. I often wonder why we don’t refer to the women of the Mahabharata equally often. Are these women threateningly independent? The Mahabharata is the story of clans in conflict. And women who belong to clan society seem to be more independent than those who belong to a society where caste is entrenched. Gandhari is married to the blind Dhritarashtra. So she chooses to go through life blindfolded. Iravati Karve, the sociologist, has asked the very pertinent question, why? Is it out of sympathy with her blind husband? Or out of resentment that she as a young and beautiful woman, has been tied for life to a blind man? As Kunti’s husband is unable to give her children, her only recourse is to call upon various deities to do so. Draupadi is married inadvertently to five brothers but accepts the decision. Nevertheless she retains her independence for when Yudhishthira places her as a stake in the game of dice, she questions his legal right to do so. She was within her rights to question his action since he had previously staked himself and lost. Therefore did he have a legal right to stake anyone else? All these women are interesting because in various ways they did not conform to the codes and yet they were accepted. But why do we today not refer to these women as role models? Is it because they cannot be subordinated to our contemporary denigration of women? I have often wondered that if we could gather together Valmiki’s Sita with Gandhari, Kunti and Draupadi, what kind of conversation would they have had? I think it’s worth considering. However, please don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that all women had miserable lives in the past. Not at all. Some even became queen-regents, such as Prabhavati Gupta who ruled the Vakataka kingdom, or Didda who lived through the reigns of son and grandson and then ruled herself in Kashmir negotiating feudal politics with great aplomb, or Raziya who was not as successful and fell victim to power politics. I am well aware that there are other aspects of the past that are highly commendable. But I am trying to ask why we emphasize those that are not in accordance with our present ideas of a just society. If again we turn to the past, then in theory, laws regarding rape are stringent and protective of the woman to some degree. Punishment for rape tells us something about the categories of women that were raped and attitudes towards them. I would like to quote from Kautilya’s Arthashastra. He recommends the compensation to be paid to the woman and the punishment of the man, in varying situations. Where the dasi is raped, or her daughter, obviously a household slave or a servant, each is entitled to demand compensation from the rapist, and this is set out. With reference to the raping and gang raping of a prostitute, the punishment suggested is a monetary fine, calculated in accordance with what she earns. The severest punishment is reserved for a man who sexually assaults a kinswoman, what we today would include in marital and domestic rape, or his guru’s wife. Such a man is to be first castrated and then given the death penalty. But some sexual transgressions against lower caste women receive seemingly lighter punishment. The one who has raped a lower caste woman is to be branded by a specific, permanently visible mark on his forehead, by which people would recognize his crime. Interestingly this applies to all such rapists irrespective of whether they are juveniles or adults. Lower caste women in those days as well were raped, but the punishment is far more severe than is given in our times. I would argue that we deliberately choose our models from the past in order that they conform to our present ideology. So if women are to be kept subordinated then we highlight this from the past and justify it as heritage. But when we thus select from the past in order to construct our heritage we should be aware of what we are selecting and why; and of what the other choices could be. And this heritage of course inevitably changes over time. This means looking analytically at our society, both the present and that of the past. We need to change it where change is required in the present, and to clean out that which is rotten. Where does one begin in trying to change the mindset? It is necessary to legislate, but above all and beyond that, to see that the legislation is implemented, for only then can it be effective. Let’s just go through the life cycle of the Indian woman. Fortunately this is not the general pattern for all. But it occurs in different regions in various degrees and if not debated more openly, it will continue to set the tone. And it has an impact on many women at many points in their life. The female foetus in some parts of the country is aborted and this is done to such a degree that the male-female ratio has gone haywire. Bonded brides have therefore to be imported from other states and are then made to double up as wives and servants in the household. Can we demand that the abortions should be allowed only when jointly decided through agreement by a group of doctors instead of a single one? The female child has to face malnutrition in various forms. Compulsory schooling for the girl child should include a mid-day meal to be eaten on the premises. This might just take care of some of the malnutrition, although the girl child may not live to a school-going age. If the parents need the earnings of the child, they can be given a monetary compensation as a subsidy so that the girl can be educated. The child should not be removed from school. Talking about school, there is an absolutely desperate need for textbooks to be vetted. Textbooks in all subjects need to be read and cleared and this applies from Punjab to Karnataka, as those currently used, especially in many private schools, don’t hesitate to describe women as inherently inferior. Such regressive views have no place in textbooks. At puberty the girl is got ready for marriage. The Age of Consent Bill is observed only in some places. There is a law against dowry but it is seldom implemented. Fines are always negotiable. But if those who burn brides are sent to prison, then the law might be taken more seriously. Putting wives through fire has continued since ancient times, from Sita to sati to dowry deaths. It is a curious aspect of our social culture. Dowry is also entwined with the laws of inheritance as they are to some extent counterparts. In a society such as ours where rights over property are central to claiming status and freedom, respect for women will emerge only when they are given rights to property. Therefore, the laws against dowry will have to be interfaced with laws of inheritance, where wives and daughters are inheritors. If dowry were to be terminated and women were to get equal rights of inheritance, they and their husbands would ensure that this right was exercised. Having obtained the inheritance she could retain it in her own name and some degree of economic backing would make her less vulnerable. Had the same option been given to women with reference to dowry fewer women may have been burnt over the list of objects they brought as dowry. Civil laws and especially rights of women have to be secular and uniform, if women are to get social justice across the board. Exercising the law is as important as having it. Most religious codes in India are not supportive of equal rights to women; and where they may be, are seldom implemented as such. There are at least two disruptive features that are creating an immense social turmoil. These have to be handled with sensitivity but with great firmness. One is the crisis in the functioning of caste. Throughout its history, controlling women has been a patriarchal method of controlling society. To retain the stability of the caste, it is crucial that the marriage of the woman is according to caste rules. And the easiest way of doing this is to clamp down on the woman. And if you read in the Manu Dharmashastra the eight legal and acceptable forms of marriage, in each case it is the woman who is to be either gifted, or exchanged, or abducted. The loosening of this control over the marriage in some castes is creating an immense problem for patriarchy. Caste rules relating to whom one can or cannot marry, are given preference in all communities, be they Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian. And indeed the category of Dalit is also common to all religions of India. Because of caste rules, the subordination of women becomes universally applicable in Indian society and across the board. There may be a few exceptions, such as among some communities that have observed matrilineal forms or among certain Schedule Tribes that do not observe caste. When women choose to marry outside their caste, it is seen as an attempt to break the stability of the caste. And in this circumstance, informal organizations like the khap panchayats prefer to murder the woman as a solution. One reason for the desperate wish to keep castes intact is because castes have now also become vote banks and therefore caste becomes the base for political power and all the advantages that come with it. But both the identity and the ranking of jatis as caste, have not necessarily been either permanent or unchanging in history. Castes have had crises and have changed in composition and in status, hence the repeated reference in the Sanskrit texts to the fear of mixed castes—the varnasankara, or the sankirnajati, or of the Kaliyuga when caste codes are turned upside down and rules dispensed with. Obviously this happened enough times for it to be seen as the worst possible social disaster from the perspective of the authors of these texts. So the claim that the purity and status of the caste are being preserved in these draconian actions of the present day, is actually determined not by a wish to conform to a heritage from the past but by a concession to the politics of the present. To state that a woman embodies the honour of a man or his caste and therefore needs to be killed, is merely a way of frightening women and of justifying violence against them. Surely a man can defend his own honour? If the honour of a man requires protection through the death of a woman, then it is but a mask to reiterate his control over her sexuality, over her rights to property and over her life itself. The other factor that has disrupted society is the rapid neo-liberalization of the economy where it is creating valueless consumer targets, leading to frustration among those who either cannot afford these goods or are unemployed. These become the meaningless symbols of affluence as is illustrated by many TV advertisements. The inability to grasp this new life-style increases the frustration that is then vented in other forms such as killing Dalits or raping women. Dalits and women by claiming their rights as citizens are seen as those who are over turning the old order in which they were subordinate beings, therefore they become the targets of contemporary violence. This becomes a way of asserting power among those for whom social violence is a way of expressing frustration. And it occurs both in rural and urban areas. Cleaning this rot then has to be an immediate agenda. Demands have been made to combat rape by sensitizing the police and by setting up fast track courts. The time limit for the decisions of the courts must be insisted upon to prevent them from going on endlessly, as is common in this country. But equally importantly there has to be a consistent effort to change the mindset of Indian society to bring about equal respect and equal rights for women; and not only as laws, but more importantly in their practice. This is a larger and more complex programme of organization and activity; without exaggeration it is a mammoth task and I am not sure how one can begin to effectively address it. Ultimately it will have to be sorted out. And it would be so much better all round, if it comes without the clobbering of women and Dalits in the violence that is increasingly common these days. We have a rational and workable Constitution, but which we do not implement fully. The obstacles it seems to me are caste codes, religious codes and the requirements of political, electoral aspirations. We could, for a start, begin to create an awareness of the rights that we already have by way of the Constitution and demand the implementation of these rights wherever possible. This can only be a prelude to other rights that should follow. Indian society today, it seems to me, is being mangled by the identity politics of caste and religious communities, by the construction of what we believe are hallowed, sacred traditions that cannot be changed, and by the new forms of obstructionism that call themselves ‘hurt sentiments’. All these should be questioned and halted, since they are essentially forms of political mobilization to enable some groups to come to power and to prevent what is needed for us to move towards an egalitarian and just society. They are not the structures of a stable society. Their success comes from the decreasing number of people willing to read and think independently and to be actively involved in questioning what happens around them. Those that claim their sentiments to be hurt invariably accompany these claims with threats of violence or even actual violence and these are used to blackmail society into greater and greater fear and silence. The increasing frequency of the concessions that we make to the ‘hurt sentiments’ of this and that group can be disastrous for our future. The fear of free expression is the death knell of a democratic society. We are now witnessing the continuous stream of banning books, banning films, threatening intellectuals, killing those who expose corruption, and threatening people who speak up openly and say they want a debate on viable subjects of concern to society. Seeing the condition of political parties at the moment and their distance from social ethics, with a couple of exceptions, it is unlikely that we can depend on them alone to bring about the change that we may want. The change has to come through a concerted effort of citizens. That this can be done has been demonstrated in the protests of young women and men against rape in the recent past all over the country. And in a sense what one is concerned about is the future of precisely this younger generation. What kind of society are they going to be living in? It is heartening that such sustained spontaneous, unorganized protests against violence and social injustice were possible. As a pointer to future action one can only welcome this. EPILOGUE Nations need identities. These are created from perceptions of how societies have evolved. In this, history plays a central role. Insisting on reliable history is therefore crucial to more than just a pedagogic cause. Delicate relationships between the past and present or an exacting understanding of the past, call for careful analyses. The essays included here have put together thoughts on the interplay of the past and the present where the present interprets the past in ways that seek legitimacy for actions in the present, and the interpretation of the past may well be determined by the requirements of the present. I have argued that this is not the function of historical writing. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of history is often sought for political ideologies and matters concerning contemporary society. However much the past may be viewed from our times, as it inevitably is up to a point, the awareness of what such a view implies should not be ignored. I have tried to illustrate the problems that arise when the past is treated as the extension (backwards) of the present, and have suggested that we understand each in its own inevitably different contexts. This becomes problematic in some situations, such as in the search for a national identity that draws on the past although motivated by the present. As for whose past it draws on for such an identity, this has perforce to be inclusive of all citizens and cannot limit itself to a single community, no matter how dominant such a community may be. The perception of the past can also be tied into the requirements of the present, as is evident by the way colonial scholarship constructed the Indian past. Nationalist historical writing challenged this construction, but perhaps not sufficiently. Instead, in the important formulation of Indian cultural and historical identity it drew on the colonial construction of the centrality of religious communities. Nationalist historians by and large, did endorse liberal values and some saw the importance of recognizing what they described as secular values, referring to the co-existence of religions. There was at the time the anticipation of creating a society subsequent to and different from, the colonial experience. Today we ask ourselves whether we chose the appropriate identity and succeeded in creating the nation we had set out to do three generations ago? On 15 thAugust 1947, when I made my short speech in school, I quoted—as did many others—a verse from William Wordsworth: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!’ In more recent years many of us have recalled the line from Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who speaks of Partition as ‘not being the dawn that we had hoped for’. That disappointment lingers somewhat. We had anticipated the transformation of a colonial society into a secular democracy, characterized by a relatively equitable distribution of wealth and basic entitlements as well as access to social justice for all citizens. If this vision had been pursued into reality, over a period of two-thirds of a century, then surely it would have been sufficient to transform the erstwhile colony—to an appreciable degree—into the kind of society for which we had hoped. I have tried in these essays to suggest a few reasons why some of our aspirations in creating a contemporary culture and drawing on the past, did not meet with fruition, but which nevertheless have not been entirely thwarted. I have restricted myself to the subject with which I have some familiarity, namely, the early past, previously referred to as ‘ancient India’ and sharply differentiated from medieval India. I give equal weightage to the medieval past, but since my familiarity with it is limited, it has featured marginally in these essays. My focus has been on the question of contemporary identities—the choice of an identity and the political use of identities—and the links of these with the past. I have written about only one aspect of why this has been problematic, where the past has been evoked to justify the actions of the present. If all this has come across as overly pessimistic I would like to correct that impression. If the public perception of the past has remained substantially unchanged or else accepts the colonial roots of its interpretation, because there are political and social pressures to keep it so, or even to reiterate misconceptions, there have at the same time been worthy attempts by historians and social scientists to question not only the colonial construction of the past but also the continuation of this colonial perspective through communal interpretations of history. The new studies provide insightful ways of comprehending the past, as also its relation to the present. They have been and are, part of the widespread discussion and debate on interpreting history. The response to this effort of the last fifty years although it has radically changed thinking about the past among those who research it and teach it, has not had the same impact in the public sphere. It has however, been effective in focusing on parameters other than those dictated by colonial views and in subsequent communal perspectives. It has also come closer than ever before to what may be called the realities of the past, revealing patterns of culture and the forms and degrees of interaction between communities of various kinds. This enables us to better understand the social and emotional ways of behavior among such groups of people in the past and this has an impact on how communities perceive each other today. Tolerance or intolerance, conflict or harmony, are not innate to certain categories of people as is sometimes believed, but result from particular ways of thinking and acting, encouraged by those who use these methods to control society and politics. The anticipation of relevance continues as also the conviction that the past can be used to understand the present, rather than merely to justify the politics of conflict, where revenge is sought for what are projected as atrocities of a thousand years ago. Such an understanding directs attention to confrontation and accommodation, as also the hierarchies of power and subordination, as they have existed in the past and as they do so now. A historical perspective forces home the realization that change has been a constant factor in the past and if appropriately directed can bring about a different present. We are still currently faced with an array of choices but there should be no illusions about the fact that each choice points to a different future. Other choices might have presaged a better future. The degree of tolerance may have been a shade more in the past as identities were perhaps not so sharply demarcated and had fuzzy edges. But sharp demarcations were not absent, as for example between the so-called pure brahmana and the impure untouchable. The oppression of the latter was sought to be justified by calling them polluted and with this excuse using them as a permanent labour source. Between the two extremes, there were a variety of others and their relationships involving lineage, occupation and belief systems. Caste hierarchy was observed to a greater or lesser extent in all religious identities, surfacing particularly when a marriage had to be arranged and patriarchy asserted. The two necessary foundations of a modern society—equal rights of all citizens and secularism—are now confronting this hierarchy. Those that had earlier claimed an entitlement to superior status and treated the social and economic inferiority of the lower castes as the necessary counterweight to this status are hesitant to accept or might even resent the democratic processes. The counterweights of inequality were multiple, among them caste society versus those outside the pale such as Dalits and tribals, and male superiority over women embedded in patriarchy, as prevalent in most places barring a small number. Pre-modern societies were partial to the idiom of religion that went beyond the needs of the individual and permeated many aspects of life. Social protest therefore sometimes took the form of new religious sects with more liberal views. These had some function in a society where religion was defined less in formal terms and more through a range of sectarian belief and practice. The idiom of religion has seldom been democratic. A hierarchy was invented and suffused its organization. The act of worship was in itself a submission to a virtually unknown authority. Democracy therefore runs into problems when society is infused with religious organizations and leaders. Secularism becomes essential to democracy. Secularism does not require the expulsion of religion, but by liberating society from the hierarchies and inequities implicit in organized, formal religion, it gives the required space to democratic functioning. The interplay of the past and the present is noticeable in periods of transition when societies mutate from one existing form to another. We are in the midst of such a period of transition, mutating towards what we visualize as a modern society in the process of shedding its colonial past. This implies an essential change when community identities earlier believed to have been characterized by single identities whether religion, caste, language, ethnicity, or region, have to give way to the identity of citizenship that incorporates and rises above these other identities. A nation grows out of a collective of communities with multiple identities inherited from a shared past. The shared past is not a static given, but accumulates and evolves through its history. Identities have always been multiple, but the combination of the constituents and the nature of the interface of communities, followed different patterns in earlier times and the pattern changes with the move to modernization. Such patterns draw on the different features that go into their making. Historians investigate these features through questioning the data in the shape of traces left by past societies. The questions encompass many perspectives. How does the environment help or hinder the making of a society? To what extent is a society crafted by its technological information? Who controls resources and labour? Who dominates social functions and who has to submit to this and why? In what way are the belief systems and their practices integrated into the pattern? Is the pattern reflected in the literature of the society? Are forms in art and architecture representative of the social ambitions of the communities involved? Where these variables change from time to time, there the pattern also changes. Community identities do not arise fully formed out of nowhere: they have to be constructed and their understanding of their own history is a necessary part of this construction, sometimes even its foundation. Historical investigation can contribute to this understanding. The methods of historical investigation are not static and are improved upon with advances in knowledge. Hence the historical perception of how communities functioned in the past is assessed afresh when there are new tools for looking at existing evidence or indeed when there is new evidence. Whether a society wishes to be open to a revision of its understanding of its own past is, of course, another matter, but even resistance eventually recedes giving way to new perceptions. The initial attempt at creating what was thought to be a modern society in India did not evolve through a period of transition as it did in Europe but came abruptly with the disjuncture of colonialism. It had potential for introducing the kind of emancipation associated with modernization. But this deeper change became stymied when a superficial imitation of the colonizer was viewed as sufficient, rather than restructuring society to accommodate change. Colonial education in any case, did not encourage understanding or changing the structure of the Indian social system in an essential way. It reinforced the colonial view of Indian society. From this perspective communities were thought of as ghettoized units identified by religion. The attempt was not to re-analyze and reformulate society but to maintain a veneer of newness, an attitude that has not been discarded. This is seen most acutely in perceptions of the core of social functioning, namely in relation to gender and to social inequality. Logic and rationality that should motivate questions of where we are at, tend to be set aside. Where logic and rationality are not the basis of an ongoing process of questioning and encouraging new views of the world around us, thinking gets ossified. Nations that have been colonies need to evaluate the colonial comprehension of both their past and their present to a far greater degree than most have tended to do. And India is no exception. The adoption of the Constitution was a good start. If it had been implemented with a healthy degree of commitment, the social and economic polity could have been for the greater good. But the initial promise met with some obvious hurdles. One was that very little attempt was made to redefine the purpose and form of the various aspects of state functioning —changing them from a colonial system to a democratic system. The bureaucratic structures have in essence remained colonial as have the attitudes that they engendered among those who controlled them. Only a minority of administrators and guardians today think of themselves as being, ‘of the people’. For the majority, those whom they govern are ‘the Other’ and the system exists so that it can be milked. An incident occurs and we suddenly discover that we are still being governed by colonial legislation—as happened recently with the withdrawal of W. Doniger’s book. Such legislation is not expected in a secular, democratic society. The most radical change was that of adult franchise. This is now battling both caste politics and the corporate financing of political parties. The media could have provided space for liberal thinking, but they have with rare exceptions, become the propagators of the conservative and the conventional, backed by a corporate takeover. The turn away from a firm commitment to a secular democracy has been with us now for a few decades. The frequency of major communal riots points to the continued use of religious identities for political mobilization. In 1991 there was a change in direction. It took a new form that was said would ensure economic and social change for the betterment of all. The question is, did it? Various reasons point to the date of 1991 and the subsequent years. The most obvious is the change in the pattern of the economy. Economic growth came to be linked less to an independent economy and more to the global market with all the attendant problems of the change. Among these are the representatives of crony capitalism that control various agencies of economic development but the reduction of poverty is not their concern. From the 1990s corporate power and control has increased enormously and the impoverishment of the peasant has declined only in a few places and that too by a miniscule amount. Half of India’s citizens remain below the poverty line. But with the focus on the economy what was not foreseen was the direction that came to be taken by changes in social attitudes and values. There has been some change, but it has not been what was promised by the liberalization of the economy. The reiteration of social conservatism as a panacea to problems and the degree to which it is accommodated is disturbing. Markets thrive on competitive activity and this in turn introduces insecurities of many kinds. The middle class has grown in numbers and so has its insecurity, which makes for a society more prone to aggression as a solution. Combining social insecurity and aggression fuels the politics of religious identities and religious fundamentalism. This is viewed as an acceptable solution. The claim to hurt religious sentiments becomes a manifestation of this. The believed threat to what are regarded as ‘traditional’ systems of social functioning creates a fear of the reality of social change, so imitations of modernity suffice. This is obvious for example, from the content of the mostwatched serials on TV channels and the invasion of mall culture. Activities seen as particular threats are matters relating to religion, to gender roles, and to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (to use the colonial nomenclature, which remains unchanged). These social categories are still regarded as inherently inferior. These are all general areas in which the past did have a different perspective and pattern of behaviour, and this was challenged by the move towards a secular democracy. By examining the conditions in the past and understanding why they were the way they were, we can comprehend what needs to change in our times. What we regard as freedom of expression was permitted largely only to privileged groups in early societies, or those who were voluntarily or otherwise outside the social pale. Some believe that a secular society means the banishing of religion. On the contrary religion in a secular society can be a source of inner strength in the private lives of many. It implies a belief in a supernatural power that is most often worshipped in the form of a deity who has the right to reward or punish in accordance with the actions of the worshipper and this explains the events in his or her life. The problem arises with the next step—when the religion is so formulated that it attracts a following, the organization of which impinges on how a contemporary democratic society should function. Religious organizations, as I have said, tend to be anti-democratic and hierarchical. All believers may be equal in the eyes of God, and on the supernatural plane, but this does not ensure equality in the here and now. A group from within the religion generally formulates a code of ethics and social laws that may or may not be in conformity with the best interests of the rest of society. This right to formulate a social code should ideally remain with the general will of the people rather than with a segment identifying with a particular religion. If religious codes prevail there will be multiple codes, some protecting and some creating social inequalities. Where the rules of social functioning, sanctified by religion and backed by the rules of caste, are intermeshed as social codes, there the confrontation with secularism becomes more complex. The propagation of a religion results in its creating institutions, meant for the betterment of society, such as schools, but also intended to draw a following as agencies of propagation. Such institutions discourage the ultimate role of rationality and logic in the knowledge on which education draws, since their premises are based on faith. A further step is when religion becomes religiosity. Here the focus is less on the teaching of the religion and more on its display, which in this situation is carried out with much fanfare and the expending of wealth. It is more a claim to status and what money can buy than a concern with belief in deity. Religiosity is generally a characteristic of situations when there is a fear that the dominant position held by the followers of a religion is beginning to decline, and therefore has to be publicized where possible. An extreme form of religion controlling public life is of course communalism, a modern phenomenon in India. Politics and the act of governance is affected by mobilization along religious lines and by political ideology based on religious identities. Communal organizations have diverse functions. They endorse the politics of religious identities and in doing so oppose democracy by giving priority to the numerically largest religious community. This is sometimes disguised by claiming that their concern is with culture rather than religion and politics—as if culture precludes these. Yet their definition of culture is neither liberal nor inclusive. Even more devastating is their pointing to the ‘enemy within’ society. To subdue such an enemy requires the setting aside of democratic norms and appropriating unquestioned dictatorial powers. In India the ‘enemy within’ includes a range of people all said to be antagonistic to ancient traditions, although such traditions are recent inventions. This becomes evident as the roll-call of ‘enemies’ is added to. Foremost among them are minority communities that are demonized as being unpatriotic. This is followed by people with any kind of liberal opinion, those who are opposed to the hold of superstition on society, Marxists—actual or imagined, women who assert their equality with men, homosexuals, transgenders, and such like. Communalism has had a long gestation period of almost a century. Much effort has gone into furthering it in the last few years in various ways. Of these the more obvious are frequent communal riots that sometimes take on the dimension of a genocide; the communalizing of those in government services, reflected in the debate as to whether they have encouraged violence and rioting; the marginalizing of liberal opinion in the media to accommodate communal views; the consistency with which session of Parliament are subjected to filibustering so that legislation supporting democratic and secular norms is stymied; and the regularity with which books on history and religion written from a secular perspective have been banned or sought to be banned. These are not incidental or accidental activities. In the late twentieth century, the kind of history that supported communal interpretations of the past had to confront a new history challenging communal constructions. The challenge has strengthened the new explorations in history, and despite the banning of books and the personal attacks on those pursuing these explorations, this history is now a presence to be reckoned with. The notion of majority and minority communities is quite alien to the Indian past and was created after the British Indian Censuses when the population was counted according to religious affiliations. These were in some ways inapplicable to most people since affiliation to a formal religion such as Hinduism or Islam, was reflected largely only in the small elite groups of society, whereas the vast numbers of the others were rather vague about which religion they conformed to. In effect therefore, the actual majority community of largely the middle to lower castes was that of people who had mixed religions or who easily crossed from one to the others as and when they chose to; and the minority communities were those small elite upper-caste groups that returned themselves as followers of one of the two formal religions. Continuing with the concepts of the predetermined majority and minority communities is contrary to both democratic and to secular functioning. When religion becomes the basis of political mobilization then it has to be properly organized for the purpose. A spectrum of militia-type organizations work towards policing society and the simplest method is through terrorizing people. We have known the Muslim National Guards of the Muslim League, the Bajrang Dal of the Sangh Parivar, the Khaqsars and the RSS both modelled on the Fascisti of Italy, and various others attached to other religious groups, such as the more recent Babbar Khalsa adn the variety of senas whose name betrays their function. They determine the contents of the religious message, which is religious fundamentalism of their own making, with a heavy political content, and hold it to be in conformity with the ‘tradition’. The appeal is also through the claim that they are teaching the true, supposedly indigenous history of the religion, community and country, as only they know it. The disturbing element in all this is the degree to which the more unsavoury ideas of such organizations have permeated the Indian middle-class. When the guard is down and people speak freely, it is not unusual to hear racist, sexist and communal remarks surfacing in conversations from those seemingly modern in their thinking. The combination of the three is not accidental. Such remarks are not only believed to be true, but are justified by being described as the received wisdom from ancient times. Religion in India as I have tried to show in some of the essays has been closely tied to caste. Intolerance in the Indian past has been expressed more consistently and to a greater degree through caste than through differentiation in religion, although this changed with the redefinition of the social function of religion in the last two centuries. Religious intolerance was not excluded, neither in the pre-Islamic period nor when Islam was part of the Indian scene. But the far more severe intolerance was that of caste and the exclusion of large categories of people of all religions who were treated as outcastes and untouchables. Secularism therefore does not only concern religion but also requires the devaluation of caste. The co-existence of religions alone, even if all religions are treated as equal, is not sufficient since unequal access to rights and resources is essential to caste. There was in the past greater tolerance among the lower castes since their religious and social boundaries were blurred, as compared to the upper castes whose religious loyalties were more clearly defined. Popular religion in the past was less text-based, more oral and in some ways different in practice from that of the upper castes. Tolerance declines where lower castes get to be organized in imitation of the upper castes as is happening in many places today. It is not accidental that the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, was followed by a decade that witnessed communal riots in many places, including Bombay in 1992-93, the genocide in Gujarat in 2002, having been preceded by the one in Delhi in 1984. The 1990s also saw an attempt at a form of affirmative action on the demands of the Dalit component of Indian society with the implementation of the report of the Mandal Commission. But even with the best will in the world this is only a partial and temporary solution. The problem requires a different and permanent solution that can be put into action alongside reservations to ease out the latter eventually. Without that there will continue to be resentment among the upper castes when a Dalit group does well and lifts itself out of its previous oppression. There is also some resentment but of a different kind among those Dalits who have not had the opportunity to qualify for the benefits of reservations, or Dalits of non-Hindu religions who should, but do not get the same benefits. The quotas in education were increased at the tertiary level without the necessary infrastructure of teachers and libraries. This has created immense problems for a system that cannot cope with sudden large increases. The end result is likely to be a lowering in standards all round, unless far greater attention is given to radically improve primary and secondary education since that is the foundation for the tertiary and provide teachers and libraries for all levels. This means open access for every child to quality schooling, but every government since Independence has done relatively little for school education and has enlarged the more glamorous tertiary education and IITs and IIMs. The middle class looks after its own interests and the rest have to fend for themselves. Or could it be that parties in power are somewhat fearful of an educated electorate? The more permanent solution is of course to build towards equal opportunities for all citizens and provide the basic essentials of such citizenship —by providing free and equal access to water from wells and public supplies without the stigma of causing pollution; through education, providing primary and secondary education in well-managed schools located in less privileged areas of villages and towns instead of in the upper-caste sections; through health centres and generic medicines; by increasing employment; by breaking down the ghettoization of castes in villages and small towns; by giving access to police protection, and by making justice available to all citizens easily and speeding. These are the minimum requirements of a democratic system. We have postponed providing these requirements by doling out snippets here and there, such as quotas in education and government jobs and temporary employment schemes. However much the policy of reservation may have helped for the moment, it is not for all time. It is likely to collapse when a range of caste groups —high and low—demand reservations. It seems paradoxical for instance, that some Rajputs and some other groups who have throughout their history claimed upper caste status are now wanting to be listed as low caste in order to avail of benefits intended for those of low status. Reservation becomes a handy excuse for not improving the workplace and merely blaming inefficiency on the quota system. The many pitfalls would have been avoided had there been reservations for economically underprivileged people, cutting across stratifications of caste and religion. And this simple change can even now be effected. As for the Scheduled Tribes, little has been done administratively to draw them into a shared history, or to understand what their pattern of living is about, or to meaningfully improve their quality of life. The contestation with the state in parts of northeastern India goes back half a century. In central India they are pawns in a game that involves a triangular contest between the state, the Naxals and the corporates, each with their own agenda. The common intention seems to be the exploitation of the tribal societies and their resources. Inevitably a few tribal leaders are now also joining in and playing out their own politics. There is little of the ethics of secular democracy in this four-cornered combat. Attitudes towards what are called ‘tribal societies’ require rethinking if the situation is not to be potentially explosive. Colonial thinking made a distinction between two groups: the civilized were literate, had a formal religion and lived within territorial boundaries and were superior; the primitive had none of these features, were scattered in the Indian forests and were inferior. Another layer of prejudice came with caste Hindus projecting themselves as members of the superior Aryan race with the rest being inferior. The Aryan race, and its counterpart—the Dravidian race—may be historically non-existent as races, but the notion of race is deeply embedded in many Indians. Descriptions of many forest dwelling tribes in Sanskrit texts emphasize their alienness and physical differences. Misunderstanding the past can lead to dangerous attitudes in the present. Not using racial categories, which are anyway defunct, would be a change for the better. What makes these attitudes potentially explosive is that since caste and formal religions are traditionally absent in tribal societies they tend to be more liberated than caste societies. Formal religion has come to them through Christian missionary enterprise, which given the lack of standards in most state schools, often makes those from Christian mission schools somewhat better educated than, say, a student from a village government school in a nontribal area. Upon moving to cities for employment they are viewed as culturally and physically different, as competitors, and are subjected to racial prejudice. In the race for votes, which is seen as a game of numbers, attempts are being made to ‘convert’some tribal groups into Hindus. Since conversion was not associated with Hinduism, the problem being that of assigning the appropriate caste, the conversions of recent times are based on new ways of including those who were erstwhile regarded as mleccha. Even if these communities represent a different way of life from the caste Hindu or the Muslim, they are nevertheless, equal citizens. Such a right would be for them a change from their earlier contact with mainstream society, via the exploitation of the landowner and the trader, a historical experience that has not been eroded from their lives. And now there is the threat from those that wish to mine their lands. When the corporates move into mining their hills and buying up their lands for a pittance, no tribal is ever asked to explain his grievance before a TV camera, so that the middle-class might just catch a glimpse of what he is experiencing. When the court of law declares pre-marital sex to be immoral and bans it what understanding will there be of the tribal institution of the ghotul, where among some tribal societies young men and women spend time together and discover whom they want to marry. Mainstream feminist movements perhaps need more familiarity with such societies, if only to ascertain how their women perceive themselves, and whether they have greater freedom than most women in caste-bound societies. A concern with a different dimension is that of changing the Indian mindset in the matter of treating women as equal citizens. This has just about begun at levels other than those of a section of the elite. Again, it is not snippets of concessions via various Bills that will be the movers and shakers of this change. It will have to be a fundamental change in the laws of the land. Additionally, the hierarchy enshrined in caste and extended to gender might explain the mindset. Patriarchy is dependent on caste that allows a control over women through rules of marriage and defines a social code in which women have a distinctly subordinate status. We are witnessing extreme expressions of this control as for example in the activities of the khap panchayats where the men of the caste determine what a woman can or cannot do. This goes against the tenets of a democratic society. And in all castes the major control is exercised through determining who can marry whom. The control is tightened by the fact that women cannot inherit property or wealth from the family, leave alone daughters inheriting equal shares with sons. This leaves the daughter, wife, widow, dependent on father, husband, son, as is stipulated in the code of Manu. She has no economic base to fall back on. The contradiction lies in the fact that in India today, and in theory, a woman can be educated for any profession she chooses and marry a man of her choice. This happens among a very small percentage of women but is not the general pattern. Such changes do take a long time to become established in a society, but they can be helped along by legislation and by the enforcing of such legislation. Disallowing any kind of ban from any source on inter-caste marriages, and stringently opposing dowry by replacing it with a law of equal inheritance for all children, would go a long way towards hastening the freedom of women to lead freer lives. This does mean changes in family structures, although such changes have been known in various parts of India in the past where customary law was entirely the opposite of the Code of Manu. Where we have precedents for alternate systems that gave certain privileges to women, these should at least be brought to the forefront. The problem in part lies with our insistence that we know what our tradition is and must act according to it. But before we quote tradition we should ask the question as to whose tradition we are observing—which caste, which class, which religious sect, which region. However much we may try and universalize past observances, there were also well-defined and accepted variants. In drawing on tradition we should respect and understand the variants, otherwise we are merely inventing a new and rather emaciated ‘tradition’ and insisting on its antiquity. Many groups of Indians living outside India are doing this and claiming to be more Hindu or Sikh or Muslim than those living in India. Those that attack liberal thinking insist on their particular reading of a text or its interpretations in such a determined way that scholars who disagree with them—and most do—are targeted on the internet. This is done through lengthy ‘exposures’ of their supposed ignorance. They are described with a battery of vituperative expletives as being not only incompetent but also anti-Hindu or - Muslim or -Sikh—whichever religion applies. This is frequently accompanied by threats of violence and physical assault. Some of us have been living with this since the 1990s. It simmers or boils up as the occasion demands, but one is assured of an immediate abusive reaction to anything that one mentions in lectures or writes about in publications. The repetition of the same hollow arguments makes all this predictably boring. There are some subjects that they cannot shake off. The hardy perennials like ‘the Aryans’ are brought up whether one has spoken about them or not. Arguing with people who make it a point of not reading what one writes makes it difficult to even get a discussion going. One’s objection is not to what is supposed to be criticism and the pathetic level of the criticism, but the fact that this kind of thinking among some groups of NRIs is being imitated by the more vacuous sections of the middle-class for whom the NRI pattern of living is what they take as their role model. Much of the criticism stems from the idea that those who make rational enquiries of the past are in effect offending religious sensibilities. This offense is not met with debate but with threats. What they are unaware of is that this has not been the rule even in the intellectual culture of early India and what they take to be their tradition. The accepted procedure for arguing was stating the views of the proponent, then responding to them, subsequent to which there could be degrees of agreement or disagreement. Every argument was met with a counterargument, not with abuse and threats. It was an intellectual culture where debate and discussion reached sophisticated heights. By comparison, it does seem utterly petty to come down to personal abuse. And in this day and age to go through the legal procedure of seeking to ban a book is a job for the unemployed to pass time. Banning a book ensures a striking increase in its readership, an increase registered both on the internet and in the boom of pirated publications of the book available with every street vendor. A wide readership is after all what most authors would be happy with. Those who do not read demand the banning of books. Those who read publish their counter arguments so that the debate can continue. The argument is that no one has the right to raise awkward questions about religion and if this is done then those who follow that religion have the right to silence the person. There is no question of responding to what is described as an offensive argument by producing arguments to counter it. One only has to think of the array of books that have been unilaterally banned in recent times. We shall soon compete with the Papal Index. We assume that our current definition of ‘tradition’ has been the accepted one for all time. Often enough we are unable to recognize that what we refer to as heritage and tradition is actually of recent vintage. Every generation invents its traditions and claims them as ancient. That which we do not accept today, we describe as ‘feudal’ or ‘medieval’, that makes them an inevitable heritage from the past. We can blame it on the past. This may be so up to a point, but it is more a refusal to come to terms with the negative aspects of the present day that we have not been able to expunge. The claim, and the authority that such a claim brings, bestows respectability on the crudest of customs. The subordination of women cannot be dismissed merely by calling it a ‘feudal’ attitude as it is the reality of contemporary Indian life, and a reflection of how we accommodate such attitudes by glossing them as traditional. The texts of the past make it evident that pre-modern India allowed the exploration of ideas and activities within broader limits than are often taken as the norm today, in some spheres of life. British Victorian attitudes for example, were not what commanded the sexual mores of Indian society. Heritage is again something that we select from the past to suit our present needs. Platitudes abound, repeating what was said a century ago, with little attempt to inquire whether in the light of new knowledge they still hold. India continues to be described as a civilization conditioned by tolerance and nonviolence, despite the existence of untouchability almost throughout its history, and the regular and unending campaigns between its many kingdoms. The Mauryan king Ashoka is today the icon of a ruler who upheld the values of nonviolence and religious tolerance, and his propagation of the mutual respect of all sects is often equated with secularism. These we are told continued even after his demise. Yet the irony is that he is remembered in Brahmanical sources as only a name in a lengthy list of rulers of early India, with nothing said about his policies. This was largely because he was a patron of the heterodoxy—in this case Buddhism—and it is the Buddhist sources that describe him as a much respected patron. But Buddhism was silenced in India by the late first millennium. Even if Ashoka’s policies were indirectly known in the first millennium AD, as some scholars have recently argued, he was relatively unknown in the second millennium AD. Historical records of pre-modern India had their ideological loyalties. Thus, Brahmanical representations of the past avoided mention of those who were patrons of what the brahmanas regarded as the heterodoxy, and the Buddhists gave space to their own patrons. So for a substantial part of Indian history Ashoka was ignored. In fact he was rediscovered in the nineteenth century with the decipherment of the brahmi script that resulted in a reading of his edicts. His then iconic status was such that it became a virtual rite of passage for historians of ancient India to write a monograph on Ashoka—myself not excluded! The other iconic figure for similar reasons is the Mughal emperor, Akbar. He again spoke of the co-existence of religions rather than of religion being one among other categories of statecraft. But such an idea would have been alien to state systems of pre-modern times. The period of Islamic rule is popularly described—in conformity with Hindutva views on history—as a period of foreign rule. This is a truly a-historical statement considering that: the later Mughals had more than a casual Rajput ancestry; immigrants from neighbouring countries in medieval times settled permanently in India; the civil and military administrative structure was manned by the ‘indigenous’ peoples both Hindu and Muslim; and above all, economic wealth was ploughed back into land and enterprise in India. This is virtually the reverse of the experience of colonialism in India. In historical terms British colonialism was the only period of foreign rule, since the British did not live in India and took its wealth back to Britain to finance other activities, leaving the colony economically impoverished. I have touched on two kinds of pasts. One is the past that has passed into the historical landscape and which has been drawn upon in highly selective ways, to validate the present. The other is the recent past, the almost-present, which has done the selecting from the earlier past and positioned it in the present. Both processes have been attempts at forging new identities associated with contemporary times. To make the connection I have discussed a few features linked to the interface of the past and the present. The ongoing changes in the present are moving us through a transition. We have the choice of appropriating the pattern of the predetermined modernity, but if we choose differently we may attain a modernity of a different kind, which draws on secular humanism. We do have a choice and we can still make it. The implication of the past as present requires recognition of the integration of the one with the other, but also the distinctive difference in the societies of earlier times and of our times. Cultural sensitivity lies in tracing the integration, but also in being aware of the discontinuities. Only then can the present seek legitimacy from the past. If I have focused on the more unseemly ways in which the past has been used I have done so to indicate its dangers and to reiterate that there is another more creative and nurturing alternative. Where this is apparent, the picture is not bleak. My purpose in referring to some problems of the present is also to make the point that if the past helps us to understand the present as it inevitably does, then such an understanding of the present should help us contemplate the future. NOTES TO THE CHAPTERS Various versions of these essays have been published previously so their original place of publication and date are given here. However, each has been revised and updated for this book. Interpretations of Early Indian History: Based on talks given at many places. Historical Perspectives of Nation-Building: The essay in its original form was first presented at a seminar on ‘Nation-Building, Development Process and Communication: A Search for India’s Renaissance’ New Delhi December 1988, and published in Mainstream in January 1989. Of Histories and Identities: This essay is based on the Neelam Tiruchelavam Lecture delivered in Colombo in 2010. In Defence of History: This essay is based on a lecture given at Thiruvananthapuram on 2 March 2002 when historians were being systematically attacked by the then government. Writing History Textbooks: A Memoir: Based on an article published in The History Workshop Journal, 2009 Glimpses of a Possible History from Below: Early India: A version was published in the January 1984 issue of Seminar under the title, ‘Continuous Beginnings’. This essay was based on my Presidential Address to the Indian History Congress held at Burdwan in 1983. Communalism: A Historical Perspective: The ideas in this essay were first put forth in an article I wrote for Seminar in January 1987 entitled ‘Historical Realities’. Religion and the Secularizing of Indian Society: This essay is based on a talk given at Columbia University, March 2007. Syndicated Hinduism: This essay was originally published as ‘Syndicated Moksha’ in Seminar in 1985. It was revised for publication in G.D. Sontheimer and H. Kulke (eds.), Hinduism Reconsidered, Delhi 1997. Which of us are Aryans?: This essay was first published in Seminar in December 1989. Dating the Epics: This essay, which was first published in Seminar in January 1976. The Epic of the Bharatas: This essay first appeared in Seminar in April 2010. The Ramayana Syndrome: The ideas in this essay were first expressed in an article I wrote for Seminar in January 1989. In Defence of the Variant: This essay first appeared Seminar in January 1994. Historical Memory without History: This essay was first published in 2007 in the Economic and Political Weekly. The Many Narratives of Somanatha: A version of this essay was delivered as the Umashankar Joshi Memorial Lecture, in Ahmedabad, on 29 December 2012. Women in the Indian Past: This essay is based on a talk given in Chennai 2012 for the Indian Women’s Association and on an essay published in Devaki Jain (ed.) Indian Women, Delhi 2014 Becoming a Sati—The Problematic Widow: An earlier version of this essay was published in Seminar, February 1988, ‘In History’. Rape within a cycle of violence: This essay is adapted from a talk given for the Centre for Policy Analysis in New Delhi, in February 2013 BIBLIOGRAPHY I have not included footnotes to the statements made in these essays, but the evidence used is referred to in the academic books that I have published. Those readers who would like to consult these may do so in the following of my books: Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Oxford University Press, London/Delhi, 1961/2013 Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, Orient Longman, Delhi, 1978/2010 From Lineage to State, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1984/2011 History and Beyond, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2000/2012 Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1996/2011 Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories, Kali for Women, Delhi, 1999/2010 Cultural Pasts, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2000/2010 Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Viking/Penguin India, 2004/2008 The Aryan: Recasting Constr`ucts, Three Essays, Delhi, 2008/2011 Readings in Early Indian History, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2013 The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, Permanent Black, Ranikhet/Harvard University Press, 2013 [The first date refers to the initial date of publication and the second date to the last impression] INDEX Age of Consent Bill, 300 agro-pastoralism, viii, 16, 19, 66, 210 Ahl-i-Hadith, 31, 51, 123 Al-Biruni, 142, 143, 159, 244 Alvars, 52, 145 Ambedkar, B. R., 13, 50, 219, 220 Annales School, 22, 24, 59 anti-colonial nationalism, 36, 61, 78, 85, 126, 166 apsara, 157, 271–273, 285 Archaeological Survey of India, 125, 178, 238, 255 archaeology, 4, 5, 16, 27, 67, 178, 184, 190, 192, 197, 199, 237-240 Arthashastra, 5, 94, 96, 99, 214, 273, 299 Arya Samaj, 45, 66, 83, 124, 140, 147, 148, 151, 152, 154 Aryans, ix, xii, 6, 10, 17–19, 44–48, 66––68, 76, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86, 166–167, 179–191, 316, 319, 323 Ashoka, vii, 20, 46, 52, 121, 133, 142, 167, 171, 178, 190, 205, 214, 235, 238, 266, 320, 321 ashvamedha 68, 91 Asiatic Mode of Production, 22, 59 Austro-Asiatic races, 44, 181 Avesta 46–47, 67, 185, 186 Babri Masjid, 31, 61, 171, 173, 314 Basham, A.L., 5 Bhagvad Gita, 5, 130, 144, 151, 175, 199, 213, 261, 297 Blavatsky, Madame, 45, 66 Bose, N.K., 13 Brahmo Samaj, 141, 150 Buddha, 47, 60, 61, 93, 104, 130, 132, 133, 151, 157, 171, 196, 201, 210, 228, 229, 230, 238 Buddhism, viii, 35, 51, 53, 116, 130–133, 138, 141, 143, 145, 156, 159, 161, 209, 214, 266, 321 Buddhist dhamma 132–133, 214 Catakantaravana-katai, 222 Chagla, M.C., 73 Chandra, Satish, 76, 86 Cholas, 19, 235 Christian missionaries, 147, 149, 150, 317 Colebroke, H.T., 183 collective memory, 38, 62, 173, 253 Cunningham, A., 11, 183 Curzon, Lord, 11, 182 Dasaratha Jataka, 218, 226, 228–230, 232, 237 dasis, 26, 95, 141, 268, 269, 274, 292, 295 Dasnamis, 155, 156 Desai, Morarji, 84 Dharmashastras, 48, 51, 77, 97, 102, 123, 142, 143, 146, 147, 160, 205, 211, 212, 214, 264–265, 269, 270, 273, 274, 277, 278, 281, 282, 301 Dravidian, 10, 18, 44, 45, 167, 181, 316 Dravidian languages, 5, 47, 67, 167, 186, 189 Eklavya, 69, 71, 212 European Rennaisance, 29-30 Fazl, Abu'l, 149, 158 Feudal Mode of Production 22, 23, 59, 69 forest dwelling tribes, 54, 316 gahapati/grihapati, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 100 genealogies, 24, 28, 40, 49, 55, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201, 206, 208, 211, 271 Goa Inquistion, 113 Gobineau, Arthur de, 180 Golwalkar, M.S., 14, 67 Gopal, Sarvepalli, 76 Grierson, G., 11 Gupta, P.C., 73 Guptas, 16, 19 Guru Nanak, 81, 111, 118, 144, 148, 238 Guru-Pir tradition, 134, 135, 159 Harappa Culture, ix, 4, 16, 17, 27, 45, 46, 67–68, 82, 141, 186, 189, 243 Harshacharita, 26, 282 Hemachandra, 248–250 Hindu Code Bill, 128, 262 Hitopadesha, 282 Hobsbawm, Eric, 3, 110 Indian civilization, viii, 16, 21, 66, 68, 82, 111, 127, 142, 163, 166, 170, 179, 181, 183, 220, 224, 264 inscriptions, 23, 25, 46, 94, 142, 172, 189, 190, 202, 242, 243, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254, 266, 275, 282, 283, 284, 286 Jainas, 20, 23, 26, 52, 53, 116, 121, 131, 142, 156, 159, 175, 190, 231, 286 Jainism, viii, 51, 130, 133, 138, 139, 141, 145, 156, 214, 249 Jatakas, 170, 228 Jesus Christ, 171, 238 Jinnah, M. A., 110 Jones, William, 76, 180, 183 Kaliyuga, 193, 208, 213, 249, 250, 302 Kane, P. V., 278 karma, 104, 142, 151, 157 Kaushitaki Brahmana, 49 Kosambi, D. D., 69 kshatriya, 25, 37, 40, 48, 49, 90–94, 102, 103, 104, 183, 187, 201, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 218, 280–285, 291, 298 Kumarapala king, 248–249 Kurukshetra 207 battle at, 193, 206, 208, 212, 282 Lingayat sect, 35, 144, 154 Macaulay, T. B., 77 Magadha kingdom, 205, 212 Mahabharata, 151, 157, 168, 202 as a civilizational text, 19, 95, 209 as a conflict among clans, 200, 206, 210 authorship of, 205 commentaries in Sanskrit, 204, 205 dating of, 192–199, 207 forms of family relations, 24, 270 historical perspective of, 26, 143, 145, 152, 215 women in, 268, 269, 271, 281, 295, 298 Mahavamsa, 230, 235 Mahmud of Ghazni, 61, 150, 169, 171, 172, 242, 244–250, 252–256 Majumdar, R. C., 74, 255 Mauryan Empire, 16, 20, 46 Max Mueller, Friedrich, 44, 66, 163, 166, 180, 181, 182 Medhatithi, 282 Megasthenes, vii, 22, 52, 142, 145 Mill, James, 9, 62, 77, 163, 172, 182, 183, 254 mlecchas, 44, 46, 54, 103, 120, 124, 146, 153, 158, 212, 317 Mohenjo-daro, viii, 4, 82, 185 Mricchakatika, 273 Mughals, 17, 20, 148, 149, 167, 253, 287 Muhammad, 171, 238, 244 Munshi, K.M., 173, 253, 255, 256 Muslim Personal Law, 129, 262 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 13 nationalism and communalism, 111, 255 link between history and, 29, 36, 78, 87, 89, 109, 110, 126, 157, 183, 193, 200, 263 religious, 12, 14, 61, 78, 79, 84, 85, 108, 113–114, 136–137, 167, 168, 171 secular form of, 12, 74, 109, 110, 131 Nayannars, 52, 144 neo-Buddhism, 35, 50, 130, 137 Olcott, Henry Steel, 66, 166 oral traditions, 3, 11, 37, 51, 152, 169, 170 Oriental Despotism, 10, 11, 13, 22, 54, 77, 82 Orientalism, 151, 182 Padma Purana, 285 Paumacharyam, 218, 231, 232 peasant economy, 91–94, 98, 99, 101 Phule, Jyotiba, 67, 167, 183 Prabandha Chintamani, 248 Prinsep, James, 11, 183 Puranas, 24, 40, 49, 52, 123, 131, 194, 208, 210, 230 rajasuya, 91, 95, 210 Rajatarangini, 76, 121, 149, 250 Ramayana, xii, 19, 24, 151, 168–172, 176, 193, 197, 199–202, 204, 209, 210, 216–219, 221, 22, 224, 225–228, 234–235, 236, 295–297, 323 Ramjanmabhoomi movement, 121, 197, 226, 234 Rigveda, viii, ix, 4, 5, 26, 45, 46, 47, 48, 67, 181, 183, 186, 206, 280 Risley, Herbert, 48 Roy, Ram Mohun, 44, 289, 291 Said, Edward, 182 Sanskrit, vii, 10, 14, 21, 25, 32, 39, 44, 46, 47, 51, 55, 66, 67, 77, 83, 94, 114, 139, 143, 150, 158, 166, 170, 172, 180, 181, 185–190, 222, 235, 242, 245, 248, 249, 250–254, 260, 266, 291, 302 Savarkar, V.D., 14, 67, 110, 140 Sastri, Nilakanta, 73 secularism, 34, 69, 113, 125, 128, 129, 131, 136–138, 167, 308, 312, 314, 320 Semitic religions, 29, 115, 128, 130, 139, 140, 142, 147, 160 Sen, Keshab Chandra, 183 Shaiva sects, 121, 144, 147, 150, 152, 155 Shakta sects, 145, 146, 159, 285, 289 Shakyas, 230 Shankaracharya, 147, 156 Sharma, Dasaratha, 74 Sharma, Ram Sharan, 76 Shatapatha Brahmana, 46, 83 Silk Route, 96 Smith, Vincent, 76, 183 stri-dhana, 275, 276 Sufis, 31, 134, 148 Tamraparni/Tambapanni, 235 Tawney, R.H., 99 Tessitori, L.P., 11 Theosophical Society, 66, 150 Tod, J., 11 Toynbee, A., 13 trade, 21, 27, 39, 45, 65, 66, 81, 94, 95–98, 185, 189, 243, 245, 252, 276, 287 Trautmann, T.R., 5 tribal peoples, 34–36, 93, 55, 56, 90, 96, 129, 146, 153, 176, 177, 220, 222, 224, 264, 308, 316 two-nation theory, 18, 63, 111 Upanishads, 26, 102–104, 150, 151, 269, 295 upper-caste Hindus, 129, 146, 147, 150, 158 Vaishnavas, 121, 144, 147, 152, 284, 295 Valmiki Ramayana, 170, 202, 218, 222, 227, 228, 231, 232, 234, 236, 295, 296 varna, 10, 18, 48, 91, 94, 99, 102, 146, 154, 181, 182, 187, 205, 264 Vedic Brahmanism, 10, 131, 133, 140–144, 145, 162 Vedic Sanskrit, vii, 47, 66, 67, 185, 186 Vedic texts, ix, 16, 93, 103, 142, 151, 184, 189, 280 Vijayanagara kingdom, 286, 287 Vrishnis, 205, 207, 212, 271 Wahhabi movement, 31 Weber, Max, 4, 7, 22, 24, 59 Wheeler, Mortimer, 118, 184 Wilson, H.H., 76, 183 Yadava dynasty, 23, 283 Yajnavalkya, 266 We have great books for anyone who enjoys first-rate literary fiction and non-fiction. 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