Pedestals that are pits

One of the early morning religious discourses on television recently had this gentleman narrating as part of some larger story about womanly virtues, a story of a raja who had to make an important appointment in the country. 

Of the contenders for the post, he chose a certain young man, but his wife, a shrewd woman, saw another young man and detecting in his responses and actions the fire and intelligence required for the task, advises the king to entrust it to that second young man. A trial proves the queen right and the young man is selected, but of the queen, it was said by wise men of the age that she was not a ‘pativrataa.’

And the reason? Her transgression was that she had contradicted her husband, and challenged and refuted his judgement. A wife who went contrary to her husband’s words, it seems, was not a ‘pativrata’, even if her husband were wrong and she, right, and her action and words were for the betterment of others, including her husband.  Although it was her ‘dharma’ as queen to act for the welfare of her people, she had flouted the dharma of a pativrata wife!

To define a ‘pativrata’ as one who did not look at a second male was bad enough and tied women down to their homes and hearths even if these were unloving or even downright oppressive. No such impossible standards were set for men. They were not bound by any 'one woman' rules.

But to interpret the word ‘pativrata’ as a woman who toed the husband’s line in all matters, right and wrong, seems to me to be a bit too much. It seems to me to be society’s spiteful revenge on women who threatened male position by the clarity of their vision, their intelligence, and their intellectual integrity.

Instead of placing women on illusory pedestals that are no more than gilded pits covered by thin ice, and painting haloes around women who play by these ridiculous rules, it is time we gave up these silly standards and definitions and accepted that women are no inferior to men in matters of the mind and intellect. Let us accept and realize that by suppressing women over millennia and denying their rights to everything from their own sexuality to world knowledge we have not only denied half the population of basic rights, but denied society itself the opportunity to rise to its fullest potential.