Women in the Indian Epics

Women in the Indian Epics

Anyone, born in the soil of the Indian sub-continent, will surely notice the misery of woman. Most of the women in this region are to struggle for a living and are to live against thousand and one odds. Women do sweat and miserably they do so, usually in the agricultural fields or in the unorganized sectors. They are also tied to the families and there they pay their services as responsible home-makers although their labor is hardly acknowledged and is hardly converted into money in any way. Of course their presence, fortunately and unfortunately, is also felt in the organized and corporate sectors. They shed sweats and they shed tears, simultaneously, days after days and years after years.

Gandhiji, the most applauded leader of the last century, in his wonderfully built-up non-violent movement against the British Empire, has successfully utilized the potency of the Indian women which still then has not been recognized socially or politically. And the very sad aspect of this part of history rests in the fact that he, too, at the formative stage of the Indian freedom struggle, had some challenged vision on the strength and capacity of the Indian women. Still a student of literature or history or philosophy or sociology may be misled at the self-deception of the Indian society which still selects to feel happy when it takes it granted   that  women  are being highly esteemed and that they have been esteemed in the same way right from the days of Valmiki and Vedavyasa.

Indian epics are marvelous gifts of the Indian people to the literature of the world. These epics are two in number, namely, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana was authored by Valmiki and the Mahabharata by Vedavyasa. Both of these bards were Indian sages, but they were dark by complexion. This leaves a hint that they did not belong to the higher run of the Aryan society where men and women were sufficiently fair. Again the society was divided into classes and a very stringent caste system was at its base. Valmiki, as is said, was a robber in a dense forest and in the first part of his life he was simply a professional robber. Vedavyasa was the son of Satyabati and Satyabati was the daughter of a chieftain of a community of the fishermen. But Vedavyasa’s father was Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura. In the epics of India we find presence of a good number of women. As the two epics provide us with some accounts of the royal families in the main and as the crisis of political authority is what the bards have dealt with seriousness in their works, a reader is expected to experience the status of the women of the royal families. There are eulogies after eulogies showered over the women in the pages of these epics and they are huge enough to develop some biased views in respect of the status of the women. And for this very reason one may tend to be skeptic too. Let me be humble to look at these things and let me be honest to find the truth about the status of some of the important women portrayed in these epics.

It may appear to a reader of the Ramayana that this grand epic has been written with the tears of Sita only. Who her parents were remained within the dusk and this nice soul was brought up by Janaka, a feudal king probably. Janaka actually collected her from the earth when he was plowing his field. Hence, to the truest sense of the term, she was not a princess. Sita was still  a minor when she had to marry. She had fixed a condition that she must marry the king who would be able to break a heavy bow which was tagged to the name of Shiva. Shiva was an important god of the Aryans. 

Ramachandra was the eldest son of Dasaratha and Dasaratha was the king of Ayodhya. Ramachandra married Sita after breaking the sacred bow. Soon after this marriage and just before the scheduled date for his coronation Ramachandra had to move to the forests of the southern India for a period of fourteen years. Once   Dasaratha was cursed by one blind sage. The curse was that Dasaratha would have to die on account of   seperation from his son. Actually Dasaratha, during one of his games, had once killed the only son of that sage by mistake. Sita followed Ramachandra leaving back the pomp and fun and luxuries of the royal palace. This was her own decision and no one had exerted any pressure on her. We should note that she could stay atAyodhya and no one would point a finger at her. But she followed her husband because of her sincere love and devotion for him and thus she had made up her mind to brave the uncertainty and insecurity of the forest life. She had no allegation against her husband. Such was she before Ravana, the king of Swarnolanka, chanced to deceive her and took her by force to the opposite side of the sea. Ravana failed to win her and had never earned a little bit of compassion from her even for a single moment. Sita remained confident that she would one day be released from the confinement of the beautiful garden of Ravana and that she would one day be won back by her dear husband. Ramachandra, with the help of an army of the monkeys, attacked the enemy’s kingdom and killed Ravana. Sita was freed finally. When Ramachandra was returning to Ayodhya in a magnificent flying cart Sita for the first time in her life came to know that the environment of trust and understanding had been severely poisoned. She was stunned when she heard from her husband that she had been released not because of the fact that Ramachandra had still retained something of his earlier love towards her. Sita was stunned to learn from her God-only husband that he had taken all the trouble to fight against Ravana in order to establish how manful he was. Yes, Sita learned from Ramachandra that he had killed Ravana and most of the male members of Swarnolanka in order to keep up the prestige and glory of his dynasty, that is, the dynasty of Ikshaku. Ramachandra was not a man to accept that Sita had been able to remain away from the lust of Ravana or that she had been spared. Sita learned this and she was doubly injured.

These all, as if, were not enough. What was in the mind of the dark bard of the Ramayana who knows.  He built up this woman perhaps with the toughest elements of the world. She endured it or she had to endure it. On the days of self-immolation, yes, on each of the two occasions, she dared establish how sacred she had always been. Fire engulfed her and she did not burn. And Valmiki’s description on her departure from this earth appeared as a child’s tale to me. The earth did never make the cavity to take her back. Sita was persecuted to such a degree that she did not find, at one point of her life, a meaning to breathe more. She just committed suicide or she was forced to commit a suicide, and perhaps it was the first ever suicide in the world literature.

Aholya is another woman. She was cursed and turned into a stone by her hermit husband on the ground that she had lost her chastity. The story is such that one god, probably Mars, had seduced her and that her husband incidentally learned this. And this hermit had no rage against the seducer. He did find it easier to turn a poor woman into a stone. The rest part of the story narrates how Ramachandra touched that stone by chance and how poor Aholya was relieved.

But there is one more woman whose tale I must tell. She is Urmila. She was not an ordinary woman. She was the daughter of Janaka who was a king. It stands as a mystery to us why she was led to get married with Lakshmana, the younger brother of Ramachandra, just after the marriage of Ramachandra.  Lakshmana had done nothing heroic like his elder brother. He did not even touch an arrow here. And Urmila, the princess, followed Lakshmana silently.

Urmila has been portrayed as an incarnation   of silence and she has been sent to oblivion just after the beginning of the journey to the forests byLakshmana to follow his elder brother instantly. Urmila was a girl with qualities, qualities of her mind. She was a   learned girl too. Lakshmana could never be her match any way. Still he was her husband and as a husband he was such irresponsible that he cared a little to meet his wife, a young and beautiful wife, or to receive a farewell from her or even to exchange with her one word or two, prior to leaving Ayodhya. Lakshmana acted like a machine and not like a human being. It was really impossible to forget the existence of the girl whom he had just married. Valmiki stopped here as if to make us haunt how miserable was the life of an Indian woman although she belonged to a royal family.

You will have to face a number of marvelous women in the pages of the Mahabharata too. Durbasa was one of the infamous sages of the Indian epics. He stayed as a guest in a royal palace for a few days once. There was a minor girl in that palace, a pretty and sufficiently intelligent girl. She was the daughter of a king, but she lived as a daughter in the house of a friend of her father. She was asked to look after the sage. Her sincere services satisfied the sage. But the sage felt infatuated to her and tried to have sex with the child. The girl was sharp and managed to maintain her virginity. This made Durbasa annoyed and he left the place awarding her a boon. With the effect of the boon the girl was empowered to have any person in her bed on her wish. Anyone can understand that any piece of curse thousand times harsher than this one would have been better for this girl. Yes, she is Kunti, the glorious mother of the Pandavas. The bard has delineated the pathetic spectacle of this girl appealing at the feet of the god named Sun to excuse her for the unintentional mistake she had committed as a child. But Sun, with   utter cruelty, wanted to rape this girl of twelve and raped her like a condemned criminal and forced her to bleed all through her life. Karna was the son of this virgin mother and he, immediately after his birth, was left alone to be flowed   in a tiny river in   a   small   piece of boat to the point of infinite uncertainty. But the bard of the Mahabharata retrieved him one day from oblivion and appointed him to challenge Arjuna   who   had   had   a   recognition  as  the   greatest warrior of the time. And alas, he was one of the acknowledged sons   of   Kunti and for him only Kunti had to meet Karna on one evening of the fateful days of the Battle of Kurukshetra in order to beg the life of Arjuna. Kunti was married to Pandu, the king of Hastinapura, and Pandu had earned such a curse that he was destined to die on any attempt of copulation ever. Pandu was placed on the throne because his elder brother Dhritarashtra was blind by birth.

Madri was the second queen of Pandu. She was trained by Kunti not to respond to the sexual hunger of Pandu. Madri was younger and could not resist her own demand and his demand also, and Pandu had to pass away. Kunti  did   not  have  any  of  her  son  from Pandu, her official husband. On his obstinate insistence for having heirs for the throne Hastinapura and also against her will she had to torture her uterus   thrice   and  thus  Yudhisthira,  Bhima and Arjuna were born. Kunti  had always been on a frying pan.

Gandhari was an excellent girl and she was the daughter of a king of the north-western India and she was charming physically and intellectually. She was a learned and a virtuous woman. Bhishma, the unmarried hero and the extra-administrative authority of the kingdom of Hastinapura, had just robbed this babe by dint of his muscle power.  Gandhari did not definitely know that Dhritarashtra, the king of Hastinapura, was handicapped by vision. When she learned this she decided to hide her beautiful eyes behind a black scarf and this she had done for the rest of her. What other means a noble soul could  take  to  register  her  mark  of  protest  ? You will find in the pages of the Mahabharata that there are three other princesses, princesses of Kashi. Amba,  Ambika    and   Ambalika. They were also forcefully brought to Hastinapura by the respectable Bhishma and these girls had to experience severe persecution simply because of the male chauvinism.

Before concluding this small piece of writing let me introduce one very important woman of the Mahabharata. Droupodi. She was the daughter of the king of Panchala. Being won by Arjuna in a grand competition she was brought to the family of Kunti and she was forced to accept four other brothers of Arjuna as her husbands. Nobody was there to listen to her. She had great love for Arjuna, but she did hardly have him with her when she was seriously in need of him.Judhisthira, the eldest brother of the Pandavas, used her as a piece of property in a gamble of cubes in which he was defeated. The Pandavas had to lose her finally in the open royal court of Hastinapura. This elegant woman of the royal family was attempted to be denuded in front of everybody and not a brave soul, save Bhima as the solitary exception, raised a voice in opposition. Droupodi had to bear the burnt of the Battle of Kurukshetra to the last. Even  when, after a truce between the both sides, that is, between the Kouravas and  Pandavas, was made and after everyone was wrapped under the shed of inexplicable agony for the loss of almost all of the relatives on either side, a warrior from the opposite camp suddenly appeared and butchered her hapless children. The innocent children were sleeping.

The bards of the Indian epics deserve the best of the glory as they have left no illusion in our mind on the real status of the women of India who have been, since the days of the epics, worshiped in the form of goddesses in different parts of this region.