The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c16.112

c16.112

To conclude, from about the beginning of the Christian era, Hindu society began to assume a patronising attitude towards women, as was done almost everywhere both in the West and the East till quite recently. While solicitous to increase the scope of their proprietary rights, while anxious to ensure all creature comforts to them, it failed to assess their proper worth with an impartial mind. The tendency to pass disparaging remarks about women in general became commoner. Some thinkers like Varāhamihira no doubt realised its danger and proceeded to nip it in the bud. But they did not get as much support in society as their cause deserved. This, however, need not surprise us. The general position of women had really deteriorated. They were no longer receiving any education. Theologically they had been reduced to the status of the Śūdras. Early marriages interfered with the proper development of their character. It could no longer be properly moulded in the loving and sympathetic atmosphere of the parents’ house. Girls had to leave it at an early age and migrate to the house of the parents-in-law, where an atmosphere of awe prevailed, and where they had to play the junior to a large number of elders, who were often not sufficiently sympathetic. When they grew old, they had the apprehension of supersession. As a consequence their character suffered from forced repression in some directions and unnatural stimulation in others, as does that of men also under an unsympathetic foreign rule. As a consequence, women began to show greater pettiness, narrowmindedness and peevishness than men. The tendency to pass disparaging and patronising remarks about their character therefore became almost irresistible. Men should have tried to investigate into the causes of this phenomenon with a view to remove them. Instead of doing so, they allowed themselves to succumb to the temptation of merely passing uncharitable remarks about the weaker sex. This weakness, however, was not peculiar to Hindu civilisation, but was shared by it with all other contemporary cultures. The tendency to adopt a patronising attitude towards women will disappear as soon as women take their proper place as valued and well-equipped coworkers with men. This desideratum will be achieved at no distant date, when we consider the rapid strides which female education is taking at present. There is no doubt that men are at present trying their best to help in the moral, intellectual and physical development of women. It is to be hoped that our sisters will regard this as a partial compensation for our patronising attitude and sins of omission and commission in the past, which were almost unavoidable in an age of darkness prevailing all over the world.