A few days ago I went with a friend to see his ailing aunt. She was bedridden, but fully conscious. She was instructing her husband to wear a special kurta pajama on her birthday, which was falling the very next day.
Seeing her delicate condition, the husband avoided saying that he did not know where it was. She then told him that it was in a red packet which she had kept in the left corner on the topmost shelf of his Godrej almirah.
You might be wondering whether it is worth mentioning here in a blog post. I think it is, because after a week, she breathed her last.
Yesterday I kept thinking how she was so concerned for her husband and family even on her death bed.
I kept thinking how a girl leaves her parental home to build a completely new home with a different guy and his family and how she immerses herself in the new environment and makes it her own paradise. Can we see any other living example of adaptation in our daily life?
Seeing their sacrificial nature, our forefathers had in their wisdom, always considered women superior to men and had advised us to do so through scriptures and practices.
Now many times society is blamed for unequal treatment of women. I agree that there are deviations and exceptions now here and there.
But when we look back, the reality was completely different. Gargi and Maitreyi were among the top 20 Indian philosophers of the Vedic age in ancient India. They were as knowledgeable as men in the Vedas and Upanishads and could compete with male philosophers in debate.
During the historic debate between Adi Shankaracharya and Mandana Mishra, Ubhaya Bharti, a female intellectual and wife of Mandana Mishra was appointed judge, and it was she who accepted Adi Shankaracharya's convincing arguments, thereby defeating her own husband.
Do you know that one of the most important female rulers in early Indian history was Prabhavati Gupta, daughter of Chandragupta II and queen of the Vakatakas? After the death of her husband, Rudrasena II, she effectively ruled her kingdom from about c.390 to 410.
Even while taking the name of Gods and Goddesses, the name of the Goddess comes first, e.g. Sita in Sita-Rama, Gauri in Gauri-Shankar, Radha in Radhe-Krishna, Lakshmi in Lakshmi-Narayan, because God is Shaktimaan (Almighty), but his Shakti (might) comes from Goddess.
Mother power has always been given importance in our culture. We give status of mother as a symbol of respect. Ganga is our mother, Yamuna is our mother, Narmada is our mother, Nature is our mother, Cow is our mother, Earth is our mother, and our country is mother, i.e. Bharat Mata (Mother India).
It may sound primitive, but the world is coming back to our old concepts of environmental protection, organic farming etc.
It's a fact that our culture and traditions have changed a lot during the Mughal and British period, but these need to be revived in our daily life, when we look at the beauty and utility of our ancient civilization that inspires us to treat everyone equal with respect, both in letter and spirit, irrespective of caste, colour, creed, or sex.
--Kaushal Kishore
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