“Sometimes it takes your Heart a little longer to accept
What your Mind already knows….”
Can India risk losing valuable man hours debating issues like Sabarimala. Hindus are the most literate lot in India anyday and this is the case with the best educated in the nation. Alternate views not welcome, dogged and rigid persistence with values of bygone centuries, and dogmas inapplicable and impractical in the modern 21st century not allowed to be questioned. In this environment, how can research ever be conducive in India. What is the value edition of these worthless protest campaigns. How many of those who talk big in social media have actually teenage daughters or daughters who will be ruling the corporate world in near future.
All it takes is, daughters to be born in the family, widows in the family, divorced women in the family, the abused and the bruised – to revise our views on Shastras and Sampradayas.
For instance, how do you define the so-called ‘Karpu’ the supposedly most revered virtue of a Tamil Hindu woman. How do you define the ‘karpu’ of divorcee Hindu women, who may be innocent divorcees. How do you define the karpu of the Hindu women who are taking a second shot at life, remarrying on divorce or widowhood. Don’t these women have karpu.
Karpu made sense for millennia, but has lost relevance ever since women in India are on equal footing with men in every arena of social development. It is not a stigma on women to even cremate the dead these days. Hindu women have come a long way.
This is why I keep out of debates on Karpu or never share in social media anything on karpu. Some of us have friends and relatives who are once or even twice divorced – innocent divorcees. There are children borne out of second marriages. We Hindu women today are violating the most basic shastra-sampradaya called the institution of marriage with the help of law, when it becomes inevitable. Should we even be debating Sabarimala now.
Most Hindus suffer from selective amnesia. Barely a century ago, Hindu women in Kerala mostly went topless. Maximum, a small blouse even some 40-50 years back. How many Kerala Aiyappa bhaktas can allow their women to go topless in present times. Don’t we change with times.
Antagonism to new ideas, unwillingness to give up inexplicable dogmas will forever keep research in unfavourable climate in India. Voice of the dissent is suppressed by mass hysteria movements. More taboos were broken under the British. In Independent India, strangely, it is lot tougher to bring in social reforms. Emotions and prejudice must not be allowed to cloud rationality and judgement.
If 1000 fools jump into a well, should we also jump in without thinking twice. Numbers should not be allowed to deceive our sixth sense of reasoning.
Hindu Dharma is not an organized religion like Christianity or Islam. Sanathana Dharma literally translates to ‘Free Will.’Which is more so reason for us to go flexible and adapt ourselves to changing times and situations.
Either that, or we have to keep our women 24 hours behind doors, not educating them or allowing them to earn a living. That truly is Hindu sampradaya!
Let us women refuse our rightful inheritance as equal legal heirs in landed estates. That is Hindu custom.
Clamping down on progress, ridiculing the logical, and persisting with legalizing and sustaining a totally unacceptable and dated notion, double mind in stepping out of conventional comfort zone will not take India anywhere. I am closing down further topics on Sabarimala because it must not take any more of our time. Sanathana Dharma is not single edition. If you have your version, I hold mine custom-made.
Research necessitates lots of questions to be asked. The old theories have to fall flat at times as new dimensions emerge. That is how world has come this far. From the days of Galileo and Copernicus. Sabarimala is one good reason why Research will always be a casualty in India and why the ‘India growth story’ will never take us beyond TV news bulletins. The tangible realizable development will record ZILCH.
Without unlocking doors, without feeding our curiosity, without questioning, we will forever be the CLERK GRADE. Innovations will be impossible. Are we Indians made-to-order to be subservient. That is why India will produce more Sundar Pitchais and Satya Nadellas but never a single Steve Jobs or Elon Musk.
That the most literates in India are the ones stalling imagination and diversification and growth is the most worrying aspect.
PS:
Updated: October 7, 2018
Kerala Court has ruled now that supporting the ideology of a ‘ dreaded world terror organization’ is not illegal. Let us get enraged for right reasons. Let law demarcate the line between what is lawful and what is illegal or criminal. When we lose focus squandering our energy on resources on trivial issues like Sabarimala which are nothing but a phase of evolutio, we will lose perspective and struggle to fight the real battles – as a community, as a nation.
vijiravindran's 