The freedom to Be - Pandita Ramabai

Book cover Rewriting History

Over two months have passed since I have held two books in my hand. One, more recently, Against the madness of Manu, Dr B R Ambedkar’s writings on Brahminical Patriarchy, selected and introduced by well known scholar, Dr Sharmila Rege. The other, Dr Uma Chakravarti’s Rewriting history – The life and times of Pandita Ramabai. I have not read two books that make me revert back and forth to each other, so often. Both books are extremely engaging and very scholarly. But, today, I will write of Pandita Ramabai, because, she was blessed with parents who broke the cast, and caste rules, and brought up a daughter who cannot be forgotten to the history of women, who were scholarly and independent, who were able to be free flowing and to invent a word –“un-castable”.

Ramabai’s father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was born a Brahmana and lettered in Sanskrit which was a language that could not be taught to anyone outside the Brahmana caste, nor could it be taught to women. However, Dongre broke the first law by trying to teach his wife, Sanskrit but her family came hammer and tong on him forcing him to abort the effort. Many years later, now a widower, Dongre, married the 9 year old Lakshmibai, (Dongre himself was at that time, 44 years old), and found a keen learner of Sanskrit in her. Under much pressure for his non-conformist behaviour, Dongre preferred to move into the forest and start an ashram, which was managed by the couple. It is here that Pandita Ramabai was born, and her first letters were studied in Sanskrit and of course the sacred books of the Hindus. Having gone out of pocket, the family now began their pilgrimage around places, a pauranikars, that is public narrators of the Puranas. This lifestyle also was accompanied by a life of sannyasa, which means, the family lived on alms provided by the people to whom they taught the Puranas. A life of a wandering minstrel brought Ramabai close to knowledge and renunciation, both, at one and the same time. After many years of travel and starvation, Anant Shastri Dongre, performed jala samadhi, a practice by which he drowned himself to be shortly followed by his grief-stricken wife, Lakshmibai. The children, Srinivas and Ramabai, survived, even as the eldest sister passed away and in 1878, arrived in Calcutta.

For the intellectual imaginative cream in Calcutta, Ramabai, unmarried and knowledgeable became the symbol of the return of Maitreye and Gargi, who followed their husband Yagnavalkya, to the forest to seek Knowledge, leaving all possessions behind. On the behest of Keshav Chandra Sen, who founded the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Ramabai, began to study the Vedas, which were gifted to her by Sen. The Vedas, Upanishads and the Vedanta, and the Brahma Sutras were texts which were not allowed to be read by women, even if they were Brahmanas, which she was.

“IX.18. Women have no right to study the Vedas. That is why their Sabskars (rites) are performed without Veda Mantras. Women have no knowledge of religion because they have no right to know the Vedas. The uttering of the Veda mantras is useful for removing sin. As women cannot utter the Veda mantras they are as untruth is”. (Quotation from Manu, Against the madness of Manu, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.121)

Indeed, the reading of these texts caused much dissatisfaction in Ramabai, because it became clear that the status of women and low caste men, were seen very poorly. Her engagement with Bengal’s intellectuals about uplifting women became a focus. The Hindu religious texts were an eye-opener for her. She saw the dominance of Brahmana patriarchy through them. It is at this juncture that she met with another tragedy in her life, that being the death of her only surviving sibling, Srinivas, to an illness. Alone, in the world, she accepted the marriage proposal from her brother’s friend, from Sylhet, now in Bangladesh. Bipin Bihari Medhavi, was a sudra, and her marriage with him in the Civil Court, proved another slap on the face of Brahamanical tradition, of endogamy and marriage by performing religious rites. In her own words, “Having lost faith in the religion of my ancestors, I married a Bengali man of shudra caste” (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 310) The marriage lasted for only 3 – 4 years and Ramabai was left a widow, with a daughter to fend for. She returned to her place of origin, this time with child, in 1882, when the reformists in Poona, Maharashtra called her back. But in orthodox Poona, as a widow, engaged with talking of uplifting women in Public discourses, the scorn of the Brahmana community in Poona was not far. Indeed, even the wives of reformers like Justice Ranade wrote with unabashed venom, fearing that, she might now convert to Christianity, far worse than marrying even a sudra.

“We cannot tolerate such sacrilege. What an accursed thing. Her father had turned her into a devotee and wedded her to the heavenly bridegroom Shri Dwarkanath. And yet, this wretch married a Bengali baboo and polluted herself. And did she build a home for herself after all? No fear. She brought utter ruin on everyone connected with her and is now out to pollute the whole world. (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 313)

It is at this moment, having seen through the Hindu texts and also being completely alone in the world along with her daughter, that Ramabai, began to feel the dire need for a personal God. In Father Goteh, a Chitpavan Brahmana convert himself, Ramabai found an answer, in Christ. Egged on by the involvement of Miss Hurford, a missionary, who introduced her to the Bible in Marathi, she found her peace with Christ, when she converted to Christianity on her visit to England, in 1883, despite the fact that her companion to England, Anandibai, having nearly throttled her, before she herself committed suicide in St Mary’s Home in Wantage, for fear that, the outlandish Ramabai, would yet again do the forbidden, that is to convert to Christianity.

An outcry followed in India, as soon as news came in of the conversion. They damned her as ‘fickle’, ‘peculiarly female’, meaning she was sentimental and not rational, as her scholarly mind should have made her.

Leave that as it may, she was about to encounter patriarchy in the Church as well. In September, 1884, Ramabai joined the Women’s College, Cheltenham, as a student and teacher of Marathi language. She was to teach the language to young English boys and women but the Bishop of Lahour and Bombay struck it down causing Ramabai to react sharply. She was not going to accept these racist rules, which forbade her, an Indian woman to teach English boys.

“I have a conscience and a mind of my own. I must myself think and do everything which God has given me the power of doing...I have with great effort freed myself from the yoke of Indian priestly tribe so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything that comes from the priests as authorised command of the Most High...” (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 322)

In 1886, Ramabai went to America and stayed there for two years, leaving her daughter Manorama with the sisters at Wantage. In these two years she travelled almost 50,000 kilometres across America, addressing hundreds of meetings, lecturing, writing, speaking, entertaining, thinking and raising funds for an upper caste widow’s home in India, because the plight of the higher caste widow in India was pitiable.

If as Dr B R Ambedkar, in his paper read out first before the anthropology seminar of Dr A A Goldenweiser at Columbia University, New York, on 9 May 1916, concluded in ‘[14] Thus the superposition of endogamy of exogamy means caste.’(Against the madness of Manu, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.86), [16] The problem of caste, then, ultimately resolves itself into one of repairing the disparity between the marriageable units of the two sexes within it...The husband may die before the wife and create a surplus woman, who must be disposed of, else through intermarriage she will violate the endogamy of the group...Thus, both the surplus woman and the surplus man constitute a menace to the caste if not taken care of;...’ [18] First: burn her on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband...[19] The second remedy is to enforce widowhood on her for the rest of her life.’(Ibid, pp 87 - 88)

This enforced widowhood, was pitiable, both in terms of the fact that the period of this widowhood could be long due to child marriage and the restrictions imposed on the widow, were inhuman. Thus, in March 1889 Pandita Ramabai, inaugurated the first Home for widows of upper caste women, called Sarada Sadan in Bombay, where widows could come to stay instead of remaining back in their families. This Home would be a place where women would be encouraged to have a new understanding of themselves, bringing the joy of new life, unlike the joyless life, widows were expected to lead, by Hindu society dictates.

In the same year she returned to India from America, then she moved to Poona, in 1890, where her work was looked at with much suspicion especially because by now she was seen as a convert, who in D K Karve’s words, “From the orthodox point of view, even the remarriage of widows was not so objectionable as their conversion to Christianity”. In her later years at Mukti Sadan, Kedgaon, the inmates were visited by a Pentecostal preacher and for a period began to ‘speak in tongues’ as if experiencing an ‘awakening’. This however was short lived and the girls trained in many crafts and lettered too, went back to singing Marathi kirtanas composed by the Christian poet Waman Narayan Tilak and printing the Bible in Marathi.

Ramabai died in 1922, suffering yet one more loss in her life, that of the death of her only daughter, Manorama. By now she was entirely deaf. But had changed the plight of widows in India and fought for equal rights for them. Indeed, the best obituary was from D.K. Karve, who had married one of the first widow inmates of Sarada Sadan.

For history to obliterate her name or to put her in the backburner would be equally participated by Hindus and Christians alike, for Pandita Ramabai, followed her heart and proceeded to a life free of both patriarchies, whether born and bred in the Hindu texts or in the Christian Church. In a way, she Indianised Christianity for the benefit of Indian women and widows in particular, in another way, she westernised the Hindu scriptures and societal dictates for the same group of women. And in that she stood on her own stead.

It would be impossible for women to do the same however, and notwithstanding what patriarchies in any domain do to erase or forget by omission, Pandita Ramabai, as women, we will not commit a heinous crime, like sati, or a forced widowhood, from the clutches of which she worked tireless towards and succeeded to make the difference. 

(c) Julia Dutta June 16, 2013

To buy:

Rewriting History – The life and times of Pandita Ramabai by Uma Chakravarti
http://www.dialabook.in/books/rewriting-history:-the-life-and-times-of-pandita-ramabai_1_18944.html

Against The madness of Manu by Sharmila Rege

http://www.bookadda.com/books/against-madness-manu-sharmila-rege-818905953x-9788189059538

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Neo-Buddhism: Balm over the angst of non-recognition

On 15th August,2010, The Times of India quoted Meena Kandaswamy, Professor in English, in Anna University, Chennai, saying through her blog (see http://meenu.wordpress.com/) “ I would like to describe myself as a woman writer obsessed with the revolutionary Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s message of caste annihilation…….Dalits are denied the right to land, Muslims the right to homes. We live in a society riddled with minority phobia.”

Indeed, where Meena Kandaswamy is placed, Tamil Nadu, there is another phobia – the fear of being upper (read brahman) caste. People belonging to that community may be bending backwards to prove they are not brahmans, as in Tamil Nadu there is 70% reservations for SC/STs.

In the meantime, Sharmila Rege , Director, Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune, has been equally involved in path breaking work in unearthing the buried histories of Dalits in India. Years of being ostracised by the Brahman community, the Dalits had been living in the outskirts of the village eating left over food by Brahmans and other communities, announcing the dead, burning death bodies, eating animals and doing menial work only, as education was totally denied to them. Their existence was non-recognition only.

Until, Dr B R Ambedkar came along.

Rising from their midst, Dr B R Ambedkar went on to do a Ph.D and become a Lawyer and finally the architect of the Indian constitution. He is best remembered today also as the founder of Neo-Buddhism which he used very ably as a weapon against social injustice bestowed upon the untouchables by the brahmans. He is also the father of the Dalit uprising in India.

It would be interesting to note that way back, while India was still under the subjugation of the British, Rabindranath Tagore, had written the famous lines in his poem Apamaanita:

Hey mor durbhaga desh
Jader korecho apomaan
Apomaney hotey hobe shobar shaman

Translated to English it means: Oh my unfortunate country, you will have to face the same undignified treatment in the hands of those your treat without dignity; only then will equality be restored among all.

One might argue that like all big talkers of present day, political parties mainly, the poet too had made no effort personally to make any difference. However, one cannot overlook his contribution to the making of Shantiniketan whose first students were in fact, the very poor, uneducated children of the neighbourhood.

Be that as it may, the real movement of the uprising of the down trodden happened when, Dr B R Ambedkar, having reached a conclusion after much study of all religions, that the way out of a decadent system, rooted in religion of the Hindus, must be wholly and absolutely thrown out of their lives. Only then he believed that the first step to liberation from brahminical subjugation and the regressive caste system would happen. The caste system which existed in India, much before Manu wrote his book Manusmriti, became strengthened by the text which is infamous for both being a text replete with oppressive dictum against women as well as the fact that it documented the divide of Indian society based on the four caste categories –brahman, vaishya, kshatriya and shudras, the last being the lowest caste. Not only that it gave brahmans superiority over all others and thus gave them unquestionable right to work diligently to dehumanise the sudras, under which the ST/ST sections of modern day India fell. The Manusmriti as well as the lawmaker Manu have been under the axe of feminists and psychologists for a long time. For one, the lawmaker seemed to be material fit for the loony bin, and for the text which proved to be a hate document taken too seriously by the brahmans. As a document that proved material for Psychoanalysis’ time-pass and the brahman’s excuse to continue to torture the sudras, it did well when Dr B R Ambedkar burned the text in public as a sign of protest.

Dr B R Ambedkar led by example. He belonged to the Mahar community which also fell into the untouchable caste. In order to throw away, once and for all, the disease ridden, caste based hindu religion, he, on October 14, 1956 converted to Buddhism, which he accepted as the only religion or practice which had no segregation of persons into different castes. Following him, hordes of Mahars turned to Buddhism, the very next day, after his conversion to Buddhism. It was in fact, Dr B R Ambedkar who conducted the mass conversion, in Nagpur. Ever since, Dalits have converted to Buddhism as their way of life. Please note, Dalits do not necessarily include Muslims and other minorities who in India of 2010 may also want to hold the Dalit ticket.

To go back in history, it is important to understand the social context in which we believe Buddha left his home in search for Truth, of that which is beyond, birth and death and the suffering in between. I have read and heard that it was the sight of four afflictions – death, suffering, disease, old age - that happen to all human beings that caused him to give up his home, his wife and his new born child, his kingdom, his aged father, all because he was overwhelmed with the need to find an answer to the end of suffering. It has been said that at that moment there was so much disturbance in his kingdom that he wanted to escape from there. Whatever, be the interpretations and the beliefs, it must be understood that since Buddha himself has not left any written matter in his hand and all that we know of him or what he preached only by way of word of mouth and texts written after he left his body, we must be cautioned that all what we know and read on Buddha and his teachings are at best only interpretations of what the listeners and the writers think they have heard him say.

Thus, in many ways, while Buddhism is a subject I too studied, I have preferred to follow what I have heard is the way of eliminating human suffering whether it is me or anybody else. And that is not a social movement but a practice which helps in annihilating the last thread of desire that might even bring me back again to this life of suffering, for if there is birth, then, suffering is a given. This is the traditional form of Buddhism, where the cause of suffering happens to be birth itself, and birth, irrespective of where one has taken birth, or in what caste, community has one thing that goes with all – there is suffering, mental and physical. Only nibbana can release one from that suffering.

Dr B R Ambedkar’s Neo-Buddhism, on the other hand, does not accept nibbana, as there is no where to go, except live this life with dignity. Hence, at the root of Neo-Buddhism, as started by Dr B R Ambedkar, there is social change that has to be achieved to gain that state of liberation from suffering. It is quite understandable that that should be the a priori reason for the birth of the new “religion” – Neo-Buddhism.

What are the basic differences between the two? At the very start we can easily state that while, traditional Buddhism is pitched on liberation from birth and death by attaining nibbana, Neo-Buddhism is about bringing about social change. It is about wearing the mantle of equality right from the start and urging, negotiating Press, public and politicians, policies and Lawmakers to see and enact laws to ensure that the down trodden and those who have been sanctioned against for centuries are seen as equal to all, without any disparity. Therefore to this end, the Dalit movement which began in Maharashtra, with the Mahars, has taken on a massive role in Indian Politics and in day to day conversations and doings in India. This now has more meaning as Dalits are not any more only the Mahars, but include all ST/SC classes across India. Dalits have all converted to Buddhism, but while traditional Buddhism is more involved with the vertical movement of the human consciousness, Neo-Buddhism is passionately concerned with the vertical movement of the once depressed classes and castes, up the ladder. This is resulting in the TN-effect across india. The TN-effect can best be described as a hate campaign against brahmans and a “do-unto-them-what-they-did-unto-us” strategy.

Traditional Buddhism is concerned with the “inner revolution” and hence practice a path of non-violence, while Neo-Buddhism, is militant and rigorous about the “outer revolution” that will bring about social change. Hence, the literature too of the Dalit movement in India, at once is engraved on the angst of non-recognition of their human presence for centuries and at the same time, punctuated with pain and anger, while looking forward to a new dawn.

It is psychologically impossible to bear suppression forever. This is not our natural state as human beings. It is also psychologically impossible that the suppressed will one day not take the same weapon of suppression and strike back at its predator in the same way.
This brings us back to what Rabindranath Tagore wrote in the beginning of the last century –

Hey mor durbhaga desh
Jader korecho apomaan
Apomaney hotey hobe shobar shaman

To be shamed and hit back with equal force is what the brahmans inherited by their own doings in the past. It is not what Dalits discovered as a weapon of retaliation.

In Maharashtra, all homes of Neo-Buddhists have the picture of Buddha and Dr Ambedkar placed side by side. In many homes Dr Ambedkar may be more prominently placed than the Buddha himself, but there seems to be a new arising in other parts of the country like UP, where Kashi Ram and Mayawati are taking things to their own meaningful end. One may see statue upon statue of both these “saviours” strewn across UP where the founder of Neo-Buddhist Dr B R Ambedkar is receding backwards, but certainly remain a part of their day-to-day conversation.

When Buddha began to speak to his following on the new way of life, the Buddhist way, the brahmans were equally disturbed as huge numbers of people left their backgrounds and followed the Buddha. This caused them to act against Buddhists and it became so bad that after Buddha left his body, his followers moved out of India to carry his words and preserve them. Thus, Buddhism grew more out of its country of origin, in fact, it flowered most in Japan.

The Dalit movement began in Maharashtra with Mahar uprising and conversion to Neo-Buddhism. It might have more than one prominent face today who seemingly is leading the way. It may be seen as one of the most powerful movements in the country today, which the brahmans all want to get on to the band wagon, for reasons of vote bank politics, or from being ostracised themselves, but it remains to see how many faces Buddhism will take, as it progresses in the hands of those who have adopted it as a potent religion for bringing in a social change in India. The question is, in the face of such pressure, will brahmans convert to Neo-Buddhism as so many are already seen to patronise it?

Yet, through all these ifs and buts, one thing comes through clearly – whatever we see is our perception of it. And our perception is after all only a perception and hence, since we as humans create a religion for our own need and I have at least not heard any God say that he has created that religion (if you have, please let me know), be it Buddhism or any other religion, it is the creator’s right, to bring out as many versions and interpretations of the same religion. However, it is equally important to remember that all are only perceptions of what we see the world as or what the need of society at large is. The real truth is: All things and feelings are transitory, forever changing, never one Truth. They vary as perceptions change. What is now is not, in the next the same. And there is no God, not even The Buddha, who has left his body 2600 years ago and who in his talks warned, I am told, his followers – If you see The Buddha on your way, kill him!

But he was talking of the spiritual path, not a social one, per say. Yet, a practicing Buddhist causes change in society outside, because he has changed inside.

To summarise, I would say that although there is on the surface a distinct difference between the purpose of traditional Buddhist practice and Neo-Buddhism, at one level they come together – they both work towards change, one from within and the other from without. But, that is only on the surface. Ultimately, they meet on a common ground – Change! Be it society or be it at the conscious level.


Note: As I have heard the meaning of - If you see The Buddha on your way, kill him - speaks of one who is striving towards nibbana, which is a path, one might start with a teacher for guidance but then it is a very individual one and must be travelled on one’s own steam. Not even a crutch like Buddha is welcome. Therefore, on the path of self-realization, the teacher including the Buddha himself must be done away with finally.

This article is inspired by a scholarly book – Mahar, Buddhist and Dalit by Johannes Beltz Published by Manohar Publishing & Distributors, 4753/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002 and distributed by: Foundation, 4381/4 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002 Price: Rs 750

News:
The Hindu report on 29th August, 2010, In search of an identity by Ananth Krishnan, Sunday magazine section, page 7, (see link http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=46,9467,0,0,1,0 ) even sections of Chinese are taking to the Buddhist path.