ViVekananda and Women Empowerment

Indian Society in the 19^th Century was a maelstrom of an astonishing variety of conflicting sentiments that had risen to the surface after centuries of Afghan, Mughal and British rule, a maelstrom that had given rise to mind-numbing poverty and widespread hunger. Adding to the confusion was the propaganda of the British missionaries which had helped create in the Indian mind a sense of insecurity with regards to their adherence to traditional customs and beliefs. Under its onslaught Indian society had turned more orthodox and repressive.

It was at this point in time that Swami Vivekananda burst upon the scene with his Awake, arise... call, galvanising an otherwise moribund society to rethink its priorities. Along with contemporaries such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand Saraswati and others, he strove ceaselessly to reform Indian society, exhorting the Indian people to shun the negativity they had acquired as a consequence of their slavish and unquestioning acceptance of all things British at the cost of their own unique identity. In doing so, Swami Vivekananda raised the voice of pan-Indian nationalism, thereby becoming one of the most enduring icons of Indian nationalism. His position was unique in that, he was in close touch with both, the core of Hindu religious thought and Western philosophy.

Swami Vivekananda often said that India’s downfall as a nation was largely due to her neglect of women. “The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women,”  he said adding that images of great Brahmavadinis like Maitreyi and Gargi of the Upanishad age, and women missionaries like Sanghamitra carrying the Buddha’s message to Syria and Macedonia, “all were lying buried deep due to the millennium of foreign domination. He was of the firm belief that women should be put in positions of power to solve their own problems in their own way. The welfare of the world, he held, is dependent on the improvement of the condition of the women.

He was emphatic that women must be educated, for he believed that it is the women who mould the next generation, and hence, the destiny of a country. In Vivekananda’s educational scheme for India, the uplift of women and the masses received the highest priority. According to him the idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.

Education, according to Swami Vivekananda could become the means towards the empowerment of women and gender interdependency. Education, for him, meant not just theoretical knowledge but also character building. Only in such a regime could society be expected to produce cultured and civilized human beings.  

Vivekananda discarded completely the notion of gender inequality. “It is difficult to understand why in this country so much difference is made between men and women, whereas the Vedanta declares that one and the same conscious Self is present in all beings. You always criticize women, but say what have you done for their uplift? Writing down Smritis etc., and binding them by hard rules, men have turned women into manufacturing machines! If you do not raise women, who are the living embodiment of the Divine Mother, don’t think that you have any other way to rise,” he said.

That is precisely why Swami Vivekananda viewed women as he viewed men---an individual with a destiny. In the sphere of the pursuit of spiritual realisation, which is the highest reach of life, woman as well as man, has to walk in a single file. Perfect freedom, independence and responsibility are involved in the individual, be it man or woman, who longs for God alone. “In India the mother is at the centre of the family and is our highest ideal. She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in one of the first hymns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal female,” he said adding that the Western ideal was the wife whereas the Indian ideal meant the mother.

Indian culture and philosophy lays great store upon humanity and Vivekananda too stresses the same thought. For him no gender is either superior or inferior. That is why he emphasised upon ‘gender interdependency’ than upon ‘gender equality’. The former is far broader a concept than the latter. Struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is not an Indian ideology. Our value system lays great store on the principle of mutual cooperation and sarvey bhavantu sukhina sarvey santu nirmaya. Indian culture, has all along, rejected the ‘pyramid structure’ of society where one section or class dominates the other. Indians, contrarily, believe in the concept of ‘oceanic circles’.

Vivekananda considered men and women as two wings of a bird. And just as it is not possible for a bird to fly on one wing, the thread of inter-dependency binds men and women into one single robust thread. In times such as these where concepts enunciated by Marshall Mcluhan and Will Kymlicka define society, Vivekananda’s thoughts on gender equality are not very different from the concept of inter-dependency that lie at the root of concepts held by both Mcluhan and Kymlicka.

All three concepts lay great store upon the ‘law of inter-dependency’, so essential in today’s globalised world. So, if today, gender inequality still exists,

it is a cause of concern. The need of the hour is to empower women, socially, culturally, economically, politically and above all, spiritually, for only then will women be able to power a nation towards all-round development.

Similarly, there is a dire need to re-arrange our cultural prejudices. By this I mean the necessity for Indians to repose their faith in India’s shared cultural heritage. Our cultural heritage’s emphasis on spirituality needs to be brought up-front for only such a step helps us stay alive and awake. The definition of modernity in India has to change. Now people believe in the western concept of modernity where materialism is at the root of all achievement. Indian culture, on the other hand, believes in the harmony achieved between materialism and spiritualism. Vivekananda, as borne out by his writings, wished to develop a harmonious relationship between science and spirituality, as only this would spell sustainable development. Elsewhere, Vivekananda says that our life blood is spirituality, that if it flows in a pure manner, no bacteria could mount an attack upon us.

It is unfortunate therefore, that social crimes are on the rise and we see much greater occurrence of instances of such ills as gender discrimination and exploitation, rape, eve teasing etc.

The progressive agenda that Swami Vivekananda had towards women is well known. In his own words, he says “That country and nation which does not respect women will never become great now and nor will ever in the future”.  His relentless pursuit of treating both genders with equality is plainly evident in his speeches and writings. At this point, Indian society is a tipping point with the recent rise in the number of rape incidents across the country. The rise in education standards among girls and women is triggering them to pose questions and confront the patriarchal nature of social systems which have diluted the space that women were offered even in our ancient scriptures. In this context, Swami Vivekananda’s message of greater education and equality for women is especially pertinent given his visionary thinking of making female empowerment the benchmark that should be used to measure a society’s growth.   

References:

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