During the sacred days of Navratras, Most of the Hindu families observe the ritualistic fasts with utmost piety. Goddess Durga is worshiped with deep devotion on the final day in her worldly manifestations of ‘kanyas’. Though I am also very religious but with a difference. I believe in God but not in church. So for the last twenty years I have not paid even a single visit to any place of worship. “Is it not the day that exposes the hypocritical attitude of our society?”, I somewhat peevishly ask my devout mother. The very mention of the word ‘hypocrisy’ is provocative enough to ruffle her religiously sensitive wings.
“What social hypocrisy you intend to allude?”, she utters with her annoyance obvious. My dear mom, I am not any fanatic nor do I harbour any ill-intention to foment communal tension in our sweet home by issuing forth such a remark. But she now holds me guilty of blasphemy and dubs me a pseudo-atheist without bothering to read my statement between the lines. I see her red in face and fear that if I do not justify my stance, I will have to bear her wrath. In order to salvage the situation and absolve myself of the charges of blasphemy, I politely put forth my point of view. My sweetheart mom (I intone the phrase “my sweetheart mom” with some overloaded affection) we worship our daughters and sisters on this designated day of ‘Ashtami’ as we believe that they are the living incarnation of the goddess. But on rest of the days our society is not just with our girls. We still have the tendency to consider our daughters inferior to our sons. The very strong male-child fixation of our society
is evidence to corroborate my argument. We don’t not give our daughters the same kind of freedom which we otherwise love to lavish on our sons.
Though I don’t deny that this parochial attitude towards our daughters is changing to some extent but still in many Indian houses’ daughters are not even given the basic to right to higher education. The males who hold the females in reverence on the day of ‘Ashtami’ are the males of who rape and molest them. Undoubtedly, all men are not the rapists but still the gory crime of rape witnesses a steep rise in our society.
Despite a crackdown on such doctors who mercilessly butcher the girl-children in wombs, the scourge of female-foeticide has not ended yet. Are not many daughters- in- law still burnt alive by their dowry—hungry parents- in- law.? Now my mother looks at me with a sense of concern but not anger. Her changed facial contours reveal that I have been acquitted of the charges of blasphemy. To further prove the validation of my standpoint, I hold the morbid men of our hypocritical society in the dock of morality and accuse their ilk of a sort blasphemy that they commit by being biased against the girl children. Certainly, there is no fun worshipping the daughters and sisters on the day of “Ashtami pooja” if we cannot accord them an equal status in society.
Prof Shiv Sethi is an internationally acclaimed columnist and literary critic based at Ferozepur, Punjab .