Firstpost
Oct
16, 2018
Part
I
American
historian Katherine Mayo gave a detailed account of the turbulent times British
India witnessed while fighting against child marriage in her polemical book
Mother India (1927). It is all the more relevant now when even women are
marching to protest against a Supreme Court verdict which allows them to enter
the Sabarimala temple irrespective of their age and bears quoting from the book
at some length.
She wrote: "Indian and English
authorities unite in the conviction that no law raising the marriage age of
girls would be today effectively accepted by the Hindu peoples. The utmost to
be hoped, in the present state of public mentality, is, so these experienced
men hold, a raising of the age of consent within the marriage bonds. A step in
this direction was accomplished in 1891, when Government, backed by certain
members of the advanced section of the Indians, after a hot battle in which it
was fiercely accused by eminent orthodox Hindus of assailing the most sacred
foundations of the Hindu world, succeeded in raising that age from ten years to
twelve. In latter-day Legislative Assemblies the struggle has been renewed,
non-official Indian Assemblymen bringing forward bills aiming at further
advance only to see them, in one stage or another, defeated by the strong
orthodox majority."
She explained why the Indian
parliamentarians, in successive debates, opposed to raising the age of marriage
even while agreeing that marriage should be postponed until a girl is
physically and emotionally mature to prevent high child and maternal mortality
rates and other disadvantages and risks involved with child marriage. She
pointed at three reasons offered by those who opposed it: "First, because
immutable custom forbids, premarital pubescence being generally considered,
among Hindus, a social if not a religious sin. Second, because the father dare
not keep his daughter at home lest she be damaged before she is off his hands.
And this especially in joint-family households, where several men and boys
brothers, cousins, uncles live under the same roof. Third, because the parents
dare not expose the girl, after her dawning puberty, to the pressure of her own
desire unsatisfied."
The objections to the Sabarimala verdict
are no different. No less than member of the Travancore royal family Ashwathi
Thirunal Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, said: "...Centuries-old faith and way of
worship that is integral to Hinduism are now being dismantled and destroyed. My
grandmother, the Maharani of Travancore royal family, has visited Sabarimala
temple only after her uterus has been removed. To the best of my knowledge till
now, no woman of the menstruating age has entered the Sabarimala
temple..." It is believed that the Sabarimala deity is different from
others by his vow of celibacy and therefore, it is not advisable to allow
menstruating women into the temple.
What should be surprising, or may be not be
so after all, is that a large number of women who should be hailing the Supreme
Court verdict as something that empowers them and frees them from the taboos of
a bygone era are instead taking out protest marches along with men.
It is just not adequate to put the blame on
a patriarchal mindset that pervades across gender, indoctrination or social and
political compulsions, though all these are significant contributing factors.
The protests have a lot to do with organised religions which have gained more
and more currency in India in the past few decades. When Dera Sacha Sauda chief
Gurmeet Ram Rahim was convicted of raping two of his disciples by a court last
year, thousands of his disciples went on a rampage in Chandigarh, Delhi and
Rajasthan leading to 29 deaths, mostly in police firing and injuries to
hundreds of others. Baba Rampal, who was recently convicted in two murder cases
by a Haryana court, was arrested after a two-long stand-off between his
followers and police at his ashram in 2015 which left six dead and several
others injured.
In recent years, psychologists have been
trying to explain such conflicts in different ways. Steve Taylor, author and
psychology teacher of Leeds Metropolitan University of UK, for example, says
"Don't blame religion for our problems — blame it on the human need for belonging
and certainty". He seeks to draw a clear distinction between 'dogmatic'
and 'spiritual' religion. Dogmatic religion, he says, "...isn't about
self-development or experiencing the transcendent, but about adhering to a set
of rigid beliefs and following the rules laid down by religious authorities.
It's about defending their beliefs against anyone who questions them, asserting
their 'truth' over other people's, and spreading those beliefs to others. For
them, the fact that other people have different beliefs is an affront, since it
implies the possibility that their own beliefs may not be true...".
He adds that such impulse "stems from
the psychological need for group identity and belonging, together with a need
for certainty and meaning". On the other hand, he writes,
"'Spiritual' religion is very different. It promotes the higher attributes
of human nature, like altruism and compassion and fosters a sense of the sacred
and sublime. 'Spiritually religious' people don't feel any animosity to other
religious groups - in fact, they're happy to investigate other beliefs, and may
even go to other groups' temples and services".
Steven Reiss, a professor emeritus of
psychology at the Ohio State University and author, takes it further to say
that his research identified 16 basic desires that attract people to religion -
acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honour, idealism, independence, order,
physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquillity
and vengeance. A 'secular society' offers alternatives to fulfil all these
desires. Therefore, religion competes with secular society and can gain or lose
in popularity based on how well people believe it does compare to secular
society.
What separates the religious from the
non-religious? Reiss explains that it is one of the same basic desires -
independence. In his studies, he found that religious people expressed a strong
desire for interdependence with others while those who were not showed a
stronger need to be self-reliant and independent.
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