Empowering all our women, not in theory but in daily practice

Now, after 56 years, despite all the special provisions made for women, the attitudes of men have not changed. The truth is that we are today still an over-poweringly male-dominated society. And you just cannot change chauvinist attitudes by making laws—this is only possible by a social consciousness and an enlightened understanding: in other words through meaningful education.

Which prompts me to recall a story about the Mahabharata—not the story of old, but a story of modern times, a true story. A few years ago, Kartikeya Sarabhai, son of the great scientist Vikram Sarabhai, witnessed in Avignon (in France) the performance of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, a production by Peter Brooks.

It depicts the entire tale of how Yudhishtra lost all his wealth in playing dice with Duryodhana and continued with the game even whilst continuously losing and ultimately offering his wife Draupadi as a wager. The tale is familiar—after he loses, Draupadi is fetched by force to the victor who starts removing her garments. And then a miracle occurs, fresh garments are seen to close her body, and good men praise God and weep.

After seeing the Mahabharata at Avignon, Kartikeya Sarabhai came back the same evening and wrote a poem representing the thoughts of Draupadi and offered it to his sister. The poem I Draupadi is inspired—but it is also poignant and expressive of the reality of conditions of women in modern India.

In the poem Draupadi says:

‘‘All rights belong to husbands so says society,
But to be shared by five, – a commodity in the market place?…
All this I accepted, became the wife of five – to each gave a son
I was the only wife of none.’’

And then it goes on:
‘‘Gambling they went, invited by Duryodhana
Lost all they had, losing even themselves
I unspared was dragged into the court of men
Which were these bonds of Dharma
That tied my husbands?
What kind of husbands these, that are tied by the Dharma of lies?’’

And the poem ends with a condemnation of the male gender for forsaking equality in practice:

‘‘Years went by, our lives we lived together
Started on our journey’s end towards the snow-clad Himalayas
I fell first, no Pandava stretched a hand
Towards paradise they walked, no one stayed by my side.
Then, I realised heaven too must be only for men
Better then to rest in the warm embrace of this snow.’’

The significance of the poem written with such spontaneity by an Indian male about Indian women highlights the difference between formal equality, hypocritically mouthed by us all and the actual inequality which the fate of Draupadi has eternally symbolised: the inequality that women have had to bear, and continue to suffer, even in present-day India.