World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 191

The Historical Epistemes of Women's Spirituality :
Kumkum Sangari's concept of 'multiple patriarchies' is an excellent attempt at revising our own concepts of one monolithic patriarchal religious dogma. Historically there are many governing structures and laws at any one point of time in history. Some institutional world views are a little more generous to women. At the present time, as discussed in the previous section, the controversy surrounding the notion of family laws and the distinctions between Hindu and Muslim laws as promoted by the fundamentalist parties occludes the reality that each could be as oppressive as the other. Thus a socio-historical and cultural analysis may indicate more clearly the gendered aspects of male law. The need for new epistemes of spirituality becomes evident to understand the twin strands of disempowerment and subversion. The suppression of women in India has a long history, from the initial powerfulness of the feminine cosmological principles within the Indus Valley, to being displaced by the Sanskrit/Aryan pantheon of male gods, to the exclusion of women by the very powerful monastic traditions, to spiritual practice based partly on the purification laws governing the female life cycle and its notions of defilement during menstruation and widowhood, to the partial restitution by the religious and nationalistic reform movements involved in the Independence struggle, and most recently the subsequent reinscription of women as handmaidens by the fundamentalists' reinsertion of ideals of chastity, monogamy, and "wifeliness." This brief account of the historical denudation of power and exclusion from privileged spaces is perhaps only partially balanced by a slow countermovement evident in the lives of the countless ammas, shamans, midwives, scholars in the Indian feminist traditions who are able to enunciate these paradoxes and open up the ambivalent spaces to the current large scale grassroots NGOs' feminist movement that articulate the concerns for literacy, economic empowerment, and the environment. The need for analysis is as crucial now as at any other point of history. In the early 21st century, even with new political powers in place within India and the global community, the danger lurks that the pendulum may yet swing toward the oppression of minorities and women. Subversion of the male order may only happen through continued interpretation and analysis of the past and present flux.
Harper's analysis of the Indus Valley symbols and iconography from within a Gimbutas paradigm is interesting and supports the thesis of a fall from enlightened times into the patriarchal laws of history. Symbols evocative of a great goddess tradition are thought to be present in a wide range of cultures. The complex philosophy accompanying these symbolic representations gave way to later traditions. Harper's discussion uses the Gimbutas method of reconstruction from archaeological evidence. It then turns to the examination of the seven goddess tradition in the fifth and the seventh century B.C. It also examines women in the Jain spiritual tradition at present.
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