World of Philosophy

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

Page 211

The repeated motif is that women have the power, while men have the authority. The male marries/tames the female who oozes with the unpredictability and messiness of feminine sexuality, enabling him to thus harness that power.
From that vantage point, it is clear why some scholars argue that she is still a male construct, even when she waves a man's severed head. (Kali often holds a man's head in one of her left hands. Mariyamman is regularly depicted with her foot atop a man's head, which is balanced against two more heads.) The goddess' stories can certainly be interpreted to uphold the patriarchal society, one can say that the goddess does not fight to liberate women, but rather she destroys demons that have disrupted the status quo. Demons, who through some boon or other are defeating the male gods, and invading the male ruled realms of the other worlds. Sati/Parvati creates the dashamahavidya (ten great goddesses) as a result of her fury when her fa: ther Daksa insulted her husband Siva. Daksa invited everybody to his sacrifice except his tiger skin wearing, ash be-smeared, serpent adorned son-inlaw. It is a male insulting a male that causes her to self-immolate. More often than not the Devi will sacrifice herself in order to uphold a male. Surely Kali was more than capable of performing the urdhva tandava, the failure of which made Siva the victor in their dance competition. I may be inserting modern western values here, but though a standing split performed by a semi nude women would reveal more than propriety permits, the fact that she wore severed arms as a skirt implies a disregard for the "laws of Manu" obeying female, not to mention that Siva was her consort. Maybe she backed down just to make him feel better, or maybe she lost interest in the competition all together.
When viewing how the goddess affects regular women it is ever important to bear in mind when discussing Indian women's sense of self and spirituality what Rita DasGupta Sherma posits, "Some of the ways in which Hindus relate women with the goddesses are not in keeping with Western feminist concepts of female power and autonomy." Meaning just because we may not see the value, or power in being the "Laksmi of the house" doesn't mean it isn't empowering. (Sherma suggests that degrees of empowerment really come from which forms of the feminine women choose to align with.) I would add that empowerment depends on the interpretive approach taken because viewed from a different lens the good wife model can be subversive, just as the ferocious goddess can be viewed keeping male order in place.
Women in India :
I am hesitant to discuss the role of women in India because I am a Westerner, and because I barely understand the subtleties of gender and sexual identity within my own culture, yet I will move forward because sometimes distance brings perspective. As stated earlier, there is a danger of en
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