The Formidable Demon of Patriarchy

 The Formidable Demon of Patriarchy:

Earlier this year I was drawn into an argument with a senior man in the family over an issue about inheritance. At the root of the argument was the refusal of this man to recognize that women have equal rights in inheritance. Compounding this was the arrogance of his tone when speaking to women and about women. 

His stance and behavior was not new. The family had witnessed it for decades. The immediate issue about dividing the inheritance amongst his siblings and their heirs had simply escalated his prejudicial behavior to a new level. Until now I had mentally disapproved this but stayed away from getting personally involved. I had felt strongly that those who he directly behaves badly with ought to stand up to his arrogance and bullying and tell him openly what is unacceptable. Instead they simply continued to tolerate and ignore it every single time. There was not a single person out of his four sisters and their total of nine children, and twelve grandchildren to tell him what he was doing wrong.

Until the day came when I was thrust into direct talk with him. What was supposed to be a simple matter-of-factly call to discuss a place to meet for the exchange of cash turned out to be an unexpected confrontation. I was advised by well meaning people not to go alone to money exchange places and collect or hand over cash. This had not sat well with this person from whom the initial suggestion had come. He called to give me another option. That too was difficult for me. So I began to ask him in a polite manner about another place that I knew would be convenient for both of us to meet and take care of the matter. I had not even completed my sentence and specified the suggestion I was going to make when he interrupted me. “ Look, you need the money. You don’t get to choose where to meet”. !! 

Implied meaning : Beggars can’t be choosers!!

It couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I had no personal interest in the money. I was simply representing one of his siblings and taking charge of her share. He on the other had grown increasingly impatient to gain sole rights to a parental property.

The arrogance in his demeanor was hard to miss. Or ignore. Not me. Not this time. 

“Look, you need the money. You don’t get to choose where to meet”. The callousness in his accusation evoked the fire in me.

That’s when I responded: “Do not try to get smart with me. You want the apartment to your name, don’t you?“

He hung up the phone!!

Not surprising. He was only used to talking down to others. He wasn’t used to being talked down to. This was new to him. A bolt from the blue. That too coming from someone younger than him.

I was on a busy street in Pune when this exchange happened. Once I got home I wrote a scathing message to him. The gloves were off now. I was going to tell him exactly what I see is missing in his relationships with the entire family. Lack of respect. Self centered ness. Rudeness. And most of all, his reasoning that he deserves everything to himself for the simple fact that he is male and his surviving siblings are females. 

One sentence out of my long text to him sums up what I wanted him to hear: A pair of testicles is not enough for you or anyone to earn my respect.

In the full text I had elaborated that those who have my respect, including my male cousins and a deceased uncle, have done much beyond just being born as men to earn my respect. Amongst other things they have been courteous, fair and unselfish. They have earned enough for their own survival through sheer hard work and do not depend on inheritance to go on with their lives. If you are required to share parental wealth with the family it is because that’s the fair thing to do. Not everyone is driven by greed. Some care for justice. You can’t get away by bullying forever and putting forth your outdated reasoning.

My words are probably going to sting in his ears for as long as he lives. I know they stung him right away because the guy immediately forwarded my message to the entire family. He thought they would see my rudeness and disrespect for him. Instead they all expressed their solidarity with me. In a bid to overturn the tables on me he inadvertently made a laughing stock out of himself. Something I had tried to shield him from by keeping our exchange private. But he couldn’t see it at all.

He may never see it!! 

What the exchange did was made me realize how he was simply a prototype of a problem of enormous magnitude. It also made me aware of where I stand in relation to this problem.

Not all men display patriarchy as glaringly as this man I described. More often it is very subtle and only revealed in unguarded moments. Women may feel a man is simply being rude or dismissive. I thought that for years whenever a man came across as rude. But now the undercurrent of the psychology is seen in better light. Deep inside, men who treat women badly see women as inferior to themselves. Some of them may not even recognize this complex within themselves or the way it gets displayed on the outside. It is embedded deep within their subconscious mind.

Once you learn to recognize it, however, it is difficult not to notice whenever it shows. 

It becomes a matter of choice whether or not to point out when we see it. Whether to object, fight or to bypass it completely and go about life on a path of least resistance? 

What must be factoring in when a woman makes those choices? Her temperament? Her life situation? Her priorities? Her estimation of her own strength? The amount of energy and time it will consume from her to fight for the cause? Other things she may have to sacrifice in the process? Fear of the ones in power? Inability to stand alone? Guarding her own reputation? May be a little bit of everything?

Despite the multi generational fights for their rights put up by women, this anomaly in the male understanding is not going anywhere for as long as we can see into the future. It is hardly a matter to ponder upon whether women need to be empowered. The answer is a resounding yes. If collectively we need to erase this wrong idea from the human psyche that women are inferior to men, women need to be proactively made to understand a few things. 

First and foremost is that a man can only remain clueless in this matter as long as a woman remains clueless. So she must be aware of what patriarchy is and how it conducts its business in our world. 

Secondly, she must understand that a man has no incentive to allow her to gain the status of an equal. It is her responsibility to claim that. And if she has to claim it she must give up playing the role of a dependent and/or a victim. 

You cannot be an equal and dependent simultaneously. You also cannot be an equal and a victim simultaneously. If you are seeing an attempt of being made a victim you must have the strength to either walk away or fight back. A folly many women make is to foresee fighting back as synonymous with getting support from a third party. That is simply shifting dependence on one person to another person or people. 

A woman who truly knows herself as an equal to other humans, men or women, will not seek support from anyone. She will stand up on the strength of her own reasoning, fortitude and ability to manage her needs with her own earnings. The universe may send help sensing her needs but she will not go searching for the extra help. She will not wait for it. Her hands and feet will get to work by themselves without waiting or expecting. This much self awareness, if it can be instilled and nurtured in our daughters and sisters, is enough for women to enjoy their lives even if the masculine clan refuses to reform. 

The ultimate vision of a perfect society is one where noone stays dependent upon another. Nor makes or thinks of someone as dependent upon themselves. These are concepts that need to be totally internalized by every individual. In a collective existence even if one individual falls short of this understanding it is bound to create friction. Conversely, whenever friction occurs, it may be worth examining if interdependence has crept in and self reliance forgotten?

It amazes me increasingly to realize how beautifully the universe is designed. Every individual is gifted the ability to exist independently. To learn, to feel, to express, to enjoy beauty in things by themselves. Every individual is gifted an opportunity to enjoy the company of one or more other individuals during the lifetime. 

Circumstances that create a reason to divide things amongst two or more individuals, lead them to think about life and living. It is often the forced choices that lead the journey towards finding the meaning in life. 

In religious practice, sacrifice is a concept that is given great emphasis. In Hindu scriptures they call it yadnya. In the Bhagwad Gita Krishna says to Arjun one should never relinquish four things: yadnya( sacrificial acts), Daana( charity), Tapa( penance which is dedicated activity that requires years of service) and karma( ordinary action, duty, work). 

Chapter 18, verse 5

यज्ञदानतपःकर्म न त्याज्यं कार्यमेव तत्।
यज्ञो दानं तपश्चैव पावनानि मनीषिणाम्॥ ५ 

It never occurred to me to question and ask why is it so. Especially what is the deal about sacrifice?

When one looks at it one realizes that all these four things are designed around the single cause of removing ignorance from the human mind. The mind exists on the primary thought of “I”. Unless there is an I there can be no individuality. If the individual was born or left alone on an island in the middle of an ocean, unless he stood up and explored his surroundings, felt hunger and thirst, found something that quenched the discomfort of these natural feelings he would perish. Every small or big action leads to learning. Every learning by definition counters prior ignorance. Thus action is essential to clean up ignorance. As they say, what you need to learn, you learn by doing!

What about tapa? Action can help survival. Tapa can bring about something more than survival. A life devoted to playing the piano or to painting or writing or sculpting or scientific research or social service or activism, these are all tapas. After years and years of dedicated practice they yield results and skills. They elevate the person above mere physical existence. 

Daana(charity) and sacrifice go a step further than karma and tapa. Here the “I” must acknowledge the presence of someone other than himself or herself. Me plus a you. It’s like the first born child sees the parents bring home a new baby. Now that he gains a sibling he is no longer the sole enjoyer of his parents’ attention and affection and also the toys and other things. He is compelled to learn sharing and caring. This is truly the start of society for him and the first step towards social skills. What he acquires in this phase of learning is what will come handy in bigger groups as an adult member of society. 

Imagine the scenario: “l” was alone. The universe sent “you” into my world. Now I have someone to share life with, although I was quite happy by myself. I can choose to keep to myself. I can create a relationship of friendship with you. Or we can enter a power struggle. Charity and sacrifice are designed to help mankind rise above the animal instincts of survival. 

If by natural selection I am more fortunate to have a better life than you, I will try to fill the gap by giving you something that you need to make your life better. I see you as an equal and wish equal happiness for you. That is the concept of charity.

Sacrifice is a step even higher than charity. When you do an act of charity you do not put yourself in a situation of personal hardship. You lessen the hardship on another person. In sacrifice you give away something the absence of which will bring hardship upon yourself. Your only incentive behind giving is to see someone other than yourself survive harder times, to relieve their suffering even at the cost of your own inconvenience. 

Sacrifice is the highest form of love for the universe or for a society or a family or a loved one. Annihilation of the ego is nothing but the ability to sacrifice for a cause you see as higher than yourself. Whoever annihilates his ego by himself cannot suffer annihilation from another person. 

A very important thing to understand is that sacrifice is not to be confused with yielding to force. A person who sacrifices is powerful, not weak. Because he has strength at every level, physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and ethical, he is able to let go. To let go out of fear or coercion is weakness. A weak person cannot perform sacrifice. When a weak person lets go it is a sign of defeat. When a strong person lets go it is a personal triumph, without an internal gloating over it. There is honor and grace in it. There is beauty and as mentioned earlier, there is sublime love in it.

When understood for its deepest meaning, sacrifice is a tool of the highest order that the universe has gifted mankind to elevate itself spiritually to the last frontier of existence and beyond.

Sacrifice of someone else’s life or anything you can easily live without, to obtain personal benefits is a delusional and distorted concept. Sacrificing what is most dear to you for some ideal or someone even nobler than that is a truer sacrifice one can make.

Why is sacrifice important to keep in consideration when discussing patriarchy and feminism?

Patriarchy is a distortion from pure spiritual principles. Feminism is a counterforce to erase out patriarchy and establish equality between man and woman. When there is equality and the relationship between a man and woman stands on a solid foundation of mutual love and respect, where both devote themselves to each other and yet do not depend upon each other at their cores, the readiness to sacrifice every single precious thing for the other is a sign of strength, not weakness. It is not the same as enslaving women. Here the readiness to sacrifice for the other is alive in the man just as much as it is in the woman. Neither one forces nor expects it out of the other. It is just there. When you call a wife as ardhangini to her husband there is a spiritual purity in the concept. Whenever any one out of the duo is affected by things beyond their control, such as a financial loss, public humiliation or physical illness the other one compensates for the shortcomings. The stronger one doesn’t look at the other as a dependent in that situation. It may appear like that to a third party but the duo operates as a single inseparable unit under such circumstances. 

Therefore in the complex world where the human race has two identifiable players in the form of male and female, concepts of personal identity, equality, self reliance, independence and cohabitation need to be carefully studied and understood. The concepts of karma, tapa, daana and yadnya within the context of a single individual and context of a marriage between man and woman too need to be understood with clarity. 

Blessed is the home where such relationships exists. 

And yet, where it fails to exist in this way, the individual must remember that one is enough to be complete! The universe has created each of us as a complete entity in ourselves. Not everyone is created to unravel universal mysteries through a partnership with another human being.

These are truths to be realized by each individual for themselves. 

As mentioned earlier, often it is friction or suffering of some kind that becomes instrumental in the journey to uncover these truths about ourselves. 

My words may have caused a painful sting to the heart and mind of the elder family member. But the fight was against the wrong ideology, not the person. The day the person finds himself as separate from the disease of patriarchy he will know I did not attack him. I attacked patriarchy. It was making him look shabby and hiding the light within him. Truth only causes pain to people in the dark. It ceases to hurt when it shines in pure light. 

Women of light within themselves can lead their men out of darkness. Those without light can follow their men into darkness. 

Women of wisdom do not follow men. They follow the light. 

It is the light that matters. Not men or women.

Each of us is the light within us. Not what a mirror or others’ eyes make us out to be.