I find myself in a suddenly
awakened whirl of thoughts about women’s empowerment. I must confess that the
whirl is mostly murky with my ignorance, but there is one question guiding the whirl’s turns, the question about a woman’s
identification with her body.
Time and again, we are urged to
transform our society into Rama Rajya. Apart from my misgivings about the genetic
choice of the ruler and division of people, I remain unconvinced of the
triumphalism about a society that clamored for Rama to disown Sita for no fault
of hers even after an unsavory examination of her chastity by fire for the sake
of the masses. She had not chosen to be abducted by Ravana; and even if her
bodily integrity had been violated by her demonic captor, was Sita merely her
body and nothing more? The paragon of virtue that he was, what sort of example
was Rama setting by giving into the credo that a woman is but her body? (This is especially troubling because we have no inkling of his own suspicion of her fidelity, or of his conviction that Sita was merely the sum of her parts. If she had to be rescued - and Rama did rescue her - he cannot have been delusional about her ability to fend off the menace that was Ravana.) Given his
omniscience, he should have foreseen that ages after, when pruriently predatory
men would sexually assault women, there would be leaders of men and women
voicing the belief that a violated woman was as good as dead.
To be sure, I do not intend to
impertinently write on the trauma of women who have been sexually assaulted.
The trauma, I am certain, is unfathomable. I am only worried by a woman's 'being' her body.
Having occasionally flipped
through philosophical texts, and tuned into spiritual discourses, I remember
being urged to realize that I’m more than my body, and that my body is but one
more of my many worldly possessions. This being the case, why is it that, as a
society, we encourage women to firmly identify with their bodies? The sidelong
looks at women dubbed licentious cannot but ensure that women adhere to the notion of chastity that weds intimacy to matrimony.
That she is coached to believe that the essence of her being is her body, which
she is to offer as a gift to the one she marries is a disturbing thought.
Despite being one of her worldly possessions, the ownership of her body isn’t
surely transferable. Her body is hers alone. And that is what makes sexual
assault a crime, a ghastly act of infringement. Equally, her body being hers,
shouldn’t she be entitled to decide how she is to use it? If the donation of
her eyes or any other organ is left to her discretion as an individual, how can
she be forbidden from pursuing the pleasure of physical intimacy? Why should
she have to endure a self-inflicted torment rooted in dogma for having yielded to
an impulse? Freedom, after all, as the Mahatma observed, must include the freedom to err.
I do not mean to sound like an
apologist for promiscuity. Yet, the idea that her chastity is what defines her,
while his chastity is not as conclusive, can only further the identification of
a woman with her body, effectively leading her off the course to realizing the
true worth of her being. If a false attachment to things worldly is the greatest cause of grief, society can only be shoving her into the sea of sorrow by seizing her sense of self in her silhouette. For all the virtues of Rama Rajya, why shouldn’t we
aim for an even more enlightened society where self-realization is not a male
bastion?
Yes, I can imagine the archaic
protectionist prophesies about how the society would lapse into further carnal hedonism
and sexual depravity if women were allowed to choose whether they want to
employ their bodies in the pursuit of physical pleasure. If men are free to go
through the experience, learn from it, and willfully walk, or eventually dodder
onto, the path to the bliss of the self, equality would demand that women be
not deprived of such experiential insights. In fact, she may assert her sole
rights to her body and stop being the easy game for exploitation that she many a time is. Wouldn’t that be salutary for our society? We may, all importantly, come
to live in a society where Rama would not have to part from Sita to pander to
perverse whims.
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