“Even if a woman does something very special, it remains in the footnote/s. But whenever a man does something special, it becomes front page news.” -Simone de Beauvoir, muse of the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre
Nature has given emotional powers to women and physical powers to men,” said Veda Vyas in Mahabharat (Chapter 3, 1,808th hymn) nearly 4,000 years ago.
This, I believe to be the keenest observation of a woman’s empowered state understood by a sage four millennia ago. When we see a woman in her various roles as a mother, sister and wife, we wonder at the boundlessness of her emotional horizon.
And nowadays, when she is on a par with man in every respect and aspect of social and corporate life, her resilience and depth of persona astonish us all the more. British philosopher John Locke rightly said that nature made a woman better than a man. Woman indeed is nature’s best creation and the finest manifestation. She has been the primary source of intellectual inspiration for man.
When Muhammad was disturbed by the divine voices echoing in his mind and doubted their authenticity, it was his wife Khadija, who assured him that those voices were indeed from God. Not only was she the first woman to embrace Islam but also the first person to accept it from Muhammad. When American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was driven out of the school for being ‘unintelligent’, his mother knew that her son was destined for greatness.
Her son went on to prove how right she was to have unwavering faith in his capabilities. Edison went on to become arguably the greatest inventor of all time, devising more than 1,000 extremely useful things that have simplified our lives – like the light bulb, cinema projector, printer and whatnot. Napoleon Bonaparte would have remained an ordinary soldier but for his mother, who removed all apprehensions of ordinariness from her son’s mind, telling him that not only was he slated to become a general but also an emperor.
It was his mother's exhortations that made a diminutive man become one of the greatest military geniuses in the history of warfare. Some detractors and misogynists may say that women have always worked from behind the curtains and their role as activists has been limited to inspiring others, without participating actively.
They are sadly mistaken. How many people are aware that Romans and Greeks preferred female soldiers and made no bones about their inclusion? British military historian Sir Carolli Barnett and Arnold Toynbee have written with documented proof that Alexander had an army of female soldiers who fought alongside men and were often better cavaliers than men.
There’s a very interesting observation made by Roman historian Catullus that when women brandished swords as cavaliers sitting on the horseback, they could control themselves better than men because of their anatomical advantage, i.e. broader hips. That’s the reason Cleopatra had active female soldiers and even female generals in her army. She herself was a fantabulous swordswoman. Just think, where does the word Amazon come from?
It’s the Greek word for an expert fighter woman. Amazons were/are women with man-like characters. Closer home, Lakshmibai, Chandbibi of Ahmednagar, Razia Sultan or Chittoor’s Queen Chennamma are not isolated examples of valiant female soldiers. Kalhan’s Rajatrangini, which describes the life of Kashmir, also describes how the king of Kashmir had an army of women.
He also had women philosophers in his court. When it comes to philosophy, are women inferior to men? This is a very biased opinion propounded by sexist men who believed in gender bias and spread this canard. Who were Gargi, Maitrayi, Nidisha or Lopamudra? They would challenge men in dialectics and defeat them hands down. The great Mandan Mishra’s wife, Ubhaya Bharati (thought to be an incarnation of goddess Saraswati) was greater than her husband in wisdom and erudition.
She would come only when Mandan used to be all at sea while arguing with a great scholar like Adi Shankara. It’s worthwhile to mention that Adi Shankaracharya is said to have written a very erotic collection of erotic verses, called Amaru-shatak.
But we prefer to study Adi Shankara as a metaphysician, rather than an expert in the erotic arts. It’s time for us to take notice of Ubhaya Bharati, who taught him (Shankaracharya) that wisdom couldn’t exist without including the household,the body and the woman. Indian philosophical traditions always hailed women as great philosophers.
Even the Greeks acknowledged women as ‘repertoires of wisdom’. Though we read the names of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Diogenes, Abiolett among others, we conveniently ignore Enkara, Trinin and others, who used to argue with the male thinkers. Women are great and have always been. It’s time men wholeheartedly acknowledged the vastness of the feminine spirit and persona.
Man and woman are two wheels of the same vehicle. It’s like two hemispheres making a sphere. One completes the other and is completed by the other.
(The writer is a regular contributor to the world’s premier publications and portals in several languages)
