By Deepa Majumdar
The great Goddesses of the Hindu pantheon are in this world, yet beyond it. For they stride the immanent and the transcendental. They visit us during this autumnal season … or become visible in our iconic human representations. We forget for a season that they are, in truth, beyond name and form and yet, the living substance of name and form. We forget the reality that they constitute the living flames that animate each being … as a result, we worship them in the earthen image so maligned by those against “idolatry.” Whether the all powerful Durga, astride her lion, slaying the buffalo demon … or the inimitable Mother Kali, radiating benediction alongside terror … or the gentle sisters Lakshmi and Saraswati representing well being and knowledge … they are each forms of the Eternal Feminine. Enlightened Hinduism is unique among world religions in its worship of the Divine as the Eternal Feminine.
As a child I used to sidle up to the fence surrounding the awe inspiring image of Durga, during Durga Puja and look intently at her benevolent face. Colorful plates of fruits and flowers, hypnotic sounds of the gong and cymbals, and the festive hum of the puja crowd each added to my reverie. The Great Spear held in Her upraised arm and the demon being thus slaughtered, looked frightening. Yet, before the sheer Power of this all protecting Mother it was impossible to be afraid. Instead, I felt happy … safe … invincible. How lustrous She looked … how omnipresent … her dark hair cascading in waves, her ten arms raised with effortless power, her eyes radiating firmness born of tenderness. How complete she looked, flanked by her daughters Lakshmi and Saraswati … her sons, the wise, all consoling Ganesha and Kartik. What then did this symmetrical celestial family mean? It meant this … when Durga appears in your heart, she brings with her the celestial gifts of wisdom, well being, success and strength, represented by her celestial children. As I continued to look at her, Durga appeared to say She would grant any boon I asked for.
Indeed what would I have asked for? Perhaps freedom for all women and men … freedom from the external bondage of social injustice and the inner chains of asphyxiating desires. Every time I looked at the Great Mother’s benevolent eyes, and saw the adoring crowds at her feet, I could not help but think of the helplessness of women outside the puja pandel. Pious Hindus believe that a trace of the Divine Mother is present in every woman. Of what use was it to worship Durga in the earthen image when her human representatives were treated like chattel … when human motherhood was often coerced and degraded … when young daughters-in-law were ill treated and underfed … when expectant mothers did not receive proper care?
For Christians, accustomed to the gentle Mary, the Great Goddess Kali is difficult to understand … Astute poet seers, fascinated by this Dark Mother, have long eulogized Her with poetic idiom. Here are the words of Swami Vivekananda, from his poem, “Kali the Mother”: “For Terror is Thy name/ Death is in Thy breath. And every shaking step/Destroys a world for e’er. Thou ‘Time,’ the All-destroyer!/Come, O Mother, come! Who dares misery love/And hug the form of Death/Dance in Destruction’s dance/To him the Mother comes.” And here are his words from his poem, “In dense darkness, O Mother”: “Thy Spirit-Face shines forth/with laughter terrible and loud!”
Yet, even this complex Dark Mother could not answer my questions. The rich symbolism adorning her image … the fact that she strides both the Benevolent and the Terrible, even as she transcends both … the fact that she grants boons with one upraised hand even as she punishes with the other … all this should have left me with hope for women crushed by Hindu patriarchy … but it did not.
American feminists have long been fascinated by the pantheon of Hindu Goddesses … especially the image of Kali. But many western leftists see India’s tradition of worshipping the Great Mother as useless to the revolutionary quest of feminism. After all, none of these Goddesses rail against the tyranny of husbands and mothers-in-law … not one of them asserts equal rights … none of them forbids the reification of women into wombs for the “production” of sons … none of them punishes dowry related murders of young hapless Indian women. After all no artist has depicted Durga as slaying rapists, pimps and wife beaters. Besides, how could these Goddesses represent the pain men suffer in the hands of women? So of what use are these Goddesses and our autumnal festivities in this Age of Revolution?
There is something very limiting about the western notion of Revolution. If the Revolution revolves from one node of anger to the next and the next, this happens for a reason … because Revolution (as this concept is understood today) is fueled, not by the virtues, but by simple reactive anger. And anger brings in its trail the clamor for rights … isolated rights … rights sans responsibilities. The Revolution therefore incarcerates even as it appears to liberate … for it imprisons us in our ego cells, inflating the ego and replacing duties with rights. If the oppressive side of Hindu patriarchy operates by severing duties from rights … by demanding duties of women without according them rights, then the Revolution does the opposite. It severs rights from duties … it promises rights without attaching duties to each right. This is where the Goddesses are relevant.
How? By liberating men and women inwardly, through the process of sublimation. Men sublimate the raw power of masculine lust when they worship the great Goddesses. This serves a far more important role in feminism than many demonstrations and marches. Women gather strength for acts of feminist courage when they worship the Goddesses. They sublimate feminine lust when they imitate these celestial beings. Above all, these great icons of the Eternal Feminine liberate us from the burden of perpetual anger … they broaden our horizons … they enlarge the scope of feminist thinking and activism beyond the rhetoric of anger and rights, by giving women ideals that transcend the cause of feminism.
Indeed, there is nothing to stop us imagining the Great Kali or Durga slaying the demons of patriarchy … and the Great Saraswati granting the divine wisdom essential for a wise feminism … and the gentle Lakshmi delivering a post-feminist homily on the virtue of gentleness sometimes despised by militant women revolutionaries. The Great Goddesses transcend patriarchy and feminism … but they are immanent in every women … they sob with those who sob in pain … they roar with those who roar against patriarchy … they smolder with rage every time a human person is abused, raped, or unjustly killed. They are relevant to every righteous Revolution waged for the sake of social justice.