As time goes by, newer and se­ri­ous top­ics come to the fore in man-woman re­la­tion­ships. In to­day’s day and age, when every­thing is in the open, it is but nat­ural that fam­i­lies, so­ci­eties and law­mak­ers must de­bate the dif­fi­cult and per­sonal-sound­ing is­sue of mar­i­tal rape, in­cest and the like. The au­thor-ac­tivist Harpreet Kaur Ahluwalia looks at how man has dom­i­nated so­ci­ety down the ages. She urges so­ci­ety to em­power women and pleads for women to em­power them­selves to face brute chal­lenges. In the ar­ti­cle, she also touches on the re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tion of the Gu­rus for an equal so­ci­ety per men and women and rues how the pre­sent sit­u­a­tion is far from it.

WE HAVE BEEN BROUGHT UPON, “the hand that rocks the cra­dle rules the world,” and rightly so. Though we choose to run down women, ex­is­tence sim­ply can­not run with­out her -she gives birth to them and equips her cre­ations to face the harsh re­al­i­ties of this world.

God made us all equal in body, thoughts and emo­tions. Both men and women are made of five el­e­ments- air, wa­ter, fire, earth and sky.  

But does a woman be­lieve in it? Does she ask:

Who am I?
Why did I need Guru Nanak to make me aware of my im­por­tance?
Why did He have to fight to change so­ci­ety’s mind­set?

Guru Nanak was us­ing a two-sided dag­ger – on the one hand, He was ask­ing the man to give the women their due and on the other, asked women to re­spect her­self and be­lieve in her­self.

We have all heard of this fa­ble – an egg of an ea­gle fell in the en­clo­sure of a hen. The baby ea­gle grew up like the rest of the chick­ens around him. He lived the life of a chicken lit­tle re­al­is­ing that he was too sore in the sky.

In ac­tu­al­ity, we are all made up of our be­liefs, thoughts, emo­tions, per­cep­tions, ego and con­di­tion­ing but along with this women have an in­nate qual­ity of love, em­pa­thy and hu­mil­ity. 

Iron­i­cally, women, in gen­eral, do not use them as their strengths but in­stead from time im­memo­r­ial, men use them as their weak­ness. In this process of use and mis­use, a woman for­gets that she is clay and not the clay pot.

Do women ask: Who am I? Why did I need Guru Nanak to make me aware of my im­por­tance? Why did He have to fight to change so­ci­ety’s mind­set?

If a lie is told 100 times over, peo­ple start be­liev­ing that to be the truth. This is what hap­pened to women. While his­tory has been re­plete with ex­am­ples and ser­mons of adu­lat­ing, re­spect­ing, grant­ing her lib­erty, jus­tice, in­de­pen­dence in what women de­sired and wanted – ac­tu­al­ity was di­vorced from re­al­ity. Too much talk yet too lit­tle ac­tion on the ground was and is the re­al­ity. 

Rules, reg­u­la­tions, dik­tats, cus­toms were made by men, the pri­mary ob­jec­tive was to rein her, con­strain her and make her do what they wanted, to fall in line vol­un­tar­ily by mak­ing her be­lieve that she is vul­ner­a­ble and needs help, sup­port and pro­tec­tion. 

She was con­signed to do tasks that were trans­ac­tional – back bend­ing and do­mes­ti­cated. She was con­sid­ered a bad omen and a girl child was a curse and mar­riage was her only des­tiny and above all mak­ing her feel small even for nat­ural phe­nom­ena like the men­strual cy­cle, etc.

Wom­en’s lives are writ­ten with a pen­cil which could be changed with an eraser as and when and where ever needed. To hide the guilt of sup­press­ing her, ma­nip­u­lat­ing her, us­ing her, so­ci­ety gives her a false ven­er­a­tion and puts her on a pedestal as Devi or God­dess.

Re­li­gious lead­ers seized this op­por­tu­nity to de­mol­ish all the re­sis­tance that could oc­cur from her side, by ma­nip­u­lat­ing and cre­at­ing verses that de­graded women as a be­ing. She had to prove her­self re­peat­edly through tests that were high as Ever­est and deep as an ocean. The ob­jec­tive was to make her fall and fail in her own eyes and make her fo­cus only on her outer beauty and to­tally erase her in­ner beauty and strengths.

Wom­en’s lives are writ­ten with a pen­cil which could be changed with an eraser as and when and where ever needed. To hide the guilt of sup­press­ing her, ma­nip­u­lat­ing her, us­ing her, so­ci­ety gives her a false ven­er­a­tion and puts her on a pedestal. 

Tulsi Das equated woman with dhol, gan­war, shu­dra, pashu. In Ma­hab­harata, Drau­padi was used in gam­bling as a com­mod­ity. The De­vadasi sys­tem forced women to be mar­ried to the Lord and then abused by power bro­kers. 

The Sati sys­tem burned her alive af­ter her hus­band’s death, clearly say­ing her use­ful­ness was only till her hus­band. Kanya dan was cre­ated and no rights in prop­erty were given to her. She was men­tally con­di­tioned like a chained ele­phant who be­lieves that he is not free even if left un­chained. In such a sce­nario, no per­son could gather courage, not to only chal­lenge the sta­tus quo but also to change it- by be­ing a rebel. 

Sikh tenets and prac­tices dur­ing the Guru pe­riod and there­after brought about a whiff of fresh air for women. Sikhism crowned women with the iden­tity of Kaur at a time when she had no iden­tity. Kaur was lib­er­a­tion from the bondages that so­ci­ety and re­li­gions across the world had im­posed on her. Sikhism did not dis­crim­i­nate against women and gave free en­try to places of wor­ship -Gur­d­waras, along with kitchens and taught women the art of war­fare.

Guru Nanak, on page 473 of Guru Granth Sahib says – from a woman a man is born, within the woman a man is con­ceived, to woman, he is en­gaged and mar­ried. Woman be­comes his friend, through women the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions come. When his woman dies, he seeks an­other woman to the woman he is bound to. So why call her bad? From her kings are born. From a woman, a woman is born, with­out women, there would be no one at all.

First Mehl:

ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਨਿੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਮੰਗਣੁ ਵੀਆਹੁ ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੋਵੈ ਦੋਸਤੀ ਭੰਡਹੁ ਚਲੈ ਰਾਹੁ ॥
ਭੰਡੁ ਮੁਆ ਭੰਡੁ ਭਾਲੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਬੰਧਾਨੁ ॥
ਸੋ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਜਾਨ ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੀ ਭੰਡੁ ਊਪਜੈ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਝੁ ਨ ਕੋਇ ॥
ਨਾਨਕ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਹਰਾ ਏਕੋ ਸਚਾ ਸੋਇ ॥

Sikhism and the Gu­rus em­pow­ered women. Guru Nanak ad­mit­ted women in San­gat with­out re­stric­tions and en­sured that his mes­sage was for both men and women. Guru An­gad en­cour­aged ed­u­ca­tion.  Guru Amar Das con­demned the cus­toms of Sati, fe­male in­fan­ti­cide and ad­vo­cated widow re­mar­riage. 

The sixth mas­ter -Guru Har­gob­ind an­nounced women to be the con­science of the hu­man race and fi­nally, Guru Gob­ind Singh gave her a sep­a­rate iden­tity. She was a Kaur right from her birth till death and was free of chang­ing her sur­name.

Sikh his­tory has some highly em­pow­ered Sikh women who helped shape Sikhism along with the Gu­rus-Bibi Nanaki, Mata Sahib Kaur, Mata Khivri, Bibi Bhani, Mata Gu­jri, Mata Sun­dri, are a few names. 

Sikh his­tory has some highly em­pow­ered Sikh women who helped shape Sikhism along with the Gu­rus-Bibi Nanaki, Mata Sahib Kaur, Mata Khivri, Bibi Bhani, Mata Gu­jri, Mata Sun­dri, are a few names. 

Sikh phi­los­o­phy calls upon all men to cul­ti­vate the su­pe­rior qual­i­ties of a woman that come nat­u­rally to her. Sikh his­tory also has had strong war­rior women -Bibi Sha­ran Kaur, Mata Bhago, Bibi Nirb­hai Kaur, Bhadur Deep Kaur, and many more. 

Sadly, to­day, these women even af­ter their im­pec­ca­ble and ex­em­plary con­tri­bu­tion have been left only in the pages of Sikh his­tory. None of these women is cel­e­brated as role mod­els. 

The Sikhs them­selves are to be blamed for this and it is for them to change the sit­u­a­tion. The irony is that the Sikh Re­hat Maryada has also been con­ve­niently mod­i­fied by to­day’s Gu­rud­wara Com­mit­tees and have as­signed sec­ondary roles to women and with time she has for­got­ten that she is a cel­e­bra­tive be­ing.

From the wom­en’s per­spec­tive, who is to be blamed? Women them­selves have been com­mit­ting a car­di­nal mis­take all her life of get­ting caught in the man-woman dis­tinc­tion, again and again, and for­get­ting that she has no bound­aries and she is here to fly. 

Sikh Re­hat Maryada has also been con­ve­niently mod­i­fied by to­day’s Gu­rud­wara Com­mit­tees and have as­signed sec­ondary roles to women and with time she has for­got­ten that she is a cel­e­bra­tive be­ing.

The ques­tion re­mains. Guru Nanak was suc­cess­ful in bring­ing rad­i­cal change for women. Now it is for women to be­lieve in them­selves and their abil­i­ties, stand up to men and so­ci­ety, em­power them­selves with grit, de­ter­mi­na­tion and com­pas­sion.