Essay on ideals of Indian Womanhood

If India is proud of anything, it is of this, that the ideal of womanhood expressed by her poets and seers are very lofty and cannot be improved upon. What is that ideal? In the first place, woman is the centre of the home and the hearth.

A home is a home because of the housewife. She tends her home, silently making self-affecting sacrifies for the good of the home over which she presides queen-like.

Secondly, a woman is her husband’s partner in life and a sharer in all his joys and sorrows, partner as well as counselor. The performance of his duties is as much his religion as hers, and therefore she has been called his other self.

Thirdly, a woman’s jewel is her chastity; it is this emphasis on chastity that is the distinctive characteristic of the Indian woman as contrasted with the woman of any other country. It is the importance that is attached to chastity that has made her value a single marriage. So she is entitled to all the considerations and all the opportunities that are customarily allowed to men.

It must, however, be admitted that in actual practice we see a wide departure from all these high ideals which are professed. Out of man’s selfishness, and also being economically dominant, man has managed to confine woman to her home and has denied her those opportunities of freedom and growth which the Shastras enjoin.

For the average Indian woman the slogan is—”Back to the kitchen”. Man lives his own life in the outside world, while woman pursues faithfully the monotonous round of her domestic duties and household chores. The arrangement has been selfishly convenient for man. He has assigned to woman this limited life by impressing upon her the greatness and the glory of the Indian ideal. In other words, the so-called ‘ideal’ is only a clever dodge to keep woman bound to the home, to the tenterhook of overmastering man.

The fact is that ideals are never unalterable or eternal. Ideals change and develop according to the change in outward situations and circumstances.

In ancient India, women mixed freely with men and took their part in the full life of the nation. The ancient scriptures and literatures record innumerable cases in which woman excelled as poets and philosophers and scientists, took part in debating contest and proved her mettle even as warriors and statesmen. They were held in high respect by all and their counsel was sought on many occasions. But as India passed through the Muslim Age, the emphasis shifted.

In the Muslim period of our history, women in India accepted the purdah, and the restrictions of rigid orgthodoxy made them retire into the seclusion to the inner apartments of the home and all avenues of free mixing between the two religious communities were shut. This is how we came to attach greater importance to the domestic type of woman and our ideal became narrow.

Then the British period in our history. The majority of woman remained retiring to the domestic, but the women who belonged to the new aristocracy, who owned their wealth and position to English patronage, made themselves artificial imitations or models of the society ladies of the West.

Of course, with the growth of freedom in our political life and the pressure of economic circumstances, there is bound to be further adaptation of ideals. We can visualize our future women as being true helpmates of men, not only in the domestic sphere but in every sphere of life.

We can visualize the educated among them also as having an independent life of their own, pursuing their own avoca­tions and developing their own special aptitudes. In conformity with modern opinion, our Constitution has given our women equal rights with men. They can compete for the highest posts in the services.

They are now not only teachers, they are lawyers, doctors, engineers even executives, parliamentarians, ministers and pilots, High Court judges and Governors. We are now getting amongst us more and more women-journalists, legislators, politicians. So a bill is afoot to reserve one-third of the seats in the Parliament for women members. And we will find ample support for this freedom and equality in our ancient Shastras as an Indian ideal.

For the only true ideal for women as well as for men is to be true to themselves, to develop their personalities, and yet to remain an integral part of the social system. Man and woman do not live by competition; they live in co-operation.