Skip to main content

Women and Religion



The team that was supposed to make an inventory of the treasures stored in one of the cellars of the Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple in Thiruvananthapuram was prevented today (20 Sep) from executing its job simply because there were women in it.  When some members of the team pointed out that the earlier inventory was also done by a team consisting of women, they were told curtly that it was a serious mistake and the purification rituals would be carried out soon.
Why are women impure?  Most religions have considered women as the source of much evil.  The very beginning of the Bible shows Eve as the cause of man’s Fall.  Neither Judaism which gave birth to the Old Testament nor Christianity which adopted the Old Testament as part of its sacred scriptures has ever given women equality with men.  For example, there are no women priests in both religions. 
The most telling verdict on women was passed by one of the Catholic theologians, Tertullian (160-220).  He said, “Do you (woman) not know that you are each an Eve?  The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too.  You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You so carelessly destroyed man, God’s image.  On account of your desert, even the Son of God had to die.” [emphases as in the original quoted by Karen Armstrong in A History of God]
Islam which accepted much of the Old Testament in its holy book, the Quran, treats women as much inferior to men.  The Taliban in Afghanistan goes to the extreme of making women cover themselves totally from head to toe, stripping them of their very identities. 
Hinduism was not generous to women, either, though the situation has improved much.  We may recall such inhuman practices as the sati and the ill-treatment meted out to widows.
Many of the evils bred by religions can be reduced if women are given equality with men.  Women may bring more compassion into religions.  This is my assumption.  Why not try it out anyway?
Labels:

Comments

  1. umashankarSeptember 20, 2012 at 9:22 PM

    It is sick the way the world goes crazy over women, idolizing and trashing, fantasizing and fuming on her in the same breath.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SidSeptember 21, 2012 at 9:43 PM

    From whatever little experience I have - WOMEN ARE INDEED EVIL !!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 21, 2012 at 10:07 PM

    In India the status of women has been changing with times..

    Starting from status of Mother goddess to slavery it has seen all.. I think today we are in one of the worst phases where girls are being killed even before they are born in some states.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 22, 2012 at 6:22 AM

      The attitude toward women in India today is ambivalent. On the one hand, we glorify them, while on the other we practise female infanticide and foeticide as well as perpetuate a lot of atrocities on them (increasing rapes, for instance). Women's attitudes have changed too. The increasing freedom and opportunities have gone the head in some cases at least!

      Delete
  4. UnknownSeptember 22, 2012 at 12:00 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 22, 2012 at 2:05 PM

      Anybdoy can claim anything in the name of religion, alas! Tomorrow the most wicked person can found a religion and tell us that his foulest thoughts came from God! Don't forget that the most mendacious people have misused the Bible, the Koran and the Gita for the foulest purposes time and again in the past.

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 22, 2012 at 6:24 PM

      For the sake of the readers, I'm obliged to state that "This comment has been removed by the author" means that the comment was removed by the one who posted it.

      Delete
  5. UnknownSeptember 22, 2012 at 5:45 PM

    Yoko Ono said 'Woman is the nigger of the world'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 22, 2012 at 6:16 PM

      Shovon, what do YOU have to say? I'm interested in that.

      Your comment is a veiled form of acrimony hurled at both womanhood and the Negro race. A very serious crime today if any woman or any Negro would hear it as your own opinion!

      Delete
  6. mandakolathurSeptember 23, 2012 at 8:37 PM

    "Why not try it out anyway?" Wow, finally that is a concession you have made to science! (Tongue firmly in cheek!)

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2012 at 2:12 PM

      No, Raghuram, in my view, it's a suggestion to the higher powers in religious hierarchy.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
48 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 2

Fort Kochi’s water metro service welcomes you in many languages. Surprisingly, Sanskrit is one of the first. The above photo I took shows only just a few of the many languages which are there on a series of boards. Kochi welcomes everyone. It welcomed the Arabs long before Prophet Muhammad received his divine inspiration and gave the people a single God in the place of the many they worshipped. Those Arabs made their journey to Kerala for trade. There are plenty of Muslims now in Fort Kochi. Trade brought the Chinese too later in the 14 th -15 th centuries. The Chinese fishing nets that welcome you gloriously to Fort Kochi are the lingering signs of the island’s Chinese links. The reason that brought the Portuguese another century later was no different. Then came the Dutch followed by the British. All for trade. It is interesting that when the northern parts of India were overrun by marauders, Kerala was embracing ‘globalisation’ through trades with many countries. Babu...
10 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The...
62 comments
Read more

Schrödinger’s Cat and Carl Sagan’s God

Image by Gemini AI “Suppose a patriotic Indian claims, with the intention of proving the superiority of India, that water boils at 71 degrees Celsius in India, and the listener is a scientist. What will happen?” Grandpa was having his occasional discussion with his Gen Z grandson who was waiting for his admission to IIT Madras, his dream destination. “Scientist, you say?” Gen Z asked. “Hmm.” “Then no quarrel, no fight. There’d be a decent discussion.” Grandpa smiled. If someone makes some similar religious claim, there could be riots. The irony is that religions are meant to bring love among humans but they end up creating rift and fight. Scientists, on the other hand, keep questioning and disproving each other, and they appreciate each other for that. “The scientist might say,” Gen Z continued, “that the claim could be absolutely right on the Kanchenjunga Peak.” Grandpa had expected that answer. He was familiar with this Gen Z’s brain which wasn’t degenerated by Instag...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more