Sharadiya Durgapuja is approaching in October, the annual occasion of spiritually invoking the feminine faculties of strength present in everyone, referred to as Shakti. Bharat’s realisation sees strength and power as its feminine manifestation.
Before Durgapuja in October, Bharat observed Rakshabandhan in late August, a celebratory ritual in which sisters ask for fraternal protection by tying rakhis on their brothers’ wrists. However, ancient tales & mantras of this auspicious ceremony also indicate that defence & protection came from women to men, not the other way round.This also aligns with the observance of femininity as a manifestation of power.
Vulnerability during the rule of invaders
How women defended men may not be easy to realise from the present perspective, as women today often appear vulnerable. During the millennium of foreign invasion in Bharat, invaders viewed women through a different value system as ‘objects’. Such an outlook gradually made women vulnerable, denting their morale and confidence. Invaders’ aggression, unknown to Bharatbhumi, led Bharatiya women to Atmabismrita (forgetting one’s true self), ending up being confined within the domestic periphery.
The millennium of foreign incursions in Bharat witnessed Arabs, Turks, Pathans, Timurids and various other European forces such as the Portuguese, the Danish, the Dutch, the French, the British etc., who all viewed women through a prism fundamentally different from the Bharatiya perspective of viewing the core spirit of women as Shakti i.e. the supreme applicable form of strength and power.
The presence of such variance in outlook towards women left Bharatiya women demoralised and hence, weak, as even the Bharatiya psyche too started deriving damaging impact from the colonialists’ outlook towards women.
Challenge Male Chauvinistic Argument?
However, perceiving women as Shakti and the prime defensive force to protect men around them may appear far-fetched to a thinker of the present time, as the core argument still remains: how can a woman defend a man while men, in general, are physically stronger than women? Both Bharatiya History and modern science offer convincing answers to this argument. Numerous women of Bharat have entered war, displaying unmatched valour that brought both victory and loss at different times. The epic Mahabharata describes how Arjuna, during the Ashwamedha Yagna, faced a fierce challenge from a kingdom ruled exclusively by women (Prameela Rajya) against whom Arjuna had to engage in a war that required divine intervention to get sorted.
Before looking at modern science to explain Shakti i.e. the feminine surge of strength to protect, it may not be irrelevant to mention that around 20 years before the birth of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (the pioneer & the very soul of the Seneca Falls Convention in the middle of the nineteenth century in America), Rani Shiromoni of Medinipur had led Chuar Vidroh in Bengal, which was one of the early anti-British rebellions in Bharat that continued as a chain of rebels, finally culminating in the Mahavidroh of 1857. By contrast, the Seneca Falls Convention marked the dawn of the Women’s Rights Movement in the West.
This implies that long before Western women ever began rising up for their rights to liberty and dignity, asking for the end of slavery in America (as slavery caused a more grievous plight for women than men), Bharatiya women were leading struggles & insurgencies against the rule of exploitation by the British East India Company. Thus, Bharatiya History witnessed innumerable events of feminine valour protecting not only men but also their own domain & properties.
However, historical accounts suggest that women exhibited valour and served as warriors primarily to protect their own domain from invaders, not to wage ‘offensive aggression’ against others. While innumerable women of Bharat went to the battlefield, such as Rani Bhabashankari of Bhurishreshtha of Bengal and so many such others who won, none of these valiant warrior ladies went for imperial expansion but to defend their own territory & freedom. While men often brandished military power for expansionist aggression, women turned aggressive primarily & predominantly to defend their own domain, as security & protection have always been primary requisites for female existence.
The female body’s hormonal idiosyncrasy appears to manifest as a predisposition to secure a periphery and, from time to time, as ‘defensive aggression’ to safeguard it. As per contemporary research, such a female trait of ‘defensive aggression’ depends on the proportionate physiological distribution of three hormones, namely Oxytocin, Estrogen & Vasopressin. A woman’s capacity to provide care, affection, co-operation & friendship comes with her power of critical observation & instinctive spontaneity to sense danger (which men mostly lack). The feminine faculty that protects her surroundings rests in incisive critique & the ability to grasp threats in advance.
On the other hand, the appearance of danger to her dear ones might trigger a sudden spurt of ferocious aggression in females, driven by the same hormonal salience of the female body.
Meri Jhansi Dungi Nahi” — the immortal phrase expressing Matrishakti by Rani Lakshmibai, when she galloped on the battlefield challenging Lord Dalhousie’s East India Company in 1857 — was also a fierce display of the same ‘defensive aggression’ to protect her son & her Kingdom.
Prolonged disuse, however, leads to the decay of such ‘defensive aggression’ in women. Annual celebrations like Durgapuja, Rakshabandhan, Lakshmipuja, and Kalipuja may therefore be seen as opportunities to recall this fierce trait in women & to organise programs for the competitive exhibition of its practice. Not to forget that women not only ask men for protection but also promise to protect them
