Worship of Shakti

Victor Hugo is supposed to have said, “Woman is the most sublime ideal", and it is this sublimity that we celebrate during the Navratri, the ideal that a woman is. The principle of Shakti is invoked and the nation worships this feminine principle which is the driving force behind the world.

According to Devi Mahatmya, once upon a time, there was a demon, who had threatened the very existence of the universe. Due to the boons he had received during his numerous penances, he had become invincible; at least the gods couldn’t do much harm to him. All the gods got together and breathed their energies into a powerful ball of energy, which shaped to form the Shakti. This Shakti was responsible in eliminating the demon, after a waging a powerful war, where the demon took different shapes to elude the powerful force, but at the end die in her hands. The goddess came to be known as the Mahisasur-mardini, the slayer of the buffalo-demon, and the quintessential woman-power.

On earth, we commemorate this divine act of the goddess and celebrate, Navratri, Durga Puja, etc.

Durga slaying Mahisasura

The principle of Shakti cannot be undermined, rather, any god without its shakti is meaningless and a beautiful verse explains this as candid as शक्ति के बिना शिव भी शव के समान हैं, i.e. without Shakti, Shiv is like a dead-body. Shakti is the personification of the divine feminity, the creative powers of the earth. No god is complete without this principle of Shakti, and together they create a beautiful harmony of the union of the two principles, the purusha and prakriti, the union of which is the root of all creation on earth.  

Hold it, I think, I have got a trifle carried away in my explanation of some concepts which only make good scripts, and just that. Did you like that? If you did, then let me pat my back, to say that I do write well. Don’t make that face; humility is not the domain of men! Such behaviour on our part is confidence, awareness and truth; however, if such behaviour was expressed by a woman, then they would be over-confidence, arrogance and brazenness! Whoever said, the world was equal, don’t believe her – aren’t there mountains and valleys on the same surface of the earth?

The earlier paragraph is a utopia painted with all the colours of the rainbow, and more. Those words of wisdom were only to make the women folk feel good and raise them to an altar after treating them like paanv-ki-jooti, for major part of the year and in more than 90% of our country. These occasional rhetoric of Shakti, etc. served well, to ensure that the women-folk got back to the grind, the fields, the kitchen and the beds to cater to all the needs of the man, and the society at large! And just in case a solitary one, did not, then there were means to bring them back to senses – kangaroo-courts, Khaps, stoning to death, rape and murder, naked-parade, etc. If nothing, it served its purpose well in others, who wouldn’t dream of any misdemeanour as inane as staring eye-to-eye with ones younger brother, leave alone any boy!

What a manly sense of achievement! First raise them to an altar, and then drag them to your beds. First talk them into such harmless divinity and them have them croon whatever you want. First offer them some rituals and then ensure that they perform ritually for you.

Dear Indians, let’s get off the high-horse of big talk, and take stalk. Except in a few homes and an even fewer Corporate, the woman is a second-class citizen, if one at all. Let’s not resort to such fancy concepts, if we don’t mean it. As a nation, we have failed our women, when one Nirbhaya takes place in Delhi and the other follows suit in Mumbai, Badaun, and just about everywhere else. If we still have to enact laws to catch hold of them legally, then we sure have failed as a society. If our politicians tell us what women should wear and what they should not, just to avoid getting raped, then such talk of Shakti is pure high-decibel talk and that’s it, and if such politicians who suffer from verbal diarrhoea too often, still move around freely in our society, then let’s take some blame for allowing the moronic retrogrades to move around freely.

A society, which feels proud to allow their men to behave like stray dogs and is not ashamed to ask the women to cover themselves, since the salivating strays cannot be controlled, then stop worshipping the feminine principle – it’s a sham, if not shame!

Ma Durga, my apologies for writing what I wrote, but sorry to tell you, that this is the truth, sordid but truth. The eulogies die a quiet death, even before you turn your back and are yourself reduced to left-over’s in rivers and ponds. I am rather appalled, that you are unable to control the terror that has been unleashed on your daughters by a certain segment of your own followers, especially when the victims had faith in you.

 

Image Courtesy – Taproot India’s campaign ‘Abused Sisters’

I dare you to show us that you care for the daughters of this country, and I further dare you to show the principle of Shakti that I so eloquently waxed, a few paragraphs back.

Or retire hurt……..