A Bleeding Goddess
Has it occurred to anybody that we are debating a woman’s right to worship in the same month that this religion worships womanhood? Navratri, Durga Puja or Pujo, whatever name you know this festival by, honours Shakti, the divine female force that manifests in abundance (Lakshmi), wisdom (Saraswati), and loving relationship (Parvati) – just a few of the avatars that Hinduism revers. Durga specifically, represents the female force against evil. And what is more evil than discrimination, than treating human beings as less than human? It is especially ironic that the very thing that is considered prime about female energy — the ability to bear life — is also used as a reason to discriminate against everyday women. Being made a goddess is not good for womanhood.
Let’s examine menstruation taboos. What makes a woman unclean during her period days? I’ve heard people tell me that this was used as a way to give the woman rest from her hard labour and to keep her husband from imposing sex on her. Even if this were true and the only way to give a woman rest at one point in time, is this the world we want to live in? What does it say about us as a society if the only way we can allow a woman to rest and reprieve from forced sexual demands is by making her taboo? Are men and society at large that indifferent to a woman’s personhood — her health, her wellbeing and her consent? And if that is the case, what kind of hypocrisy is it to worship this same aspect of the women that they discriminate against?
Menstrual blood is not unclean and is not an excuse to treat menstruating humans as untouchable. A period is not an illness, not a reason to quarantine menstruating people. Women are human beings, not objects to be put out of harm’s way or intoxicants to be locked away.
This is my poem about the dichotomy of being an object of worship/discrimination in my culture. The background score was composed by the talented Karthik Rao and the animation and video production were by KalArt/Bramha Media. Thank you, Kunal Jhawar and Nalini Ujjain for bringing my message to the world.
Update 2022: This video is now available for viewing on Disney Hotstar.
I don’t know a ton about Hinduism, but yeah it is quite ironic that there is a debate over a woman’s right to worship in the same month that the religion worships womanhood.
Rest assured though…Hinduism is not the only religion struggling with this seemingly two-faced attitude towards women. My religion, Catholicism, reveres female saints who fought against attempts at sexual assault (St. Agnes and St. Maria Goretti come to mind) yet has its own problem when it comes to sexual violence (especially against women).
@Brendan Birth: Yes, most existing religions and other prevailing social structures have some form of this dichotomy towards women’s bodies. Patriarchy infects all that we do, across the world and corrupts the human journey.