Today people talk about 'liberation' and 'empowerment' only when it comes to women. There is no doubt that the time has come when women should be liberated as well as empowered from their age-old relegated position. But first, let us delve a little deeper into the real meaning of 'freedom'. To understand the concept fully, we must first ask ourselves, whether we are ready yet to handle this freedom and still not forget our responsibility to both ourselves and the society?
Women in the West are certainly living a life based on indulgence and personal choice. They are in a much better position, socially, than their Indian counterparts. Then are we to conclude that they are more independent and complete individuals than us? Well, we are certainly misconstruing our role that we must fulfill as women.
Since ancient times, women all over the world have been considered as the ādhāra or shakti on this earth. She is one who sustains society and has the innate ability to balance life and bring harmony to her surroundings. She should be able to bend with the wind, enduring as well as condoning every blow that she faces. She should have an all-encompassing devotion to the welfare of others - being both generous and compassionate. Virtues like equality, tenderness, modesty and kindness at once with perseverance, endurance, dignity and courage are natural to her and she should exert a spontaneous happiness on all, just as a lighted candle can illumine a dark room. True wisdom and a pure heart are better than mere material knowledge and mundane talents.
When women would realise their real worth, they would naturally perform a lustration by sacrificing all that pulls them down and make them remain just females. Then, and only then, will they blossom forth as complete human beings and find 'true' freedom from their present bondage of ignorance.
Well said. Evidently a vast majority of the current generation of western women have a very different concept of an ideal woman. Not to blame. Men, too, here and abroad, have lopsided ideas of what an ideal man should be like. This great variance in concept is directly linked to what men and women expect or demand from life. And the peculiar expectations are the result of the condition or status of the human heart. Very often there is a great confusion in even recognising, let alone inculcating, the values that are ideal and therefore to be cherished and those that are less than ideal and hence to be rejected. But no pedantry can resolve the afflictions of the human heart - not in some Russellian formula or some Platonic arrangement or a certain Spinozian geometry lies the answer to women's (and men's) woes. It is the immense wheel of evolution creeking slowly through the ages that we ride to become wiser by degrees. Meanwhile, blogs like this from time to time, point at the straight path.
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