Goddess of liberty

I Witness - Antara Dev Sen :: The Week: "Perhaps for the first time in India, a woman saint will have her bronze idol in a temple. Akka Mahadevi’s statue will grace a temple in Srisailam, where the 12th century mystic poet died. If this is indeed a first for a woman saint as claimed, Akka Mahadevi is a great choice.

Akka was the first woman poet in Kannada, a stalwart of the radical Veerashaiva cult that believed in a casteless, classless, democratic society, a rebel who challenged patriarchal values 900 years ago. According to legend, the stunning beauty walked out of her marriage to the local king and went naked and unashamed, partly covered by her long tresses, in search of her true love: Chennamallikarjuna, her Lord, white as jasmine. She died in her twenties. If we must have temple saints, we couldn’t get much better than this glamorous rebel.

Through Akka we see the power of religion to free us, to offer escape routes to the disempowered. For women, religion has often offered escape from patriarchal norms: the earliest women’s anthologies were by Buddhist nuns in the 6th century BC, the bhakti tradition brims with fascinating women poets who defy convention, reject ‘mortal’ marriage for an ‘immortal’ union with God, and, like Akka, are treated as goddesses. From Mutta in the time of the Buddha, Andal in the ninth century, the medieval bhakti poets like Sule Sankawa (whose poetry expressed her experiences as a prostitute and compared her god to a client) or Janabai (a Sudra who saw her God as a fellow sweeper) to Lalded of 14th century Kashmir and Mirabai of 16th century Rajasthan, women mystic poets tailored their individual god to ensure intimacy. Akka belongs to this centuries-old tradition of women who snatched personal freedom from the jaws of oppressive custom. It was not a call to arms, but a deliberate disregard of gender roles, a refusal to follow social norms, an individual rebellion.

‘I have Maya for mother-in-law, the world for father-in-law…’ says Akka. ‘And I cannot cross the sister-in-law….’ But she will escape them all because ‘my mind is my maid....’ About 400 years on, Mirabai sings: ‘Mother-in-law fights, my sister-in-law teases, the Rana remains angry….’ But it doesn’t help. ‘Mira danced with ankle-bells on her feet, people said Mira was mad; my mother-in-law said I ruined the family reputation. Rana sent me a cup of poison and Mira drank it laughing….’ Mortal husbands do not compare with Akka’s Chennamallikarjuna or Mira’s Giridhar Naagar. ‘Take these husbands who die and decay, and feed them to your kitchen fires!’ declared Akka. Mirabai sang: ‘Mira’s Lord is Giridhar Naagar. Let the wicked burn in the kitchen fire.’ Today, Indian women are themselves fed to kitchen fires, hemmed in by dowry killings, ritual rapes and honour killings. Last month, Mirabai’s Rajasthan was busy promoting sati tourism while in Uttar Pradesh, Ram Kumari, 75, apparently committed sati unbeknown to anyone. The administration, and the rest of the village, swiftly declared their innocence. Sati temples are sprouting in UP on land reportedly allotted by the government.

Muslim women are no better off. This week, imams in UP have issued an order forbidding women from all kinds of bad behaviour, which include going outdoors, watching films, even watching TV at home. Earlier this month, a woman raped by her father-in-law was asked by the village panchayat to distance herself from her husband and treat him as a son. Meanwhile, in the secular domain, a court in Delhi made a marry-your-rapist proposal to a victim. In 2003, Bhura, a ward boy in a Delhi hospital, raped a 21-year-old nurse, gouged out an eye and severely injured her. Minutes before the sentencing last month, proven guilty, Bhura offered to ‘save’ the girl by marriage. The court asked the victim to consider it. We shuddered in shame.

But this was the land of Akka’s sisters. The victim rejected the proposal and asked the court to hang the rapist. In UP, the other victim declared that she didn’t care about the shariat or the panchayat, she would continue to live with her husband and hoped that her rapist father-in-law is punished by law. As Akka said, ‘Like a puppet on a string, I played as you made me, I lived as you made me, until Chennamallikarjuna, who drives the world, said: Enough!’

sen@littlemag.com "