Woman and Goddess in Hinduism

by Tracy Pintchman

  Kma is said to be characterized by a desire for one’s own pleasure, whereas prema is characterized by a desire for pleasure of the other. However, if considering the happiness of the other is the true measure of love, there may be some problems to contend with.13 First, this consideration of happiness is more often than not depicted in terms of being at the service of the other, which might place slaves and prostitutes at the top of this hierarchy. The insider response is that service and desire for the pleasure of the other is not personal debasement as a survival strategy, but is a natural expression of the freedom, as the oft-cited tmarma verse in the Bhgavata declares (claiming that even self-satisfied sages are attracted to the qualities of Hari).14

  The requisite understanding of loving service, the insider respondent would parry, is that it is not personally motivated. Hence the Bhgavata-Purna proclaims that bhakti must be unmotivated and unceasing in order to please the self (BHP 1.2.6). Hence nirodha (ces-sation, as in the ending of all self-interest) and tmarma (satisfaction in the self) are prerequisites of supreme bhakti. One can still wonder, however, at the apparent lack of mutuality, communion, or compassionate inclusion in these descriptions. After all, much of the Gosvm literature on the subject appears to be more fetishistic than relational. Is the desire for the pleasure of the other really a sign of love, or is it a survival mechanism for someone who has no other choice? If indeed Rdh and Ka are one, and Rdh, as the theologians contend, is Kna’s hlain-s’akti, or the divine aspect of joy and bliss, is there any distinction between the pleasure of one and the pleasure of the other? A love that is primarily seen in terms of one serving another arguably smacks of sacrificial medievalism that remains ensconced in power dynamics in which the primary metaphor is not love as sharing but as submission.15

  The tradition would respond that prema bhakti, in its insistence on surrender, seeks to subvert traditional hierarchies by encouraging its aspirants to take on the persona of being the lowest of the low: hence its rhetorical glorification of what Mackenzie Brown (1990: 72-75) has labeled “grace by deprivation,” or the loss of wealth, health, position, and even life itself as the grace of God. Hence, the greatest gops in the Bhgavata Purna are said to be the ones who did not make it to the rsa dance. Deprived of their meeting with Ka, they were deprived of life itself, as the burning fires of separation immolated their bodies, but moved them to the apex of the devotional hierarchy in the eyes of the devotional community.

  In religious traditions and institutions of “Hindu” India, such hierarchy has become solidified through the complex, variegated, but always present notion of the guru, who becomes (in certain traditions) the living, visible emblem of the deity, and hence the sole valid object of devotional love in this world. We return again to the insistence on exclusivity in Vaiava sensibility and again wonder if such exclusivity is a sign of love or a mechanism for social and psychological control. Is the das, the “slave heroine,” a model of love or of love as abjection?

  Moreover, if the feminine concept of surrender leads to divine servitude, what becomes of akti herself? What becomes of the power aspect of the feminine? Can the overwhelming victory of Durg, the fierce power of Kl, and the expressive wisdom of Sarasvat be so easily absorbed and subsumed by the charm and meekness of Rdh? What if the “transformation of lust” and the subsequent turning away from “the world” lead to an “idealized feminine” that cannot accept more powerful, solid, and less ethereal forms of the female (as in the Tulsi Rmyap’s refusal of the notion that a “real” St came under the power of Rvana, insisting that only a “shadow” form of St was kidnapped)? In such a case, the promotion of self-abnegating love would again be a way of circling the patriarchal wagons and keeping the feminine power at bay.

  Religious forms and dispositions possess a resiliency, however, that confound secular critics and historical ideologues. Devotional bhakti may be poised to make contributions to an emerging culture that could not have heretofore been imagined. Specifically, the ideal of “other worldly love” may serve as a corrective to the vulgar discourse of romantic love as the be all and end all of life that currently floods international markets through Hollywood and Bollywood. Moreover, just as bhakti challenged the “conceits” of nondualistic discourse by affirming the separateness of Rdh and the integral necessity of her devotional disposition, it may now challenge the “idol of the self” promoted by popular “gurudom” in India and abroad. The supreme vision of prema is an ideal that may also contest a contemporary vision that cannot see beyond social strata, commodification, and self-satisfaction as ultimate values. Thus prema-bhakti, with its supreme value of surrender, offers “a way out of romance” that is not laced with the downward spirals of cynicism and bitter irony that characterize many Western critiques of the romantic ideal.

  THE INNER BEING AS THE DIVINE FEMININE

  The idea of all humans as feminine and divinity as supreme and masculine is not unique to either Vainava or Indian theologies. I would argue, however, that it is pervasive in the religious life of the subcontinent. There are other ways of relating to the divine, of course: the reverence of the sevaka, the detached peace of the jni, the immanent embrace of the tantrika, and the heroic yogin as iva himself, but the question of why surrender and devotion seem to gravitate toward the female form is one that scholars and partisans seem to skirt around, remaining a problem to a world that is bent on gender balance, if not equality.

  Vaisnava theology claims that when the Absolute manifests itself, “His” overwhelming power and presence assumes the male gender; the remaining creation, kti, is female.16 The specific relationship to akti, of course, depends upon one’s doctrinal perspective. What I want to focus on, however, is to what degree the relationship in Vaisnava discourse between the “powerful and the power,” and particularly between the male “lord” and the female “lorded” may reflect social-psychological concerns and constructs.

  Since most, if not all, of the devotional texts were written by men, the phenomenon of spiritual surrender usually entails the male becoming female, “surrendering his manhood” so to speak. Sudhir Kakar (in Kakar and Ross, 1987) cites the fifteenth-century Gujarati saint Narsi Mehta in the following quote: “As I took the hand of the Lover of the Gopis, I forgot all else, even my manhood left me. I began to sing and dance like a woman. My body seemed to change and I became one of the gopis.”

  As mentioned previously, the mainstream Vaiava insistence that this surrendered love turned female should not be seen in mundane terms is suspect from certain perspectives. Those of Freudian disposition, for example, would perhaps label this phenomenon as latently homoerotic or sexually regressive. No matter what it may or may not be, however, the question of why religious elements in a patriarchal culture would want to yield their heroic, phallic trappings remains disturbingly alive. Do men perhaps want to be what they can never be and possess female creative power? Do they want to be inwardly female because women, as the social holders of emotion and passion, the ones who are permitted to mourn at funerals and wail at the loss of love, can express everything that the male has been trained to repress or deny? Is this a secret desire of man, as Kakar asserts—to become a woman (and not just a woman per se, but a kikar: a woman who has no other recourse)? On the other hand, are the male voices in these texts defending themselves against unconscious fears of emasculation? McDaniel (1989: 174) cites Bengali practitioners discussing how by taking on the female mood during ritual sex, the drive for lust is destroyed, the semen is held inside, and “then a man becomes a woman.”

  One might also posit that in a male-dominated society, becoming female is a logical way of overthrowing conventional conditioning and leaving one’s ego attachment, typified by attachment to maleness and control, behind. Perhaps, what we have here is a case of reverse power trappings, as the burden of being on top can finally be released before God, for only God is truly “on top,” and men just masquerade as such. Freud’s Totem and Taboo thesis would fit nicely in this niche. There has been a
scramble for the top, an ongoing parricide, whose moral dreadfulness is displaced through strict adherence to the absent father, now present in the form of the guru (Hardy, 1983: 563e). Such “surrender,” reaching its apex in the form of spiritual men becoming maidservants, would indeed be viewed as a social emasculation that allows society to function.

  Becoming a woman to “reach God” may be one way of acknowledging a woman’s power without losing face (as opposed to other bodily parts). It likewise may reflect the primacy of the son-mother over the lover-lover dynamic in Indian culture. From this standpoint, the male lover of the Goddess would reflect an incest taboo and would therefore be unacceptable in any direct form. One might speculate in this regard that this may be one of the reasons that tantra is so strongly associated with the taboo. It is not just a question of ritually partaking of forbidden things, but of nonprocreative sexuality as directly challenging the primacy of the filial dynamic.

  There are many other arguments and perspectives around the “inner being as female” that deserve at least equal attention. In a recent discussion with a Vaiava crya around the word prapatti, I was told that the essence of its femaleness is neither about gender nor action. Prapatti (surrender) was said to be a “spontaneous disposition” that appears in face of the overwhelming love of God. Here is where one might see another form of reclamation, reclaiming the feminine voice as a voice of truth in which the discourse of surrender can hold its own with the discourse of the heroic. One is ennobled through yielding to, as opposed to triumph over, another.

  There is another major form of reclamation regarding the ideal of the “inner being” as feminine: the “rehabilitation of the arts” into the “lived artistry” of bhakti. The culture of conquest tends to see the arts as existing on the periphery or as adornment for martial prowess and display, but the sixty-four arts of the Kma Stra are said to be practiced by the cowherd women at the center of their devotional life. A social order that can organize itself around beauty and celebration may be less inclined toward destruction. The acknowledgment of the feminine in terms of a disposition and the values that follow from it may have extraordinary consequences. Play becomes more prominent and less cut throat. The ¿ops sing for Ka, not for capital, and their surrender is seen as blissful play and not as abject capitulation. Hence, surrender is seen as a gateway, a relinquishing of the need for dominance that allows one to “join in the play” (ll). One area where this kind of sensibility might be emerging is in the return of dance and dancers to temples in India. Nrtya (dance) may in fact be seen as the complementary discipline to yoga—as its feminine side. It may be no accident, in this regard, that yoga, the discipline of conquest of the body and the ending of thought, has increasingly taken on more feminine aspects in both India and in the West.

  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

  Perhaps the archetype of surrender and submission is prevalent in so many world religions because it makes sense—because in the face of the overwhelming and inconceivable breadth and power of existence, any sane human being would bend his or her knee and pray. Since this position comes through a sensibility where woman is exalted as a sublime servant and where the female energy is seen as holding the essence of mercy, the surrendered female would serve as a natural metaphor for this position.

  The detailed works of Gosvms of Vrndvana often seem to challenge the idea of the feminine as mere metaphor, however. For the emissaries of Caitanya, Rdh is a real personality, as are the milkmaid gops and the eternal forms of those who follow them. Their stated goal is to remember and follow these surrendered residents of the holy mandala of Vraja. This is the polar opposite of heroic lordship, and indeed, the archetypal epic villains (asuras) Hiranyakaipu, Rvana, and so forth are upstart males who try to usurp the role of the leading male. Likewise, sexually aggressive, or just plain aggressive females, such as rpanakh or the goddess Durg do not fit into the surrendered paradigms, and are either mutilated (rpanakh) or given their own realms (Vainavas generally acknowledge Durg as the superintendent of the world of my, and hence a devotee of Viu, but not as a member of the “inner circle of surrendered souls”). In fact, anyone with power is kept out of the rsa-ll, including the god iva and the goddess Laksm herself. Apparently, the sweet precincts of mdhurya permit no manifestations of majestic ais’varya whatsoever.

  From a certain social psychological perspective, devotional surrender can be seen as a defense against admitting emasculation— politically, economically, or spiritually. The entire phenomenon of transcendence, viewed from this light, is a defense mechanism in the face of the obvious and inevitable; as, for example, the translator of the BrhM-Bhgavmrtam transforming the story of Aurangzeb seeing the lights from the temples in Vraja and cutting them down, to an Aurangzeb who could not see the transcendental holy light coming from the temples, and thus cut them down.

  Let us return to the intersecting opposites of the yantra for a moment. On one hand, one can observe poor and abject widows in holy precincts all over India sitting on the ground and chanting the name of God. As their nm-bhajim drones on, some passers-by may see them as pious, while others will sneer at the fact that these destitute women are paid three rupees a day to chant by landowners and temple holders— barely enough to sustain themselves with a little flour and water until the next day. Nevertheless, when I quizzed a major Vaisnava lineage holder about “who holds the power in Vraja,” I was told (after exhausting all my answers) that it is “the widows.” No one seems to be waiting in line to procure this particular form of power, however, which is why such “surrender,” to some, remains suspect.

  Perhaps a quality that needs to be developed here is a conscious androgyny that would allow for rigorous scrutiny as well as reverential resignation, and a scholarship that could both empathize and criticize, for both modalities are stronger when supported by the other. If we insist upon construing surrender from a hermeneutics of suspicion alone, without the method of dialexis, however, we run the risk of the most severe reductionism; we close the window on the alaukika realm, the ever-present ll of loving exchange. We refuse to consider why Ka declares that the glory of the milkmaids fascinates him more than the Vedic hymns, or why Akrüra (and thousands of bhaktas after him) started rolling on the ground in ecstasy when coming into contact with the dust of Vrndvana. Why do kings abandon their thrones, jjopïs their homes, and scholars (such as Caitanya) their accumulated knowledge when coming into contact with the mahbhva of r Rdh? Might it be possible that both sides of the yantra point to truths in their respective spheres, and that the challenge might be to integrate them into an ongoing creative dialogic exchange?

  NOTES

  1. Vaudeville’s “Evolution of Love-Symbolism in Bhgavatism” speaks of the Hindu wife, who is championed for sublimating her desire and her will in the service of her husband.

  2. Padma-Purna, Uttarakandha 272 166f: “In former times all the great ras living in the Dandaka forest, seeing Rma and Hari there, desired to enjoy them . . . They all became women and were born in Gokula. Obtaining Hari through physical passion, they all found liberation from the ocean of existence.”

  3. The rsa ll, or “circle dance” codified in the Bhgavata, depicts the divine Ka dancing with his devoted cowherd women, who have left husbands, family, and household to come to Ka. The dance is thought of as a divine expression of love existing beyond mundane boundaries of space and time.

  4. The diagram, expounded in detail in rïvidy writings of eleventh-century Kashmir, is also known as r Cakra.

  5. Bhagavad Gt 18. 66-67: “This should not be spoken by you to those who are not austere, devoted, desirous of hearing, or envious.”

  6. rï Vaisnavas trace the sensibility of prapatti back through the Taittirya, Katha, and vetsvatara Upanisads, as well as through the epics the Laksm Tantra and Ahirbuddhya Samhita.

  7. See Dasgupta, 1954: 91, for a detailed discussion of Rmnuja and the angas of pmpatti.

  8. See rïla Ymuncarya’s r Stotraratna.

  9. uka, the princip
al narrator of the Bhgavata-Purna, refers to sexuality as hrt-rogam, the disease of the heart.

  10. One might ask, “What about tantra here? But tantra has always considered itself to be in (subversive) opposition to the mainstream. Likewise with yoga—although the Yoga-Sūtra does acknowledge is’wara pranidhna as a preliminary step on the path of yoga, this term, usually translated as “surrender to the Lord,” has more of a “yogic” connotation: “to place down,” “put,” “reflect upon,” stemming from √dh, “to place”

  11. Nrada Bhakti Sūtra 35: tat tu visayatgt. sangatygt ca.

  12. Note Siddhanta Saraswati’s discussion of this in his introduction to the Brahma Samhit (1932).

  13. The tarada Bhakti Sütras, 24, contend, e.g., that—nstyeva tasmin tatsukhasukhitvam—in profane love (tasmin), happiness does not at all consist in the happiness of the other.

  14. “Even self-satisfied beings and silent sages who have gone beyond the knots of textuality are attracted to the qualities of Hari” (Bhgavata Purna 1.2.45).

  15. For some reason, I am thinking of Jean Paul Sartre here, who could only envision sexuality from an Adlerian perspective of wilfulness and power over another.

  16. Hardy, 1983: 536–545.

  REFERENCES

  Sanskrit Texts

  Bhagavadgt: The Original Sanskrit and English Translation. 2007. Lars Marin Fosse. Woodstock: YogaVidya.com.

  Bhgavata-Purna. 1962. Gorakhpur: Gita Press.

  Nrada Bhakti Sütra. 1983. Trans. Swami Tygïsnanda. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math.

  Rmnuja. 1978. r-bhsya with text and English rendering of the sufras, comments, and index. Swami Vireswarananda, Swami Adidevananda. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama,

  r Brahma Samhit, with commentary by r Srimad Jva Goswmi and translation and purport by r Bhatki Siddhnta Saraswati Goswmi. 1932. Madras: rï Gaudiya Math.