Motive: 6. Dethroning the matriarchate

"It would not happen overnight, but the enantiodrama was that the discovery of cereals by women permitted the discovery of warfare by men."

 WI Thompson

The battle of the sexes appears to retain its fervour even in the new millennium. Academics, otherwise meticulous in their research findings, may also be drawn into a universal endorsement of stereotypes.  Consequently they damage their own credibility across the globe.

Perhaps they need to realize the dangers of tunnel vision. For instance, Glick and Fiske outline a theory on gender inequality, which is largely thought provoking. They examine the hostile and benevolent versions of sexism convincingly (referenced in an earlier post). Ironically, they also write:

Hunter-gatherer societies (common to an earlier era of human history)… may have been relatively egalitarian, but the idea that matriarchy was once common has been thoroughly debunked…

The stray remark is unconnected with the substance of their theory. The authors have not investigated the ‘matriarchy’ issue themselves, but support the claim anthropologist Harris (first name Marvin), made in the 1990s that matriarchy is a myth. But the unquestioned endorsement conveys the impression that they themselves harbour attitudes discriminatory to gender and other cultures.

Unawareness of the universal context is clear. For instance, in North America, where ‘civilization’ dates only a few centuries, matriarchy may indeed have never existed. Patriarchy may be the present dominant social mode elsewhere also. However, in the older civilizations of Asia and Africa, patriarchy actually appeared later in time. In earlier age, matriarchy was more widespread, and pockets of indigenous people still retain its practice.

In his article on the origins of the “queenmother” (now reduced socially to figurehead status in Africa), Farrar writes:

Afrocentric scholars…have begun to seriously address the issue of female political and social power in ancient Africa, and have tended to place the discussion within the broader context of the question of the matriarchate. They are in agreement with the theory that matriarchy is the most ancient or primordial family form and maintain that it is older in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

And further:

When scholars began to search for actual examples of this type of society, historically and ethnographically, they could not find any. The idea that true matriarchal societies had once existed was thus largely dismissed. But also dismissed, and incorrectly so, was any notion that societies in which women possessed “real” political authority – authority that gave them power over the lives of men – had ever existed.

Essentially, the absence of empirical evidence satisfactory to modern Western standards should not be taken as enough to “debunk” beliefs and practices of civilizations that actually date thousands of years! If, as new discoveries appear to indicate, the origin of human life was indeed in Africa, Farrar’s comments that female power began in ancient Africa, and that politically, it built on “an underlying matriarchal foundation” could bear weight.

Similarly, ancient Indian civilization, over 5000 years old, has few surviving artifacts. Ancient hieroglyphics have never been deciphered, and modern written scripts did not exist. Cultural transmissions were verbal, handed down generation to generation over centuries - which possibly is unimaginable to present-day theoreticians. Humans were perceived as descendants of the gods, not apes.

In India, Durga, the sylvan deity was the original Earth Mother. The oldest surviving ritual that pays homage to her as Nature is the ghot puja. The ghot is an earthenware pot that is filled with water and a vermilion figure inscribed on its surface symbolizing the embryo being carried in the pregnant womb. Coconut and mango leaves placed at the mouth of the ghot represent Nature’s creative abundance.

This vestige of worship of the female form has been carried forward to the present day, and is the crucial initiator of any Hindu religious event. Women’s ability to reproduce then made them ‘magical’, and they were worshipped as goddesses. Durga is also the Warrior Queen, called upon to fight battles on behalf of the less capable gods. It seems logical to assume that in the beginning, women’s status was equal to if not better than that of men.

It needs to be clarified that Hinduism started as a philosophy rather than a religion. In India’s formidable “religiously schizophrenic” diversity, Hindu ritualistic practices vary widely. Harris (first name Ray) writes:

The name [Hindu] is derived from the word Indus (a river) and simply means the people of the Indus region. It is where we get the word India (Hindus call India Bharata). Hinduism is a collection of religious and cultural traditions. Today the main religious groups are Arya, Vaishnavites, Shaivites, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Tantrikas and Shaktas…

India has been the hotbed of cultural intermingling, especially of the Aryan practices from the North and Dravidian traditions from the South. The Northerners perpetrated no bloody revolution but an insidious invasion of culture that infiltrated and assimilated. Harris explains:

…the Arya adapted some religious iconography to suit their needs…[they] could be flexible and creative when they needed to be. The one thing they were not so accommodating about was their caste privilege and power. The Brahmin caste were the priests and scholars, the 'keepers' of the Aryan ideology… [they] manipulated Indian religion and history in order to increase and maintain their caste privileges.

The Aryans brought the concept that the source of creation was the male element, the ‘seed’. In agrarian India, it made sense. Durga was thence dethroned as the supreme deity, and reinvented as the consort of Shiva, the male god, her guru (teacher) and master. Her social recognition thereafter stemmed from her relationship with him. Worship also shifted towards the male element thereafter, although the initiating ghot puja remains till today.

Caste Hinduism achieved a stranglehold on organized society prescribing cruel practices to keep the female gender especially underfoot.  For example, menstruating women, and those in childbirth were impure and banished to remote parts of the household, widows were burned alive on their husbands funeral pyres or forced to survive in pitiable conditions, and so on. Systems that rebelled against the imposition of patriarchy, like Tantrism, became esoteric cults associated with “sex magic” that worshipped the female form and considered menstrual blood sacred.

Giti Thadani, author of the book “Moebius Trip”, chronicles her experiences travelling throughout India in search of “’yogini’ temples”, that is, dedications to forms of the goddess. As Harris relates from her experiences:

India was once covered in yogini temples. They are quite different to the standard Aryan temple. They were usually circular and open to the sky… These temples also often contained a yoni stone, a stone carved to represent a woman's vulva. The goddesses of these temples were usually autonomous, independent of male gods.

Thadani found that proponents of Aryan patriarchy actively suppressed the goddess. In some places, the naked images were draped over with cloth. Elsewhere, there was “the systematic distortion and rewriting of Indian history”. Harris reveals:

Thadani has given numerous accounts of where the feminine of the original Sanskrit has been translated as masculine. She also encountered temples where the goddess had been mutilated and either replaced by or turned into a masculine god.

Thereafter, with the systemic removal or replacement of the goddess influence with Shiva lingam (phallic symbols), patriarchy and the caste system became the core of Indian social life. Religion, as interpreted and perpetrated in the patriarchal age, is often invoked even today to drive home the point of the given - a ‘woman’s place’ in subservience, and ascendancy of man. The casual onlooker may be easily taken in by the overlay. However, academics trained to analyze and evaluate all information need to be more discerning of the possible alternative layers of reality smothered beneath.

References for this post:

 

1.      Farrar, Tarikhu. “The Queenmother, Matriarchy, And The Question Of Female Political Authority In Pre-Colonial West African Monarchy”. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 27, No. 5 (May, 1997), pp 579-597. Sage Publications, Inc. 1997.   

2.      Glick, Peter and Fiske, Susan T. “An Ambivalent Alliance”. American Psychologist. Vol. 56, No. 2, 109-118. February 2001. 

3. Harris, Ray. “INDIA ARYAN PATRIARCHY AND DRAVIDIAN MATRIARCHY” integralworld.net. INTEGRAL WORLD. February 1007.