CHAPTER VI THE CULT OF WOMAN AND LOVE
SAKTI, the female deity, is Woman and Love, and
Motherhood. She is worshipped by the intellectual
class, the scribes and the clerks. Sakti is the men's
goddess among a numerous following. There are
holy rites of a sexual character associated with her
adoration. The word sakti signifies power and
energy.
As I have said before, where women are exalted as
the goddesses of religion, they usually occupy a
higher status than among the worshippers of male
deities. In India, therefore, notwithstanding the
much-assailed institution of the zenana, women are by
no means the vassals or the mere chattels of men, as
we are sometimes taught to believe.
" Far from India's being the land of the uniform
oppression of women," writes Miss Margaret Noble, " by a uniform method, it represents the whole cycle of feminist institutions. There is literally no theory of feminine rights and position that does not find illustration somewhere within her boundaries."
The erotic valuation of women in India is not, as it
may appear at first, a simple expression of sensuous-
ness. It is something deeper, more subtle. Love
and religion are intermingled, even in the zenana.
The amours of Krishna and Radha, in the " Prem-
Sagar," are said by some Occidental critics to bore
with their reiterations of love-adventures, and have
been described as " indecent." Probably, judged
from the prurient-prudish standpoint of the West, they are so. But who shall decide? Does not the Old Testament, used in our churches, contain the most amorous of pictures in the " Song " ascribed to King Solomon?
The veil screening the face of Hindu women has
been accepted as an emblem of the oppression of the
sex. May it not possess a very different significance ? It is true that a woman may not show her face to any man save father, brother, and husband. But the veil is, in a sense, a tribute to Woman, whose loveliness and sweetness of countenance has in it something sacred, which must not be exposed to the common gaze. No Hindu woman feels herself degraded by the practice of veiling part of her features. She would be insulted if you suggested that the veil sym- bolised her bondage to men.
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The life behind the purdah, the thick curtain that
conceals the women of the zenana from the gaze of
strangers, seems to Western eyes oppressive, even
degrading. A man-doctor, who calls professionally
upon a lady of the zenana, feels her pulse and ques-
tions her through the curtain.
Is this imprisonment? Indian women in the mass
do not think so. The rights to which religion and
law entitle them are accorded duly behind the purdah. They are queens of the home, not active competitors with men in the scramble for existence. Their greatest ambition is to be women, and that ideal con- notes much that the woman of the West is discarding in scornful rebellion. Spinsterhood, and " the right to live one's own life," the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women- make no appeal to an Indian woman. Her strongest impulses are to fulfil her womanhood, to experience love, and to bear children. That is her vocation, her ambition, and her joy.
I have repeated the testimony of English women, who discern, in the home-life of India, a perfect adjustment of the functions and responsibilities of both sexes. But there are critics, Indian as well as foreign ; and we must listen to them. It is, of course, incredible that there are no malcontents among the Hindu women.
The wave of feminine revolt is sweeping steadily
eastwards. It has reached Turkey, and has spread to
the farther East. In another chapter I shall present
a very different point of view from those of certain of
my Indian friends and correspondents.
For the present, we are considering the Hindu
reverence for woman as the lover, the bride, the life-
giver. She is more than this. There is a sacredness, something that arouses awe, in her body, and her physical functions. To show how deep and sincere is this mingled emotion of piety and sex-love, I cannot do better than quote some lines by the greatest living Indian poet, Rabindra Nath Tagore, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
GOD AND THE ASCETIC
At midnight the would-be ascetic announced :
'* This is the time to give up my home and seek for God. Ah ! who has held me so long in delusion here? "
