01-May-2014, 10:19 PM
There was a recent surge in interest in the Indian blogosphere in the Ambedkar-Gandhi debate (Appendix I and II here, among other online venues). Earlier in the forums, there have been discussions on Vivekananda's lukewarm zeal for reform besides considerable lip-service and also about the firm yet respectful disagreement of Tagore with Gandhi on the role of Reason. While those debates, all involving the subject of untouchability, have received much commentary, it is a a womens' rights debate involving the said interlocutors from the same time, which the national poet from Tamil Nadu, Subrahmanya Bharati, waged in writing, pitted against Gandhi and Vivekananda, that is the topic of this thread.
The frank exchanges between Bharati and the two objects of his long-standing admiration, are related in the following short televised talk in Tamil by Suki Sivam. Mr. Sivam is a well-known speaker giving religious discourses and commenting on various social issues, who enjoys a wide audience among Tamil-speakers globally. Though the speaker is primarily associated with religious discourses, the content of this particular talk can resonate well with anyone claiming freethinking and humanistic sensibilities:
In the first half of the talk, Mr. Sivam speaks of the importance of challenging authority and convention when the greater social good is at stake. He cites as historical examples Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and Vallalar as fearless critics of the orthodoxies of their times in their societies (much as Goparaju Ramachandra Rao 'Gora' does in this note), and most importantly, in a way that would please freethinkers, goes one further by calling upon believers today to not hesitate in exercising their freedom of conscience should the need arise to criticize the utterances of those very prophets. As a detailed illustration, Mr. Sivam goes on to cite the example of Bharati, who on other occasions had composed paeans to Gandhi and Vivekananda and hailed them as visionaries, vehemently disagreed with them on the subject of widow remarriage. Below, Bharati's proposal is near-literally translated from the quote read by Mr. Sivam and the rest of the exchanges are paraphrased (with comments in parentheses).
Bharati's proposal:
"Women who have lost their husbands may have lost their companions but still possess their bodies. The have lost neither their five senses, nor their feelings, nor the human heart, nor the yearning for companionship nor the means to experience and express such companionship."
Thus it is a grave injustice and a humanitarian tragedy if remarriage is denied to bereaved women.
Gandhi's response:
It is the practice of men remarrying promptly after their wives depart, that is leading to the indignant feminist calls for women to exercise the right to do similarly. The solution is for men too to eschew remarriage.
Bharati's rebuttal to Gandhi:
When called to support emancipation of women from the weeds of widowhood, the Mahatma is instead advocating bondage of men too to those very privations and deprivations!
(Bharati was vociferous in his rejection of Gandhi's much overused method of asceticism as atonement, and argued that only what is life-affirming can be truly emancipatory.)
Vivekananda's response:
Reformists from the depressed classes are more radical in their demands for widow-remarriage than those from the classes deemed upper-castes. Part of the reason for this state of affairs maybe demographics, since women seem to outnumber men in the upper social strata and men seem to outnumber women in the lower social strata. It may not be prudent to attempt to change this state of affairs overnight, given that we would also have to ignore the counsel of the sages of old if we did so in a hurry.
Bharati's rebuttal to Vivekananda:
The Swami is evading a moral question by citing statistics. The numbers may well be right, but cannot be reason enough to impose life-denying circumstances on even one woman.
(Bharati's robust stance here that ethical challenges cannot be reduced merely to empirical claims, is a study in clarity on the distinction between factual claims and value propositions and a safeguard against the hazards of numbers games leading to indifference towards the rights of non-dominant groups.)
The frank exchanges between Bharati and the two objects of his long-standing admiration, are related in the following short televised talk in Tamil by Suki Sivam. Mr. Sivam is a well-known speaker giving religious discourses and commenting on various social issues, who enjoys a wide audience among Tamil-speakers globally. Though the speaker is primarily associated with religious discourses, the content of this particular talk can resonate well with anyone claiming freethinking and humanistic sensibilities:
In the first half of the talk, Mr. Sivam speaks of the importance of challenging authority and convention when the greater social good is at stake. He cites as historical examples Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and Vallalar as fearless critics of the orthodoxies of their times in their societies (much as Goparaju Ramachandra Rao 'Gora' does in this note), and most importantly, in a way that would please freethinkers, goes one further by calling upon believers today to not hesitate in exercising their freedom of conscience should the need arise to criticize the utterances of those very prophets. As a detailed illustration, Mr. Sivam goes on to cite the example of Bharati, who on other occasions had composed paeans to Gandhi and Vivekananda and hailed them as visionaries, vehemently disagreed with them on the subject of widow remarriage. Below, Bharati's proposal is near-literally translated from the quote read by Mr. Sivam and the rest of the exchanges are paraphrased (with comments in parentheses).
Bharati's proposal:
"Women who have lost their husbands may have lost their companions but still possess their bodies. The have lost neither their five senses, nor their feelings, nor the human heart, nor the yearning for companionship nor the means to experience and express such companionship."
Thus it is a grave injustice and a humanitarian tragedy if remarriage is denied to bereaved women.
Gandhi's response:
It is the practice of men remarrying promptly after their wives depart, that is leading to the indignant feminist calls for women to exercise the right to do similarly. The solution is for men too to eschew remarriage.
Bharati's rebuttal to Gandhi:
When called to support emancipation of women from the weeds of widowhood, the Mahatma is instead advocating bondage of men too to those very privations and deprivations!
(Bharati was vociferous in his rejection of Gandhi's much overused method of asceticism as atonement, and argued that only what is life-affirming can be truly emancipatory.)
Vivekananda's response:
Reformists from the depressed classes are more radical in their demands for widow-remarriage than those from the classes deemed upper-castes. Part of the reason for this state of affairs maybe demographics, since women seem to outnumber men in the upper social strata and men seem to outnumber women in the lower social strata. It may not be prudent to attempt to change this state of affairs overnight, given that we would also have to ignore the counsel of the sages of old if we did so in a hurry.
Bharati's rebuttal to Vivekananda:
The Swami is evading a moral question by citing statistics. The numbers may well be right, but cannot be reason enough to impose life-denying circumstances on even one woman.
(Bharati's robust stance here that ethical challenges cannot be reduced merely to empirical claims, is a study in clarity on the distinction between factual claims and value propositions and a safeguard against the hazards of numbers games leading to indifference towards the rights of non-dominant groups.)
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