The Nirmukta Freethought Community

Anything is not wrong is right. Then what is left? Left handedness is always on wrong side in the history. Be in the language or in religion.Many languages the word for left considered, evil, bad omen etc.

People can't accept "prasad", can't exchange money, prevented to write, can't perform religious activities ( islam, christian or hindu and maybe others as well) prevented eat with left hand.

There are other problems in day to day life, but considering lefty people are less in number these problems are inevitable. Like knife or scissor are usually made for right handed people. This is acceptable.

However the main problem is when people often relate left handedness with dogma and bad omens.

Isn't it interesting that, only left hand, is considered bad in our whole body. Can you imagine any other part considered as bad omen?

Last week, a person who is highly educated and was my teacher in my school days came to my home. He told me that he rejected a marriage proposal for his brother-in-law just because the girl was left handed. I was speechless.

A few years back when I was a Hindu, I payed a shopkeeper with my left hand. He asked me to give the money with my right hand. I was the first customer and he didn't want to start the day on such an inauspicious note. I didn't see the point of both irrationalities, but I obliged anyway, in a way admitting that I was not a proper Hindu.

If I was in the same situation today, I would tell the shopkeeper that it doesn't matter which hand one uses, even after conceding the fact that one hand is used to do the "dirty" deed of wiping one's arse. The soap hygiene that has become the norm today counters any protests of lingering impurities on the hand.

But rejecting a potential partner because of left-handedness is plain stupid. As if the religious didn't have enough lame excuses (caste, fairness of skin, jyotish, gotra) to avoid mates who would otherwise be good partners.

Why is left-handedness a problem for religion? This can be seen as just one particular instance of the question, 'Why is the uncommon anathema to religion?'

There is a sensible line which the controversial clergyman Rev. Jeremiah Wright used as a refrain in one of his 2008 speeches: "Different is not deficient". It is precisely this line, which any establishment, especially the religious establishment, finds hard to accept. Left-handedness is something, which to the unthinkingly religious mind, is not only different, but also deficient and even delinquent. Being able to use both hands is also uncommon, but that seems to be approved of at least in the case of Arjuna, who in the Bhagavad Gita is addressed as Savyasaachi, the ambidextrous one (Come to think of it, any archer has to use both the hands!. Difference is fine if it offers an advantage like ambidexterity, but a difference like left-handedness which would render the individual disadvantaged in a conformist society and hence liable to being frowned upon. To make matters worse, left-handedness is treated as a deliberate delinquency which can be reversed by punishment, as is sadly the case with many congenital left-handers who grew up in India until very recently. Left-handedness is just one trait among many, including notably homosexuality, towards which the hostile religious attitude is based on the ignorance of genetic predispositions that cause these traits and the mistaken notion that they are delinquencies.

The very adjective 'left' across many cultures has become a standard way of connoting disapproval and exclusion. The Latin 'dexter' and the English 'right' not only mean the right-hand side but are also synonymous with 'proper' or 'fitting'. So too is the Sanskrit 'dakshina' (from U Chicago's dictionary)

Quote:daksina (p. 115) [ dáksh-ina (also á) ] a. able, clever, dexterous; right; southern (because when look ing east the right hand is towards the south); south (wind); upright, honest; amiable, obliging; m. right hand or arm; m. n. right side; south; â, f. (sc. go), a good i. e. milch cow, (being the original) sacrificial fee; fee; gift; personified as the wife of Sacrifice.

What about a Sanskrit word for 'left'?

Quote:vama (p. 277) [ 2. v&asharp;ma ] a. left, being on the left (the quivering of the left arm or eye is a good omen in women, the quivering of the left arm a bad omen in men); crooked, oblique (rare); acting in the opposite way or differ ently (rare); refractory, coy (in love); ad verse (fortune); hard, cruel (love); perverse, wicked (rare); m. n. left side: in. vâmena, on the left; vâmâd dakshinam, from left to right; n. adversity, misfortune.

Unsurprisingly, vamachara or the 'left-hand path' is the term for spiritual practices that are considered heterodox and perverse, as is the use of the left hand itself in any sanctified practice.