‘It is too appalling. What must we be like,
if we are the contents of this!’
— D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
According to the Hindu world view, an individual is obliged to produce children to facilitate the rebirth of her/his ancestors (pitr). Rebirth gives the ancestors a chance to enter the land of the living, interact with the world (samsara), realise their true identity, and gain release from the cycle of rebirths and attain liberation (moksha).
Rebirth happens only when an offspring produces a child. Those who fail to do so are trapped in put, the land of the dead. It is for this reason that a son is called putra and the daughter is called putri. Hence, according to the Hindus, the primary reason to marry and produce children lies in this concept.
Since women were the carriers of progeny, it was common practice to offer them to men who wanted to beget children in exchange of a favour. In Indian mythology, Sage Galava asked King Yayati for eight-hundred white horses. Although the king did not have so many horses, he did not want the sage to return empty-handed. So, he offered him his daughter Madhavi instead.
Madhavi was destined to be the mother of four kings. Yayati asked Galava to later offer his daughter to four men who wanted to be the father of a king in exchange of two-hundred white horses. This is one of the many examples where a woman was offered as a commodity in exchange of a favour. Ironically, in the epic Mahabharata, when Krishna, the charioteer of the Pandava brothers, approaches the illegitimate Pandava brother Karna to fight from their side along with the claim to the throne, he also offered him the claim and access to Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavas. A quaint law in the Indian scriptures states that, ‘The wife is the property of the husband, no less than a cow or a slave’.11 Hence, women were offered as an incentive with the same indifference of sentiment as objects.
There are also instances in the Indian mythology which suggest the prevalence of sexual hospitality. The women were often offered as objects of pleasure to please the guests. Since the role of the women was primarily to procreate and provide pleasure, they were viewed as one of the utility commodities, like the land and the cattle.
According to the ancient law of Niyoga (levirate), the number of men that a woman could go to for the purpose of impregnation was four—including the husband. Hence, four came to be the permissible number that a woman could be traded in lieu of a favour. These women were considered chaste as they were merely obeying the men of the household.
Any woman who overstepped this limit, whether of her own accord or due to family compulsions, was considered a prostitute. This gave rise to a new community of women—courtesans or prostitutes. These women dedicated their lives exclusively to providing pleasure. Since they had to support themselves, they offered their services at a price. Hence, women were slotted as those who were sought (in marriage), the chaste women, and those who could be bought (exploited), the unchaste women.
Today, although women have equal rights and sexual freedom in theory, the cultural conditioning deems any woman who exercises this freedom out of wedlock as an unchaste woman. And women who save themselves or are saved by their families (encaged or chaperoned) are called cultured (sanskaari) women.
Women who are comfortable with their sexuality are viewed as a threat to this cultured society—a culture which endorses and adheres to the doctrine of virginity. Chaste or unchaste, cultured or uncultured, holy or unholy, men are so caught up in the hypocritical debate of judging their women, that they have yet to come to terms with the fact that beyond a woman’s body, lies a mind—a logical, rational, analytical, and intuitive mind.