What do we teach when we teach sanskaar?

When we first came to Chennai many moons ago, I remember walking on Besant Nagar beach with my husband one evening. We were accosted by a fortune teller, in a sari tied Madurai style, large maroon pottu on forehead, a string of jasmine on her top knot, and bright, shining eyes. She cajoled me in her sing-song voice, called me rasathi , and I laughingly let myself be charmed into sitting on the sand and having my palm crossed with her silver wand. Among her many pronouncements, she declared that I was the ‘Lakshmi’ of the family — the bearer of all things auspicious. I swelled with pride and looked at my spouse smugly. Over the years, as I showed no signs whatsoever of playing my Lakshmi role proficiently, it was his turn to look smug.

But never mind my auspiciousness deficit. I was reminded of the episode and the whole grihalakshmi trope when I read a recent exposé in Outlook magazine that talks of 31 minor girls from Assam trafficked to Gujarat and Punjab to be inculcated with ‘Hindu’ values or sanskaar . They are taught there to be ‘good women’, women who grow tulsi outside the home, don’t wear pants, or use cell phones. They learn legends and songs that glorify practices like sati and jauhar and devi worship.

And why are only girls kidnapped for moral science training? Because, says one trainer, “Girls can inculcate values in the entire community… They can raise families that will be the core of a Hindu

rashtra .” This, then, is the crux; the very nub of how patriarchy is entrenched. Women as upholders of a society’s ‘honour’, goddesses responsible for its moral upkeep. This is the line trotted out to prove how protofeminist Hindu culture is: ‘See how we value the importance of women.’

But the ‘female auspiciousness’ motif is only a convenient pretext that pretends to credit family and social wellbeing to the woman in order to blame her when anything goes wrong. Accountability is thus taken away from men and dumped on women. If a man dies, the wife is blamed. Widows were once considered so unlucky that upper caste men would bathe if so much as their shadow fell on them. If a drunkard drives his family to penury, or a couple is childless because of the man’s low sperm count, the woman is called barren or a failed family Lakshmi.

Cherchez la femme is not just a cute Poirot line. It’s a tragic absurdity, as when a khap panchayat recently banned women from owning cell phones after a man videotaped a minor girl to blackmail her. Or when it leads to vicious murders, euphemistically called ‘honour killings’, of young people who elope and marry.

It’s nice to talk of

sanskaar . There’s a rosy glow of nostalgia in doing things the way our ancestors did; upholding a way of life that’s centuries old. By all means, let’s light lamps and grow

tulsi and draw

kolams on the porch. But we would be foolish to ignore the lethal sting that customs carry. The die-hard traditionalists I know who glorify ye olde past are busy sending their kids to the US for degrees and green cards. They wouldn’t dream of making their son a farmer or leaving chicken pox for

devi to cure. So let’s just get our priorities right (and our hypocrisies sorted), shall we, before we keel over to worship the

sanskaar god.

I would mourn the cultural loss if our daughters and grandsons forgot the Jataka Tales or the art of alpana , but I would be utterly devastated if they did not learn to be self-sufficient, did not learn that there’s nothing glorious about sati, and did not learn that their dress, demeanour and marital choices don’t have to uphold anybody’s honour.