Historian and environmentalist Nanditha Krishna has called for acknowledging Indian women of yore and making them role models in an era of changing values.
She was speaking after inaugurating a women’s conference on the theme ‘Role of women in multiple facets of life — education, art, and ecology — and changing value systems’ as part of the 90th birthday celebrations of Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram director P. Parameswaran here on Sunday.
Ms. Krishna said women as role models had existed in Indian culture. They had acted for the welfare of the Earth, humanity, and all aspects of life. However, all that was good about culture and tradition was being discarded in the name of modernisation and development.
Equal role
Women had authored 17 Rig Veda and four Sama Veda hymns, Ms. Krishna said, pointing out they were equal to men in the Vedic period. Women were teachers, philosophers such as Gargi, and warriors too as mentioned by Patanjali, Kautilya, and Megasthenes. Sati, Savithri, Sita, and Draupadi were women who had fought for what they believed in.
However, with time, patriarchy had crept in and it had led to subjugation of women. Sita’s casting off by Rama was a later interpolation in the Ramayana. “Kannagi, in my opinion, was no role model,” she said.
Ms. Krishna also spoke at length about how women expressed themselves through the arts, by keeping alive epic stories, women’s traditions, and environmental traditions. These included decorating homes as part of religious rituals such as Chitta or Rangoli. The Mandana paintings of Rajasthan had designs that were passed from mother to daughter. Kolams not only had religious significance, but also fed ants and birds. However, the past that held many good things was being neglected, she said.
Nivedita Bhide, vice-president of the Vivekananda Kendra at Kanyakumari, who delivered the keynote address, said freedom meant not thinking about oneself or doing what one pleased but contributing to family and society. The reasons why families remained strong were a sense of duty and obligation to others, she said.
There was need for men and women to be “cultured in behaviour,” she said.
