For sheer brutality, the rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder of a young Indian student in New Delhi last month is astonishing, even in a country known for its ingrained misogyny. Protests continue unabated in India and the topic will continue to rivet the news media world-wide for a long time. The low status of women and the ossified state of the Indian legal system make prosecuting the offenders of such cases (few, unfortunately, are reported) very difficult. Moreover, the current state of affairs is also fundamentally incompatible with the rapid modernization that is sweeping across the sub-continent. One thing is for certain: swarms of morally crippled brutes--of which the monsters who savaged that innocent student are a representative sample—have made life a hell for Indian women who venture outside with or without a male escort. Why are so many young Indian men sliding backwards into a state of feral, sex-crazed savagery and why is it being tolerated?
That religion should ennoble rather than degrade humanity is a noble claim, but history has shown time and again that it is often without warrant. Instead, religious beliefs tend to promote self-serving, irrational notions. One of the worst of these uses what psychologists have termed “transference”; simply put, it is the means by which a culpable party seeks to objectify their moral evils and put the blame for them on an innocent party (usually called the “scapegoat”). This practice, visible in the Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as the Vedic system, is fundamentally a matter of a corrupt and powerful individual or entity seeking to ritually purify the self or group from sins for which they are entirely responsible.
Indian culture is permeated with myths and superstitions that promote the treatment of women as scapegoats. For example, the Laws of Manu claim that
Consuming liquor, association with wicked persons, separation from her husband, rambling around, sleeping for unreasonable hours and dwelling -are six demerits of women (9.13).i
So, if a woman is “rambling around,” how to control her? The answer, as the slavering beasts in New Delhi have shown the world, is to degrade her. Worse, people who otherwise seem models of propriety have sought to export these warped ideas to the West, usually under the guise of teaching the“degraded West” the Vedic system. Many examples abound, but speaking from my own experience as an early Hare Krishna follower of Bhaktivedanta Swami, this is a familiar and highly distressing pattern. The general tactic is disarmingly simple: praise men for their alleged intellectual and moral superiority and attack women for being dull, lustful temptresses. It amazed me when I was a young teenager to see how readily educated European and American men fell for this nonsense and so I was not in the least surprised to see how Indian men have reverted to using young women as scapegoats for their irrelevance and insecurities. As one commenter to today’s Wall Street Journal writes:
It's high time that these animals get over their gender bias and act like men, instead of sex crazed animals. Further, there ought to be severe penalties.ii
Indeed, but what penalties would be severe enough? The rapists who did the unthinkable to such a fine, intelligent young girl anyone would be proud to call a daughter or sister should be executed after a speedy trial. Enough of dragging out the legal process for decades. Like it or not, gropers will soon find their hands and fingers cut off and others will get doused with pepper spray. In my opinion, the pen might be mightier than the sword, but, in a pinch, the sword will do just fine.
http://nirmukta.com/2011/08/27/the-status-of-women-as-depicted-by-manu-in-the-manusmriti/ This website is an excellent resource for any rational analysis of Hinduism, even for believers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578227751166162988.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Dcomments.
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Showing posts with label Indian Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Women. Show all posts
REDUCTIVE THINKING AND CULT PROPAGANDA: THE CASE OF ISKCON
Members of groups popularly identified as cults expend a great deal of energy attempting to deny that they are cults at all. Most often they claim the label is simply name-calling based on fear or outright discrimination. What we call begging they call “soliciting contributions,” whereas the love-bombing that alienates inquisitive youth from their families and friends is treated as a means of religious orientation similar to what a nun undergoes as a novice in a convent. In short, the tactics that cults employ for fundraising and indoctrination of new members might seem (at least superficially) to have parallels in the practices of organized mainstream religions. However, once you scratch the surface of the cult in question by examining its propaganda, you will find that what identifies it as a destructive pseudo-religion is not so much what its adherents do as the thinking behind their actions.
To illustrate my point, take my hand and descend with me into the vortex of the past, until you find yourself standing with me in spirit watching me as a 14 year- old girl accompanied by my 16 year-old sister as we approach the ISKCON temple at 26 Second Avenue in the East Village in New York’s Lower Eastside. It is a hot day in the summer of 1967 and we’re visiting the temple after having been informed of its existence at one of the Central Park “Be-In’s” we had attended a week earlier. What we find is a storefront plastered with images of the blue Hindu God Krishna and his retinue of cowherd girlfriends. Also prominent were photographs of an Indian Swami who strongly resembled the noted black actor Scatman Crothers. When we entered we saw rows of white men and women in saffron robes and saris with u-shaped chalk marks from their foreheads to their noses. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with large metal plates of vegetarian food in front of them, which they were eating with their right hands only. We had stumbled upon one of their weekly love feasts! After standing in the doorway looking rather embarrassed, we were welcomed inside and promptly sat down to join the others and found the food to be quite good. As we left shortly thereafter, we were handed a couple of pamphlets and an issue of Back to Godhead magazine, which we were urged to read before we returned the following weekend. That, reader, is when the trouble started.
The pamphlet featured a story about an incident that occurred when the great Hindu space traveler-preacher Narada Muni visited the house of a pious man. He was depicted in the saffron robes of a celibate monk and held a pair of the small brass hand cymbals ubiquitous in Vaishnava (Hindus who worship the god Vishnu rather than the more typical Shiva) worship services. He related an anecdote in the life of a holy woman, who when importuned by a rich suitor, invited him to see her real beauty in a week. During this time she took a powerful laxative and stored her diarrhea in a number of jars (one would hope that they had tight lids!). When her suitor returned eager to see her “real beauty,” she directed him to her stool collection, telling him that it was where her former beauty resided, now that her purging had reduced her to a haggard, sunken-eyed shadow of her former self. One wonders how fast her suitor fled the scene, but, for us, it was a different matter.
We were simply mesmerized by the story, which seemed to us to have been a thunderbolt of truth Krishna had sent to illuminate our young minds. Imagine being pure spirit, always young and free of the ravages of age and disease! What we didn’t know was that we had been duped by one of the oldest and most effective of all brainwashing techniques cults utilize. As a form of argument, it is reductive thinking carried to an irrational extreme and is usually presented as a philosophical examination of a central human dilemma (such as the fleeting nature of physical beauty that Narada Muni treated in his story). It is then is subjected to what appears to be an objective analysis, but is in reality a withering rejection of human values that ends in rejecting the material world entirely. Furthermore, it treats this life as a trial the faithful must undergo in order to qualify for liberation from it and entrance into the spiritual realm. In practice, of course, it is a recipe for social alienation and psychological dysfunction. For those too weak to find a way out of its argumentative maze, it can be nothing more than a slow and acutely painful method of suicide.
First, let me begin by demolishing what masquerades as an objective analysis and forms the underpinning of Narada Muni’s argument. To the extent possible, I will cast it in the form of a syllogism so that its components (major premise, minor premise, and conclusion) are clear:
• The beauty we perceive in human beings ultimately turns into excrement;
• Beautiful women are human beings;
• Therefore, what makes women beautiful ultimately turns into excrement.
The basic flaw in the so-called logic of this argument should be obvious: it is a gross over-simplification based on extremely reductive thinking. For starters, the first premise is faulty because it ignores the fundamentality subjective nature of our perception of beauty, which is always based on a great deal more than mere appearance. In fact, one can argue that beauty as we perceive it is one of the most spiritual forms of appreciation we can have for another human being. Instead, the beauty=excrement analogy that underpins the major premise of Narada’s argument relies on the immature thinking of a young adolescent who, when just beginning to notice the opposite sex, claims that they are “gross” or fixates on some allegedly “disgusting” aspect of the object of their attraction. This nonsense is silly, of course, but it is just part of growing up. However, once the youth begins to appreciate the intelligence, wit, and other qualities that together can make even the less physically attractive seem beautiful, the youth has crossed from the doldrums of early adolescence into the bloom of a young adult. Unfortunately, in cultures where “child marriages” stunt the emotional development of both sexes, the squeamishness and disgust about sexuality that characterizes early adolescence becomes a permanent feature of their view of the relation between the sexes. Sorry to say, it’s a tragedy, not a state of transcendence that leads to such a reductive treatment of the nature of beauty.
Ultimately, the reductive thinking behind the story of the saintly girl leads to one inescapable conclusion: since the body is pure shit, ridding ourselves of it as soon as possible is something to strive for, even if, as we were advised at the temple, you should abide by Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-Gita and not take any credit for the “fruit of your actions.” In other words, you should work like a automaton, and then, after spending your life chanting and hitting the road to dupe the public with a lot of inane propaganda, die, get cremated, and hope your soul returns to the land of ancient India that happens to be a big planet devoted to the adoration of a flute-playing cowherder and his girlfriends. What appeared to be a doctrine of bliss and contentment to two innocent teenage girls was in reality a cheap cover for a philosophy of renunciation that is a direct route to self-annihilation.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
To illustrate my point, take my hand and descend with me into the vortex of the past, until you find yourself standing with me in spirit watching me as a 14 year- old girl accompanied by my 16 year-old sister as we approach the ISKCON temple at 26 Second Avenue in the East Village in New York’s Lower Eastside. It is a hot day in the summer of 1967 and we’re visiting the temple after having been informed of its existence at one of the Central Park “Be-In’s” we had attended a week earlier. What we find is a storefront plastered with images of the blue Hindu God Krishna and his retinue of cowherd girlfriends. Also prominent were photographs of an Indian Swami who strongly resembled the noted black actor Scatman Crothers. When we entered we saw rows of white men and women in saffron robes and saris with u-shaped chalk marks from their foreheads to their noses. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with large metal plates of vegetarian food in front of them, which they were eating with their right hands only. We had stumbled upon one of their weekly love feasts! After standing in the doorway looking rather embarrassed, we were welcomed inside and promptly sat down to join the others and found the food to be quite good. As we left shortly thereafter, we were handed a couple of pamphlets and an issue of Back to Godhead magazine, which we were urged to read before we returned the following weekend. That, reader, is when the trouble started.
The pamphlet featured a story about an incident that occurred when the great Hindu space traveler-preacher Narada Muni visited the house of a pious man. He was depicted in the saffron robes of a celibate monk and held a pair of the small brass hand cymbals ubiquitous in Vaishnava (Hindus who worship the god Vishnu rather than the more typical Shiva) worship services. He related an anecdote in the life of a holy woman, who when importuned by a rich suitor, invited him to see her real beauty in a week. During this time she took a powerful laxative and stored her diarrhea in a number of jars (one would hope that they had tight lids!). When her suitor returned eager to see her “real beauty,” she directed him to her stool collection, telling him that it was where her former beauty resided, now that her purging had reduced her to a haggard, sunken-eyed shadow of her former self. One wonders how fast her suitor fled the scene, but, for us, it was a different matter.
We were simply mesmerized by the story, which seemed to us to have been a thunderbolt of truth Krishna had sent to illuminate our young minds. Imagine being pure spirit, always young and free of the ravages of age and disease! What we didn’t know was that we had been duped by one of the oldest and most effective of all brainwashing techniques cults utilize. As a form of argument, it is reductive thinking carried to an irrational extreme and is usually presented as a philosophical examination of a central human dilemma (such as the fleeting nature of physical beauty that Narada Muni treated in his story). It is then is subjected to what appears to be an objective analysis, but is in reality a withering rejection of human values that ends in rejecting the material world entirely. Furthermore, it treats this life as a trial the faithful must undergo in order to qualify for liberation from it and entrance into the spiritual realm. In practice, of course, it is a recipe for social alienation and psychological dysfunction. For those too weak to find a way out of its argumentative maze, it can be nothing more than a slow and acutely painful method of suicide.
First, let me begin by demolishing what masquerades as an objective analysis and forms the underpinning of Narada Muni’s argument. To the extent possible, I will cast it in the form of a syllogism so that its components (major premise, minor premise, and conclusion) are clear:
• The beauty we perceive in human beings ultimately turns into excrement;
• Beautiful women are human beings;
• Therefore, what makes women beautiful ultimately turns into excrement.
The basic flaw in the so-called logic of this argument should be obvious: it is a gross over-simplification based on extremely reductive thinking. For starters, the first premise is faulty because it ignores the fundamentality subjective nature of our perception of beauty, which is always based on a great deal more than mere appearance. In fact, one can argue that beauty as we perceive it is one of the most spiritual forms of appreciation we can have for another human being. Instead, the beauty=excrement analogy that underpins the major premise of Narada’s argument relies on the immature thinking of a young adolescent who, when just beginning to notice the opposite sex, claims that they are “gross” or fixates on some allegedly “disgusting” aspect of the object of their attraction. This nonsense is silly, of course, but it is just part of growing up. However, once the youth begins to appreciate the intelligence, wit, and other qualities that together can make even the less physically attractive seem beautiful, the youth has crossed from the doldrums of early adolescence into the bloom of a young adult. Unfortunately, in cultures where “child marriages” stunt the emotional development of both sexes, the squeamishness and disgust about sexuality that characterizes early adolescence becomes a permanent feature of their view of the relation between the sexes. Sorry to say, it’s a tragedy, not a state of transcendence that leads to such a reductive treatment of the nature of beauty.
Ultimately, the reductive thinking behind the story of the saintly girl leads to one inescapable conclusion: since the body is pure shit, ridding ourselves of it as soon as possible is something to strive for, even if, as we were advised at the temple, you should abide by Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-Gita and not take any credit for the “fruit of your actions.” In other words, you should work like a automaton, and then, after spending your life chanting and hitting the road to dupe the public with a lot of inane propaganda, die, get cremated, and hope your soul returns to the land of ancient India that happens to be a big planet devoted to the adoration of a flute-playing cowherder and his girlfriends. What appeared to be a doctrine of bliss and contentment to two innocent teenage girls was in reality a cheap cover for a philosophy of renunciation that is a direct route to self-annihilation.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WEAPONIZING WOMEN OR A NOVEL MEANS TO AVOID BEING USED AS A HUMAN TARGET
The use of women and children as human shields during wartime has probably been going on since time immemorial and is certainly a staple of current terrorist practices in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that were not emasculating enough, the countries harboring these cowards regularly condemn the U. S. or Israel for targeting these civilian populations, when in fact the militias who infest their own countries hide in plain sight in villages packed with families and then flee just in time to see the bombs intended for them drop on these pitiable human targets. At times is seems as if we are dealing with a bunch of deranged, gun-toting zombies whose bloodlust and cowardice have shrunken their brains to the size of walnuts.
Experience and time, however, teach us that notions of innocence and ignorance are tightly intertwined. We all know that keeping women ignorant and therefore submissive is an evil waste of human potential. While it hurts to hear of another school burning or acid attack in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan, most people shrug at the news; after all,what can you expect in countries where the four-legged and two-legged donkeys are almost indistinguishable? As long as a warlord supplies them with a fancy, shiny rocket-propelled weapon fit for shooting down helicopters and assures them of good standing among their rotten-toothed, pajama-clad comrades, what else is there to wish for? The spectacle of these grimy slack-jaws yelling insults to the U.S. and burning our flag to protest the targeted killing of a mass murderer who has also been making their lives a living hell just shows how their individuality has vanished, reducing them to little more than a blob that rolls along mindlessly, killing and incorporating everything in its path.
What hope, then, remains for the women who live in the shadows of these thugs? That they are determined to learn and persevere despite frequent school and polling place bombings shows how much they value education and the right to vote. Their situation reminds me of the plight of European women during the Dark and Middle Ages, with one very important exception: these women, if their families permitted it, could flee the outside world and seek education, shelter, and a life of quiet industry in a convent. This separation from a life of grinding poverty or early death in childbirth advanced a revolutionary change in attitudes about women: far from being merely a submissive, two-legged uterus, women were intelligent human beings who could devote themselves to scholarly pursuits as well as grow their own food as necessary.
Parents living in a tribal region of Afghanistan,for example, who are desperate about providing for a family of daughters could place one or more of them in a fully-funded scholarship program that would also provide room and board in a non-sectarian school where they would get a first-rate education and also learn a trade. A foundation in economics would be an essential part of their education and teaching them how to grow a business using micro loans would be its practical demonstration. Pouring money into programs in villages that are terrorist-controlled hives of death and misery only makes the population resentful and envious because the terrorists steal the aid anyway. They need to learn how to produce honest wealth first. Mark my words: day schools are a start, but building fortresses or rather, walled cities of education and industry to assure that girls and women can use their intellectual gifts simply acknowledges that they really do live in an Islamic version of the Dark Ages and that we have the means to gradually bring light into their lives.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Experience and time, however, teach us that notions of innocence and ignorance are tightly intertwined. We all know that keeping women ignorant and therefore submissive is an evil waste of human potential. While it hurts to hear of another school burning or acid attack in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan, most people shrug at the news; after all,what can you expect in countries where the four-legged and two-legged donkeys are almost indistinguishable? As long as a warlord supplies them with a fancy, shiny rocket-propelled weapon fit for shooting down helicopters and assures them of good standing among their rotten-toothed, pajama-clad comrades, what else is there to wish for? The spectacle of these grimy slack-jaws yelling insults to the U.S. and burning our flag to protest the targeted killing of a mass murderer who has also been making their lives a living hell just shows how their individuality has vanished, reducing them to little more than a blob that rolls along mindlessly, killing and incorporating everything in its path.
What hope, then, remains for the women who live in the shadows of these thugs? That they are determined to learn and persevere despite frequent school and polling place bombings shows how much they value education and the right to vote. Their situation reminds me of the plight of European women during the Dark and Middle Ages, with one very important exception: these women, if their families permitted it, could flee the outside world and seek education, shelter, and a life of quiet industry in a convent. This separation from a life of grinding poverty or early death in childbirth advanced a revolutionary change in attitudes about women: far from being merely a submissive, two-legged uterus, women were intelligent human beings who could devote themselves to scholarly pursuits as well as grow their own food as necessary.
Parents living in a tribal region of Afghanistan,for example, who are desperate about providing for a family of daughters could place one or more of them in a fully-funded scholarship program that would also provide room and board in a non-sectarian school where they would get a first-rate education and also learn a trade. A foundation in economics would be an essential part of their education and teaching them how to grow a business using micro loans would be its practical demonstration. Pouring money into programs in villages that are terrorist-controlled hives of death and misery only makes the population resentful and envious because the terrorists steal the aid anyway. They need to learn how to produce honest wealth first. Mark my words: day schools are a start, but building fortresses or rather, walled cities of education and industry to assure that girls and women can use their intellectual gifts simply acknowledges that they really do live in an Islamic version of the Dark Ages and that we have the means to gradually bring light into their lives.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WIDOWS AND CHILD BRIDES NO MORE: THE INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS OF INDIAN WOMEN
When I was living in Los Angeles in 1979 near the end of my thirteen years with the Hare Krishna cult, one day a devotee friend and I walked into an Indian boutique and, as we looked at the wares, began to commiserate about how we had suffered as the victims of arranged marriages. It was soon apparent that we had been overheard by one of the owners behind the counter, for when we stopped for a moment, we saw that she was looking at us earnestly, while tears coursed down her cheeks. It was one of those rare moments when affinity attracts strangers and reveals a commonality that makes kindred spirits immediately recognize each other. Both of us must have seemed to radiate compassion for this woman and she knew it instantly. Then she told us her story.
She told us that she, like so many other Indian women, had been pressured into an unwanted marriage, despite her known preference and love for another man. Her brothers insisted that she would disgrace her family if she married the man of her choice, claiming that he was poor and would never be able to provide for her adequately. So she entered into a marriage with a man she did not love and bore his children, all the while faithful in her heart to the man she loved, who, contrary to her brothers’ expectations, became very wealthy. This woman, a devout Muslim, spoke very respectfully of her husband, saying that he was a good father and provider. However, as she said, nothing could erase her grief of having been forced to abandon her hopes to marry the man she loved. Worse, years after the marriage, she confronted her brothers and asked them why they pressured her so relentlessly to give up her true love. They actually had the audacity to say that she should have done what she wanted and that they didn’t feel responsible for what had happened to her.
When I got home that night and thought about what my Muslim sister had confided to us that day, I remembered another even sadder instance of this wearing down of the spirit that I had witnessed years earlier in India.
When I first visited India in 1971, the year after my arranged ISKCON marriage, my husband and I paid a brief visit to his maternal aunt, a widow. She was very gracious and generous: I vividly recall how touched I was when she gave me a beautiful kashmiri shawl in a dark maroon color (it suited my coloring perfectly!). But what struck me most of all about her was her intensely sorrowful face that was accentuated by deep-set, hollow eyes and gaunt patrician features. Once she noticed the compassion that must have been written all over my teenaged face, she began telling me her story.
She too had been pressured into marrying against her will and, to make matters worse, was widowed at a young age without any children. Hindu widows are notoriously ill-treated as a rule and I sensed this in the dismissive way her plight was regarded by my in-laws. The notion that widows are inauspicious and generally a nuisance runs strong in Indian society. When I noted that she looked ill, she told me that she suffered from chronic bronchitis and diarrhea, both the bane of sufferers of extreme emotional distress. It seemed to me nobody cared about her suffering and that my compassion for her plight was a kind of manna in the wilderness of her isolation. Years later I mentioned her to one of my sisters-in-law and was simply told that she had died years earlier.
The plight that these Muslim and Indian women found themselves in was dreadful, but is dwarfed by the monstrosities that we read about everyday: girls “married” before puberty dying or maimed in childbirth by fistulas that literally rip open their birth canals and leave them permanently incontinent unless surgically repaired. That horror that is widespread over the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, and Africa, is the direct result of immature girls—children themselves—bearing children at an age when most of their Western counterparts are still playing with dolls.
The irony of all these horrors is that Indian women, far from being the stupid, lustful chattel that the swamis of the Hare Krishna movement and others who misinterpret the Vedic literature believe them to be, are celebrated in the West for their high intellect by those fortunate enough to study or work with them in any capacity. This fact alone makes the continued subservience to, and abuse by men of their less fortunate sisters a grave crime to humanity: think of what marvels and discoveries would have been achieved by our lotus-eyed sisters in India had they been given free rein to develop their natural intellectual gifts. Instead, they are often doomed to lives of little more than two-legged wombs peering out of the saris or chadors that only accentuate their anonymity.
I remember my guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, describe the womb as little more than the bellows in a blacksmith’s shop, with no function other than to nurture the seed of the real parent, the father. This barbaric and, I might add, willful ignorance of basic biology is characteristic of religions whose claims of “protecting” women is nothing more than a front for men whose actual relationship with their child brides is technically nothing more than the crime of pederasty perpetrated by a repressed, insecure sociopath. It is no small wonder that terrorism has developed strong roots in countries where religion is used as an excuse to crush the intellectual aspirations of women and girls--why else do the Taliban bomb schools for girls in Afghanistan? Those goons would rather rot in endless poverty than acknowledge that this is the 21st century and women everywhere are rising out of the mire of ignorance and prejudice to develop our irrepressible intellectual rights.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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| “Gulabi Gang” Abusive Husband Beaters |
When I got home that night and thought about what my Muslim sister had confided to us that day, I remembered another even sadder instance of this wearing down of the spirit that I had witnessed years earlier in India.
When I first visited India in 1971, the year after my arranged ISKCON marriage, my husband and I paid a brief visit to his maternal aunt, a widow. She was very gracious and generous: I vividly recall how touched I was when she gave me a beautiful kashmiri shawl in a dark maroon color (it suited my coloring perfectly!). But what struck me most of all about her was her intensely sorrowful face that was accentuated by deep-set, hollow eyes and gaunt patrician features. Once she noticed the compassion that must have been written all over my teenaged face, she began telling me her story.
She too had been pressured into marrying against her will and, to make matters worse, was widowed at a young age without any children. Hindu widows are notoriously ill-treated as a rule and I sensed this in the dismissive way her plight was regarded by my in-laws. The notion that widows are inauspicious and generally a nuisance runs strong in Indian society. When I noted that she looked ill, she told me that she suffered from chronic bronchitis and diarrhea, both the bane of sufferers of extreme emotional distress. It seemed to me nobody cared about her suffering and that my compassion for her plight was a kind of manna in the wilderness of her isolation. Years later I mentioned her to one of my sisters-in-law and was simply told that she had died years earlier.
The plight that these Muslim and Indian women found themselves in was dreadful, but is dwarfed by the monstrosities that we read about everyday: girls “married” before puberty dying or maimed in childbirth by fistulas that literally rip open their birth canals and leave them permanently incontinent unless surgically repaired. That horror that is widespread over the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, and Africa, is the direct result of immature girls—children themselves—bearing children at an age when most of their Western counterparts are still playing with dolls.
The irony of all these horrors is that Indian women, far from being the stupid, lustful chattel that the swamis of the Hare Krishna movement and others who misinterpret the Vedic literature believe them to be, are celebrated in the West for their high intellect by those fortunate enough to study or work with them in any capacity. This fact alone makes the continued subservience to, and abuse by men of their less fortunate sisters a grave crime to humanity: think of what marvels and discoveries would have been achieved by our lotus-eyed sisters in India had they been given free rein to develop their natural intellectual gifts. Instead, they are often doomed to lives of little more than two-legged wombs peering out of the saris or chadors that only accentuate their anonymity.
I remember my guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, describe the womb as little more than the bellows in a blacksmith’s shop, with no function other than to nurture the seed of the real parent, the father. This barbaric and, I might add, willful ignorance of basic biology is characteristic of religions whose claims of “protecting” women is nothing more than a front for men whose actual relationship with their child brides is technically nothing more than the crime of pederasty perpetrated by a repressed, insecure sociopath. It is no small wonder that terrorism has developed strong roots in countries where religion is used as an excuse to crush the intellectual aspirations of women and girls--why else do the Taliban bomb schools for girls in Afghanistan? Those goons would rather rot in endless poverty than acknowledge that this is the 21st century and women everywhere are rising out of the mire of ignorance and prejudice to develop our irrepressible intellectual rights.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ISKCON AND THE SIN OF GREED, Pt. 2
Although the whole “Maharani” episode was ridiculous from start to finish, one incident has remained fresh in my memory. It happened on the occasion of a reception I held for Taittiriya (Maharani’s initiated name) and her husband Bali Mardan at our apartment at the corner of Kane and Henry Streets. At the time she sported a fair-sized bulge in her abdomen, which she asserted was a multiple pregnancy. This claim was highly disputed:how could this hag (she could have been anywhere between 40-55, but to me, a 20-year old mother, the thought of anyone her age pregnant or claiming to be pregnant was simply—no pun intended—inconceivable) with her veiny hands and seamed face be slated to become the mother of a bunch of babies? Maybe, I thought, she is wearing a pillow under her sari or has bunched up the part one tucks in to resemble a belly? So, imagine my raised eyebrows when she told me matter-of-factly that our guru Prabhupada told her that the four fetuses she was allegedly carrying were four incarnations of Vishnu, each with four arms. The thought of sixteen arms waving about inside of her was funny beyond words, but I kept a rapt facial expression once I heard that it was Prabhupada who told her that bit of lunacy. Crazily enough, I never doubted the veracity of her account; however, I also knew beyond question that the old bird had been taken for a ride.
Before long it was clear to us that Taittiriya had been initiated by Prabhupada (in Los Angeles in 12/73) and married shortly thereafter by the scheming hypocrite Bali Mardan for the express purpose of getting at her money. Remember, those were the days when ISKCON devotees were ubiquitous in airports, conniving the public into buying literature that was in most cases almost immediately thrown into the trash. So the prospect of tolerating the antics of this shriveled brown monkey--whose effrontery and hauteur were driving most of us into the trees ourselves—was really no big deal. Yet something was profoundly wrong in the monkey house:there were no babies and, you guessed it, no money. How Prabhupada reacted to this state of affairs is clear from his letters. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Taittiriya shortly before her ruse was discovered:
I have got very good respect for Japanese people. So far I have met the Japanese boys and girls in our temple here, they are so well behaved that I was astonished that they were more respectful than my direct disciples. (September 15, 1974)
But after it became plain that she was penniless, his reaction was quite different. Here is an excerpt of a letter dated November 28, 1974 that Prabhupada wrote to my spineless ex-“husband” Gopal Krishna in response to letter he wrote acting as if he had discovered Taittireya’s ruse:
She is old, like great grandmother. Because you are a devotee you could not tolerate the nonsense.
In fact, it was only after my continual urging to do something about the scandal at the temple and after the scandal was common knowledge that Gopal—a black-hearted villain if there ever was one—wrote to Prabhupada acting as if the discovery was his. Regardless, you can draw your own conclusions about this account of a cult’s greed and immorality without my pointing out the obvious. One thing is certain: Maharani was clearly an example of one who, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was more sinned against than sinning.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Before long it was clear to us that Taittiriya had been initiated by Prabhupada (in Los Angeles in 12/73) and married shortly thereafter by the scheming hypocrite Bali Mardan for the express purpose of getting at her money. Remember, those were the days when ISKCON devotees were ubiquitous in airports, conniving the public into buying literature that was in most cases almost immediately thrown into the trash. So the prospect of tolerating the antics of this shriveled brown monkey--whose effrontery and hauteur were driving most of us into the trees ourselves—was really no big deal. Yet something was profoundly wrong in the monkey house:there were no babies and, you guessed it, no money. How Prabhupada reacted to this state of affairs is clear from his letters. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Taittiriya shortly before her ruse was discovered:
I have got very good respect for Japanese people. So far I have met the Japanese boys and girls in our temple here, they are so well behaved that I was astonished that they were more respectful than my direct disciples. (September 15, 1974)
But after it became plain that she was penniless, his reaction was quite different. Here is an excerpt of a letter dated November 28, 1974 that Prabhupada wrote to my spineless ex-“husband” Gopal Krishna in response to letter he wrote acting as if he had discovered Taittireya’s ruse:
She is old, like great grandmother. Because you are a devotee you could not tolerate the nonsense.
In fact, it was only after my continual urging to do something about the scandal at the temple and after the scandal was common knowledge that Gopal—a black-hearted villain if there ever was one—wrote to Prabhupada acting as if the discovery was his. Regardless, you can draw your own conclusions about this account of a cult’s greed and immorality without my pointing out the obvious. One thing is certain: Maharani was clearly an example of one who, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was more sinned against than sinning.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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