#Hinduism: Daughter lighting funeral pyre of Atal Bihari Vajpayee

After demise of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one of India's best and most respected Prime Ministers on 16^th of August, his foster daughter Namita Kaul Bhattacharya lit the funeral pyre ^[1]. That created some buzz in the media as media is always eager to cover as many aspects of the ‘news of the hour’ as possible. Media reported about the fact that a daughter lighting funeral pyre is not common among Hindus; which is correct. But it is important to note that the reason behind the custom is not any bias against women but a different one altogether.

First, Hinduism as a religion does not ban women from attending cremation or a female from lighting funeral pyres. A lot of women have done so across the times. This practice of not allowing women at the cremation site is more of a cultural practice or a social custom. The reasons can be explained in many ways.

The major reason is that daughters are perceived to be emotional and too attached to their parents and hence may not be able to carry the whole process as strongly as a son would be able to do. This should not be seen as a sign of ‘weakness’ as modern feminist could judge it as. Any custom that society makes considers the general welfare of people. In several cases a daughter may be strong enough or stronger than the son but those would be exceptional cases.

Anu Lall writes in her article ^[2] titled "Why Hindu Women don’t light funeral pyres":

"As the fire leapt up, the pandit handed over a bamboo stick for the Kapaal Kriya — breaking the skull to release the soul from the body. Several times in the process, buckets of water were poured on me, or I was asked to pour on myself. Shivering to the spine, in the cold November rain, breaking my dad’s skull, my senses were numb, maybe heart stopped beating. I must be breathing. Must have, coz I didn’t die. We came back, drenched to the bone, my soul and mind paralysed."

This just gives an account of kind of experience the doer of the rituals have to go through.

You can go through the whole process or rituals in this article on Hindu Jagriti website  ^[3].

It is an arduous task.

Even if daughters or females were allowed to do the rituals, all of them may not like to do it. Hence sons or male members of the family would take care of the process. It is very important to note that this custom is to "safeguard" the women from the trouble.

Many a time when the deceased does not have a male family member, one of the daughters or a female family member does the process. No Hindu organization issues a "fatwa" against them or any other sort of protest.

To conclude, this custom of not allowing females from doing the cremation rites is social in nature, not religious. And this custom was made to safeguard the females from the inconvenience and ordeal due to a cumbersome process, not as a form of any gender discrimination.

:: Rahul Tiwary 

References:

1.     https://www.news18.com/news/india/atal-bihari-vajpayee-funeral-live-updates-daughter-lights-pyre-of-former-pm-nation-bids-teary-adieu-1847293.html

2.      https://medium.com/@anulall/why-indian-women-dont-light-funeral-pyres-48580e52dd0d

3.      https://www.hindujagruti.org/hinduism/rituals-to-be-performed-prior-to-and-during-cremation-of-a-dead-body

Disclaimer: Views are personal.

Why Women Hate Men

It is history’s worst kept secret. It is kept secret so sacredly that if it came out, it could destroy the very nature of life that flows on earth. And yet, it is everywhere. You see it daily, you feel it quite often. But you must deny it. You must forget it. You must destroy it.

For some time I have wondered why women hated men for nothing but just because men were men. If you do not believe they hated, you would either never realize it or else it will come to you at some point of your life. The ‘hatred’ is plain irresistible. To the extent that women have often fallen in love with the men they hated. It is captured in history and in the literature of all times. It is just that it is so subtle and the realization so revolutionary that it could mean to destroy all things we believe in and hence it was better to be denied – to be turned blind eyed to.

I think the roots of this hatred go into some very basic stuff. Men are seen as ‘free’ – free of burdens which women necessarily and inescapably have to carry. It is not only the womb, although it pretty much is almost all of it; or enough of it. The child bearing capacity which is often glorified, celebrated and worshipped in all religions and cultures for obvious reasons, at some level of the female psyche turns into a burden. Why should men get away without it? That is the million dollar question. And then it is not only about it. I don’t know if it is only because of female hormones, which has been repeated in such a simplistic manner in modern scientific world, that we come to think of it and hence divert our attention from the female folks, but women feel the kind of vulnerability and insecurity which no men ever feel. Men can never imagine and guess what women feel. And hence they pay the price for not knowing their enemies well…

Women know that they are weak and need to be dependent on men in some way or the other – and they ‘hate’ it at some level of their psyche. Women hate men’s guts and confidence. There is no horrible scene for a woman than to see a confident and happy man. Such a man represents everything that the women not are – and can never be – and hence they must hate it. Put in this way you may think that women may hate the idea of a man than the man himself. I will not object to it but whenever they see a man – the idea manifests into a shape and they must hate that shape – that creature – that monster – that something which they can never be – that man…

History of the mankind is the history full of hatred which could not always get chance to manifest into something concrete. It is really a miracle that for so long you could avoid getting stung by that hatred. Or, did we?

© Rahul.