What did gifted and sensitive women, forced by tradition and law to the margins centuries ago, have to say about their lives? Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Nuns) is a compilation of 73 verses by 101 female Buddhist nuns of the Theravada sect. It was the first sect the Buddha launched to preach dhamma. The verses of Bhikkhunis or nuns allowed into the monastic order, the Sangha, were orally transmitted for centuries in Magadhi. Eventually, they were written down, translated to Pali, compiled and added to Vinaya Pitak, one of the three compilations of Buddhist thought. This task was performed by Dhammapala, a sixth-century Buddhist scholar who calls these verses Udana (inspired utterances).
The path to self-knowledge was opened up to women from all castes and walks of life by the Buddha. In the words of Theri Tissa, the Tathagata said to her: “Tissa, train yourself strictly, don’t let/What can hold you back, overwhelm you/You can wander about in the world freely now/Fearless, freed of depravities that have oozed out from within.”
After the Buddha, this concept of women as nuns, wandering freely and fearlessly, disappears. It resurfaces conceptually — “swatantra stree” — in a (5th or 8th century) treatise by Vigyaneshwar, on Yajñavalkya Smrti. The thoughts compiled are ascribed to the scholar-sage Yajnavalkya, whose idea of Brahman as the core principle of Hindu Dharma was popularised in the 8th century by Adi Shankara, who led a counter-attack against Buddhism.
Yajnavalkya had two wives. One of them, a seer herself, Maitreyi, refused his offer of sharing her husband’s wealth and asked him instead for the Ultimate (Brahma) Gyan. A long association with an enlightened female not only made Yajnavalkya one of the more liberal creators of laws governing society, but he also took women seriously enough to draw them into formal philosophical debates.
In his treatise, Vigyaneshwar explains swatantra as a liberated woman who may voluntarily step outside the home to roam, learn, and if need be, meet and mate with men for a pre-settled fee, without fear of punishment. Female seer Gargi Vachaknavi held on to Yajnavalkya, demanding: “If even water needs two components to take shape, how can Brahman be conceptualised as a single particle?”. Initially dismissed, she came back to the subject and could only be silenced with the usual threat of serious bodily harm.
By the 11th century, the term swatantra (or swairini) had acquired pejorative overtones. We read of two swairinis in Raja Bhoj’s tale of two sisters in Shringar Manjari. One uses sex for money, as advised by older mentors. They told her doing so was fine, but that falling in love is an enemy to a swairini. She lives happily, but her sister Kam Manjari falls in love, is abandoned by her lover and dies of heartache.
A Theri, known only as mother of Sumangala, once wrote about this: “I am well freed from the mortar and pestle/My shameless husband and the umbrellas he makes/And my dented little pots that stink like snakes/All disgusted me/I have overcome my lust and anger now/Sitting under a tree I think/Ah, the happiness to be rid of all that.”
The history of women, as Amitabh Bachchan said, is “a very funny thing”. Our swatantra stree can never be on par with a man empowered by Purusharth with its four pillars supported by the state and dharma.
Good ideas go underground and resurface. In the early 20th century, Gandhi’s call for female participation in satyagraha brought women out in the streets. India became free, and three decades later, after the first State of Women report, another lot of women questioning the system arose. Their quiet but determined resistance to laws has mostly proven powerless in preventing violence and injustice against women. But the arm of thought that led Theris’s search for freedom gets effortlessly linked to the 21st century protest against rapes, custodial and marital brutality and workplace exploitation of women. Even women wrestlers, female weavers and farmers of Manipur and Leh have launched voluble protests and found support in other women. By now, the system realises the latent power of women’s unity and has set about wooing them as a vote bank.
Rebellions from the ranks of those relegated to the margins are swiftly subjected to backlashes. The market that has fattened itself selling “acceptable” images of bodies to women swings into motion. We are told how our traps were designed for our protection; they are embellished with gold, silk and gems. Our faces must look fair and lovely: Wipe off those frowns with anti-wrinkle creams. Then we must put a smile on those silenced mouths and dream of how to look like a queen on our wedding day.
On political platforms, women’s status as homemakers and mothers is being re-established as the central fact of our existence, never mind women’s personal and professional lives, where a lack of basic human rights makes long-term empowerment almost impossible. Our greatest power, childbearing, is used as a lever by political powers. From, “May you be a mother of 1,000 sons”, we moved to “Do hi bachche ghar mein achhe”. And more recently, Hindu women must have at least three for the sake of the nation.
“Mind it!” as Rajinikanth would say.
The time for women to come up for air, to push for repossession of their own space in homes, in media, in politics and the markets is now. It can bring far deeper and essential change not only to their own personas but also to the human community. Five thousand years ago, Theri Dantika tells us of her own experience.
“Having come out/From where I had spent the day/A man holding a goad told the elephant, ‘hold up your foot’/And the elephant did and the man climbed upon its back/I saw how the untamed was tamed/How animal was ruled by human/And I entered the forest just to think more about that.”
The writer is former chairperson, Prasar Bharati
The path to self-knowledge was opened up to women from all castes and walks of life by the Buddha. (File photo/Canva) 
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