Is Motherhood the aim of Woman's life?
("Ever remember the five maidens")
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Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Motherhood used to be considered as the great ideal, even the sole ideal for women at one time. In modern times, a large part of women-folk has stood up in protest against it. It is not the sole aim of their life, they say. Just because they are imprisoned within that exclusive ideal, women are deprived of the very best of opportunities and advantages of life, which should be available to all without making any distinction between male and female. The sadhana of Knowledge, training in arts and science, taking part in the work for the good of people in one's own country and in the world-all these are not easily accessible to women. Most of their life-stream flows through a different channel.
The other side usually says (how far out of a dictatorial will and egotism is questionable) that this is the natural and general division of work between man and woman, willed by the Creator as a law of Nature-women will do the household work and bear children, remain occupied with "indoors" while men will handle the work of the external world. To glorify this story, to hide this unjust discrimination, it made a further clever statement: Man can create, but the creatrix even of the creator is woman.
One of the means discovered to solve this problem sounds like a joke. Probably, it originated first in Greece. Then Nietzsche came to accept it. The proposed ideal was that each man would have two women-one the married wife, the other a cohabitant. The wife's work would be to produce children, while the cohabitant would be the companion of the vaster and greater work of man. A strange ideal, with no cover in its mode of expression-but not completely estranged from some support by real life. We know about Yajnyavalkya, the Upanishadic seer. He had two wives. One remained occupied with household affairs, and the other became his companion in the pursuit of Brahman. Such an indication of a solution, however cumbersome it seems to be, may lead us to the road of a new solution. Consequently, those women, who will accept motherhood as the ideal of life, naturally must follow that course. But those who will venture on other paths-paths taken for granted as for men only-should also have the complete freedom to tread them at their will. In case of men most of them take up the ordinary life and only a very limited few leave the worldly life to enter the spiritual, and they get ample freedom, chances and advantages and even encouragement. Similarly those women who will accept this so-called men's path should also have corresponding chances and advantages, encouragement and help. Legally women are not barred from living a spiritual or ascetic life (of course history tells us about other types of laws in a particular epoch in some particular society) but even then these are always considered to be exceptions. They are hardly a few in this path, and the conditions imposed on them to get entry this side are almost insurmountable. These conditions tend only to support that unjust discrimination. In India women sannyasins lead comparatively a freer life though the case of the Nunnery under the Catholic Church is different.
But we want to say something else. The demand of the modern age is a radical and revolutionary change of attitude. It stresses that the distinction made between man and woman is mostly, if not wholly, artificial and therefore should be rejected. This sense of distinction has been allowed to grow and establish itself through habit, biased and restricted education and blind conventions taken to be one's own nature. All these could be changed if a transformation is brought about in the culture, if we acquire new habits, cultivate new manners and customs and a new nature. Right to vote, coeducation, mechanical skill and employment for women-all these are various manifestations of that very movement which wants to wipe out the distinction and inequality being imposed as a principle of nature.
We can cite the example of Jeanne d'Arc in this connection. Her advent is a marvel in history. Jeanne d'Arc is the symbol of a supra-terrestrial force and a future possibility. She brought with her the imagination and the possibility of a relation between human beings which did not get its proper respect and recognition. Rather, she was accused of being unsocial, even anti-social! Those who come to organize humanity have to bear this torture of the cross. Probably there is no other way to deliver Nature. Socrates used to urge the youngsters to think independently, to reason before coming to a conclusion, never to accept anything as true without passing it through a hard test of analysis-be it with respect to existence of the gods or anything whatsoever. So Socrates was accused of misleading the youth. Similarly Jeanne d'Arc, dressed in male uniform, fighting as a soldier on horseback, became one with the male and brought about a terrific revolution by even forgetting that she was a woman-that means shattering all social and moral ideals in vogue. This reminds us of the Greek goddess, Diana, the huntress. Ever virgin, dressed like a hunter, attired as a male-all her movements and postures expressed the integral beauty of man. Of course one may say that gods are gods, it is not possible for a human to imitate the inhuman or the superhuman.
Is it really so? This is the question which needs to be answered. A human being who follows the ideal of ordinary humanity may at will follow the course of the past, organise social systems according to its liking, maintain the distinction between man and woman as per dictates of the mental light and under the pressure of body and life. But if we want something superior surpassing humanity, want a divine collectivity, then the more we forget the past the better; or if at all, we shall remember the utterance of the most ancient of the seers, the representatives of universal man: tvam kumara uta va kumari (Thou art a boy and a girl).
There is no distinction of man and woman in the human soul; the luminous body which will contain this soul must to some extent be of a similar nature. That does not mean having no distinction anywhere. There will surely be some in a deeper sense and that distinction is not of this physical difference. It is not that the criterion of the real difference between man and woman has to be only the gross physical difference. That was true for human beings so long as they were pre-eminently animals. Whatever distinction may appear in future will not depend necessarily on the gross external body; but it is not necessary to rack our brain about it. The first thing needed is to remove the discrimination owing to ignorance. Then along with the increase of knowledge, due to the advent of Light, by the action of the force of transformation the dharma of unity in diversity of Nature will itself appear. There is no cause for apprehension that everything will get mixed up and be devoid of any diversity-that is something opposite to both Nature or Over-Nature.
(Nolini Kanta Gupta was a revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and a man of deep spiritual realisation. Author of nearly 60 books he was a Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.)