Creative expressions attain their perfect form through emotions
modulated. Woman has that expression natural to her--a cadence of
restraint in her behaviour, producing poetry of life. She has been an
inspiration to man, guiding, most often unconsciously, his restless
energy into an immense variety of creations in literature, art, music
and religion. This is why, in India, woman has been described as the
symbol of Shakti, the creative power.
But if woman begins to believe that, though biologically her function
is different from that of man, psychologically she is identical with
him; if the human world in its mentality becomes exclusively male,
then before long it will be reduced to utter inanity. For life finds
its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in
harmony.
If woman's nature were identical with man's, if Eve were a mere
tautology of Adam, it would only give rise to a monotonous
superfluity. But that she was not so was proved by the banishment she
secured from a ready-made Paradise. She had the instinctive wisdom to
realise that it was her mission to help her mate in creating a
Paradise of their own on earth, whose ideal she was to supply with her
life, whose materials were to be produced and gathered by her comrade.
However, it is evident that an increasing number of women in the West
are ready to assert that their difference from men is unimportant. The
reason for the vehement utterance of such a paradox cannot be ignored.
It is a rebellion against a necessity, which is not equal for both the
partners.
Love in all forms has its obligations, and the love that binds women
to their children binds them to their homes. But necessity is a
tyrant, making us submit to injury and indignity, allowing advantage
over us to those who are wholly or comparatively free from its burden.
Such has been the case in the social relationship between man and
woman. Along with the difference inherent in their respective natures,
there have grown up between them inequalities fostered by
circumstances. Man is not handicapped by the same biological and
psychological responsibilities as woman, and therefore he has the
liberty to give her the security of home. This liberty exacts payment
when it offers its boon, because to give or to withhold the gift is
within its power. It is the unequal freedom in their mutual
relationships which has made the weight of life's tragedies so
painfully heavy for woman to bear.
Some mitigation of her disadvantage has been effected by her rendering
herself and her home a luxury to man. She has accentuated those
qualities in herself which insidiously impose their bondage over her
mate, some by pandering to his weakness, and some by satisfying his
higher nature, till the sex-consciousness in our society has grown
abnormal and overpowering. There is no actual objection to this in
itself, for it offers a stimulus, acting in the depth of life, which
leads to creative exuberance. But a great deal of it is a forced
growth of compulsion bearing seeds of degradation. In those ages when
men acknowledged spiritual perfection to be their object, women were
denounced as the chief obstacle in their way. The constant and
conscious exercise of allurements, which gave women their power,
attacked the weak spots in man's nature, and by doing so added to its
weakness. For all relationships tainted with repression of freedom
must become sources of degeneracy to the strong who impose such
repression.
Balance of power, however, between man and woman was in a measure
established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men
accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the
material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that
home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is
receding farther and farther from its orbit.
The arid zone in the social life is spreading fast. The simple
comforts of home, made precious by the touch of love, are giving way
to luxuries that can only have their full extension in the isolation
of self-centred life. Hotels are being erected on the ruins of homes;
productions are growing more stupendous than creations; and most men
have, for the materials of their happiness and recreation, their dogs
and horses, their pipes, guns, and gambling clubs.
Reactions and rebellions, not being normal in their character, go on
hurting truth until peace is restored. Therefore, when woman refuses
to acknowledge the distinction between her life and that of man, she
does not convince us of its truth, but only proves to us that she is
suffering. All great sufferings indicate some wrong somewhere. In the
present case, the wrong is in woman's lack of freedom in her
relationship with man, which compels her to turn her disabilities into
attractions, and to use untruths as her allies in the battle of life,
while she is suffering from the precariousness of her position.
From the beginning of our society, women have naturally accepted the
training which imparts to their life and to their home a spirit of
harmony. It is their instinct to perform their services in such a
manner that these, through beauty, might be raised from the domain of
slavery to the realm of grace. Women have tried to prove that in the
building up of social life they are artists and not artisans. But all
expressions of beauty lose their truth when compelled to accept the
patronage of the gross and the indifferent. Therefore when necessity
drives women to fashion their lives to the taste of the insensitive or
the sensual, then the whole thing becomes a tragedy of desecration.
Society is full of such tragedies. Many of the laws and social
regulations guiding the relationships of man and woman are relics of
a barbaric age, when the brutal pride of an exclusive possession had
its dominance in human relations, such as those of parents and
children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, teachers and
disciples. The vulgarity of it still persists in the social bond
between the sexes because of the economic helplessness of woman.
Nothing makes us so stupidly mean as the sense of superiority which
the power of the purse confers upon us.
The powers of muscle and of money have opportunities of immediate
satisfaction, but the power of the ideal must have infinite patience.
The man who sells his goods, or fulfils his contract, is cheated if he
fails to realise payment, but he who gives form to some ideal may
never get his due and be fully paid. What I have felt in the women of
India is the consciousness of this ideal--their simple faith in the
sanctity of devotion lighted by love which is held to be divine. True
womanliness is regarded in our country as the saintliness of love. It
is not merely praised there, but literally worshipped; and she who is
gifted with it is called _Devi_, as one revealing in herself Woman,
the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because,
in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal
feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her
heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to
man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence
failing to penetrate the callousness of the coarse-minded; but that is
the destiny of all manifestations whose value is not in success or
reward in honour.
Woman has to be ready to suffer. She cannot allow her emotions to be
dulled or polluted, for these are to create her life's atmosphere,
apart from which her world would be dark and dead. This leaves her
heart without any protection of insensibility, at the mercy of the
hurts and insults of life. Women of India, like women everywhere, have
their share of suffering, but it radiates through the ideal, and
becomes, like sunlight, a creative force in their world. Our women
know by heart the legends of the great women of the epic age--Savitri
who by the power of love conquered death, and Sita who had no other
reward for her life of sacrifice but the sacred majesty of sorrow.
They know that it is their duty to make this life an image of the life
eternal, and that love's mission truly performed has a spiritual
meaning. It is a religious responsibility for them to live the life
which is their own. For their activity is not for money-making, or
organising power, or intellectually probing the mystery of existence,
but for establishing and maintaining human relationships requiring the
highest moral qualities. It is the consciousness of the spiritual
character of their life's work, which lifts them above the utilitarian
standard of the immediate and the passing, surrounds them with the
dignity of the eternal, and transmutes their suffering and sorrow into
a crown of light.
I must guard myself from the risk of a possible misunderstanding. The
permanent significance of home is not in the narrowness of its
enclosure, but in an eternal moral idea. It represents the truth of
human relationship; it reveals loyalty and love for the personality of
man. Let us take a wider view, in a perspective truer than can be
found in its present conventional associations. With the discovery and
development of agriculture there came a period of settled life in our
history. The nomad ever moved on with his tents and cattle; he
explored space and exploited its contents. The cultivator of land
explored time in its immensity, for he had leisure. Comparatively
secured from the uncertainty of his outer resources, he had the
opportunity to deal with his moral resources in the realm of human
truth. This is why agricultural civilisation, like that of India and
China, is essentially a civilisation of human relationship, of the
adjustment of mutual obligations. It is deep-rooted in the inner life
of man. Its basis is co-operation and not competition. In other words,
its principle is the principle of home, to which all its outer
adventures are subordinated.
In the meanwhile, the nomadic life with its predatory instinct of
exploitation has developed into a great civilisation. It is immensely
proud and strong, killing leisure and pursuing opportunities. It
minimises the claims of personal relationship and is jealously careful
of its unhampered freedom for acquiring wealth and asserting its will
upon others. Its burden is the burden of things, which grows heavier
and more complex every day, disregarding the human and the spiritual.
Its powerful pressure from all sides narrows the limits of home, the
personal region of the human world. Thus, in this region of life,
women are every day hustled out of their shelter for want of
accommodation.
But such a state of things can never have the effect of changing woman
into man. On the contrary, it will lead her to find her place in the
unlimited range of society, and the Guardian Spirit of the personal in
human nature will extend the ministry of woman over all developments
of life. Habituated to deal with the world as a machine, man is
multiplying his materials, banishing away his happiness and
sacrificing love to comfort, which is an illusion. At last the present
age has sent its cry to woman, asking her to come out from her
segregation in order to restore the spiritual supremacy of all that is
human in the world of humanity. She has been aroused to remember that
womanliness is not chiefly decorative. It is like that vital health,
which not only imparts the bloom of beauty to the body, but joy to the
mind and perfection to life.