Manusmriti as well as modern discussions on the place of women and their contribution to the intellectual tradition completely ignore the significant contribution by single women. In fact, in such discussions, the achievements of single women are conspicuous by their absence. Debates on women are limited to their roles as mothers and wives.
The debates even on Manu’s famous, though controversial, dictums like ‘a woman should never be independent but should be under the protection of her father in youth, husband in adulthood, and son in old age’, and ‘gods reside where women are honoured’, relate to married women in general. Of these two dictums, the former is seen as a paradigm of gender suppression, and the latter is cited as an example of the glorification of women in the Indian tradition.
It is not that the notion of ‘single women’ was unknown in the Indian tradition. The earliest Indian text, Rig Veda, categorically states that the goddess Vaak has no consort, and Saraswati, the goddess of learning, too is worshipped without a consort. But both Vaak and Saraswati are almost absent from the feminist discourse.
The narrative of the debate between Sulabha and King Janaka found in the section ‘Mokshadharmaparva’ in Shanti Parva of the epic Mahabharata (Chapter 320) is an exception. Sulabha does not belong to the brahmin (priestly class) or the scholarly community. Born in the reputed kshatriya Rajarishi Pradhan clan, Sulabha has voluntarily taken the path of asceticism to realise the ultimate spiritual truth.
Sulabha is a single woman and an intellectual-renunciant. She is an exception because she upholds that celibacy and learning are means for attaining salvation for women as much as they are for men. Unlike Maitrayi and Gargi, whose primary identity lies in being the wife of a rishi, Sulabha is a rishika in her own right. She does not belong to any monastery or monastic order as Buddhist nuns do. She is an individual and lone seeker. She has taken a conscious decision not to marry, and decided to wander the world alone in search of moksha—emancipation. She chooses to seek emancipation by the same path as men do, and her actions to enter into public debate with King Janaka and her decision to enter into a yogic union with him are deliberate.
She hears from fellow sannyasins that King Janaka of Videha had attained moksha and was a living example of a jivanmukta. She wants to learn first-hand about it. So, she goes to Videha to learn and hold a debate with him. The debate is not just limited to methods of attaining emancipation and whether a woman by herself can attain moksha, but is also about questions relating to gender issues, the autonomy of woman, and intellectual equality/superiority between man and woman. Desirous of ascertaining the truth, she enters the court of Janaka, who was a married man, a father and a king.
On seeing a gorgeous and very attractive woman with a delicate form and beautiful, glowing skin in his court, Janaka wonders “who she is, whose she is, where she has come from, and where she is going”. He welcomes her like a guest is welcomed in the Indian tradition. However, when he comes to know that the purpose of her visit is to verify whether he is a jivanmukta or not and that she wants a debate as his equal, he gets upset.
To begin with, Janaka claims that he is of a high lineage. He has attained true knowledge of atman from Panchashikha, the well-known guru belonging to the Parashara clan, and has an equanimous attitude towards all.
In the debate, Janaka uses conventional anti-women arguments. Among the renunciants, he claims himself to be the most superior renunciant and argues that Sulabha, by virtue of being a woman, is actually attached to the world and naturally desires for sensual and sexual pleasures. He even goes to the extent of surmising that though she exhibits all the external symbols of a sannyasin, like wearing saffron clothes, having a tonsured head, carrying a kamandal in one hand and a tri-dand in another, she may be a fake renunciant. He even conjectures that she may have either challenged him for a debate out of ‘ignorance or perverted intelligence’, or she may have been sent by an enemy king. He goes to the extent of calling Sulabha an evil woman. His orthodox thinking, that only brahmins can seek moksha, makes him mistakenly believe that she belongs to the brahmin caste.
Sulabha responds to Janaka’s arrogance in a polite and dignified way. Her replies are logical and her arguments are based on the principles enunciated in the Vedas and Upanishads. Since Janaka’s arguments are couched in inappropriate and faulty language, Sulabha begins by explaining how language is constituted, and asserts that only well-structured and patiently articulated language conveys the meaning of the speaker. She also discusses the nature of the body and how knowledge arises. She shows that Janaka’s speech is faulty because it is based on anger and misconceived presuppositions.
Ruth Vanita has summarised Sulabha’s philosophical arguments as follows: “The body is gendered but the atman (universal Self/Spirit) is not gendered. The body acquires its gender at a certain stage in the womb, and the body changes constantly, so even the body is not always gendered in the same way, that is, even bodily gender is not a fixed or static thing. The atman is one and the same in all beings, regardless of the body’s gender. The atman is neither the property of anyone nor under the control of anyone, and the atman does not really act”.
From these arguments it follows that King Janaka, like any lay person, was wrong in making a gender difference as the same Atman pervades all. Atman is gender-neutral and just one; grammatically there is no plural of “atman” in the Sanskrit language. That is why we say aham Brahmasmi tat tvam asi—‘I am Brahman, so are you’. As a consequence, there is no other, there is no place for varna classification. Since at the core there is no gender difference, both men and women can attain emancipation by following the same path. Since sat, chit, ananda—existence, consciousness and bliss—are the only characteristic of Atman, Janaka is mistaken in asking ‘whose she is.’ His question is based on the orthodox thinking that a woman must belong to someone, she cannot have an autonomous status.
This episode from the ancient epic is proof that progressive ideas about gender and women’s roles in society had a place in India’s past. That a woman does not have to derive her personal and social identity from her relation to a man—especially as his wife—or rein in her intellectual development and thirst for knowledge to fulfil the ‘greater’ goal of getting married are key lessons for which one does not have to turn to contemporary literature or academic discourse—Sulabha’s calm, logical arguments can teach them just as well. More examples of driven and erudite single women like Sulabha are needed today to encourage a worldview which isn’t limited by a gender binary and narrow gender roles. Not only will this challenge the relationship between marital and societal status and unfetter women from traditions which curb their identity formation and freedom of expression, but also show that an individual’s actions and goals do not have to be motivated by their gender identity.
Many conventions, especially about the ‘worth’ of women and their ‘duty’ to society, fail to stand up to scrutiny today—just as Janaka cannot object to any of Sulabha’s arguments and falls silent.
The author is a former professor of philosophy at the University of Delhi. The views expressed are personal.
The Sulabha episode from the ancient epic is proof that progressive ideas about gender and women’s roles in society had a place in India’s past. That a woman does not have to derive her personal and social identity from her relation to a man—especially as his wife—or rein in her intellectual development and thirst for knowledge to fulfil the ‘greater’ goal of getting married are key lessons for which one does not have to turn to contemporary literature or academic discourse—Sulabha’s calm, logical arguments can teach them just as well. More examples of driven and erudite single women like Sulabha are needed today to encourage a worldview which isn’t limited by a gender binary and narrow gender roles.
