Worshipping the Goddess in any form this Ashtami

Goddess Durga comes in various forms to us and during ongoing Navratri festival we all worship Goddess Durga in various states of India. Today being the Ashtami/Navmi the most auscpicious day of the Navratri festival, my wife was little disappointed due to the covid-19 pandemic this year her regular suvasini our own daughter who comes for all these years is not able to make it this time and my wife was waiting for a suvasini to be worshipped and this morning our regular Laundry lady who visits our home every week for collecting and delivering the laundry was here in out door step and my wife immediately called her inside and gave her the traditional 'OTI" in the form of rice, fruit, coconut and some gift and worshipped her as the form of Goddess Durga at our home, this picture shows how soulful was this worship of Working Durga in the form of the Laundry lady, this is the real beauty of Indian festivals that we involve all those connected with our daily lives.

Why is The Goddess worship so important for the world? This can be broken down to some further questions. What is a deity and why are they assigned gender?I've answered this question here: my answer to What is the purpose of a wife for god? General impact of gender. Does the gender associated with a deity have an impact on the institutional treatment received by the corresponding gender in real life? Representation i.e. Inclusion

Is it necessary to represent all genders in a pantheon/all gender attributes in a monotheistic entity? Respect. Is the respect accorded to "female/feminine" deities a factor in the institutional treatment received by the female gender in reality? Worship. Is the ritual worship of "female/feminine" deities a factor in the institutional treatment received by the female gender in reality? To understand the difference between respect and worship, consider Chinnamasta and Kali. Both are aggressive forms of the same Goddess, but while most people will admit to respecting both, few will actually truly think the former worthy of worship.

Now although this answer asks about the world at large, I am going to make a case study out of India, not only because of familiarity, but because the subcontinent is home to the largest number of adherents of a millennia-old continuous tradition of Goddess worship.

Dr Kathleen Erndl, Associate Professor of Religion, University of Florida and specialist in Hindu Goddesses decided to ask these very same questions. She got down to brass tacks and did a lot of fieldwork, interviewing lots of rural and urban women across India, presenting her results in the book Victory to the Mother. Here are some of her conclusions:

Shakta communities have greater representation of women in leadership positions than either Shaivism or Vaishnavism - as Gurus, Saints and such many feminists and activists over the centuries have and continue to draw upon these Goddesses as a source of inspiration and power. Even outside the explicit Shakta communities, Shakti has a great impact on the daily lives of women - giving them safe spaces and a voice. But for all this, the Shakta tradition and the non-Shakta Goddesses are ultimately products of a patriarchal milieu. To quote:

"the Hindu patriarchal impulse to subordinate women is rooted in the acknowledgment that women are powerful...the task for Hindu feminists, at an ideological level, is to rescue shakti from its patriarchal prison" Source: “Is Shakti Empowering for Women? Reflections on Feminism and the Hindu Goddess,” Thinking more on these last lines is Dr Saumitra Chakravarty, Department of English, Jain University, Seshadripuram College, Bangalore.

In her paper Patriarchal Politics and the (Dis)Empowerment of Hindu Goddesses: Unveiling the Chandi Mangal and the Devi Mahatmya of the Markandeya Purana, she writes: With the passage of time, the power of the goddess was usurped by male deities and the primacy of goddess worship in earlier non-Aryan societies became subordinate to powerful male deities to whom the goddess existed as a mere appendage. Analysing the Bengali epic (Mangal-Kavya) dedicated to one of its most popular Goddesses - Chandi, as well as the Devi Mahatmyam, she demonstrates the Brahminisation and Disempowerment of the indigenous Goddesses, so that these narratives were used as a weapon for

The dominating the lower castes/class people on the one hand, and maintaining control over women on the other, thus the very scriptures central to Goddess worship are appropriated and undermined by the Patriarchy. And yet, there is hope. In her paper Defeating Patriarchal Politics: The Snake Woman as Goddess: A Study of the Manasa Mangal Kavya of Bengal, Dr Chakravarty analyses the greatest Bengali epic in the Mangal Kavya tradition - the Manasa Mangal Kavya. This is a story that is infinitely badass. To quote: Wrapped in her serpentine coils, Yama is rendered impotent and the life and death cycles of the universe suffer, shaking the very foundations of divine order. The succubus image here represented is repeated throughout the text. She penetrates the hermetically sealed marriage chamber of Chand's last son Lakhinder, robs him of his male potency and later his life, rendering his young wife Behula, a virgin widow.

In the guise of a beautiful courtesan, Manasa fatally attracts Chand Saudagar her deadliest enemy, and cleverly robs him of his ancestral wisdom, knowledge and his powers of divination, which are the sources of his impregnable social position and his antidote against her destructive attacks. She poses a serious challenge to Chand Saudagar's Shaivism and uses every weapon in her armoury to convert him to snake goddess worship. She kills his seven sons, sinks his fourteen ships laden with merchandise and leaves him floundering and spluttering in the middle of the river. This represents the vengeance of women marginalised by society and religion. Chand is flung, denuded and stripped of his manhood and pride, on an unknown island. Accompanied by the mocking laughter of Manasa, he is stripped of the last vestiges of human dignity, covers his nakedness with his bare hands in her presence, begs and forages for morsels of food, is humiliated and beaten and remains unrecognised by his own subjects. Manasa thus strikes at the threefold foundations of patriarchy in the text—the androcentric Hindu pantheon of gods, the Brahminical priestly power and the wealthy merchant community that controlled the economy of contemporary society.

The resolution of the deadly conflict between the vengeful Manasa and the unrepentant Chand can only be facilitated by another powerful woman, Chand's young daughter-in-law, Behula. She is learned beyond the limits of contemporary feminine wisdom in herbal remedies, powerful mantras and the knowledge of reviving the dead. Behula, who becomes a virgin widow on her wedding night by Manasa's machinations, steps beyond the prescribed periphery of womanhood by refusing to ascend her husband's funeral pyre for sati. Instead she courageously embarks on a six -month odyssey with his body, floating alone and unprotected on a raft made of the banana plant to appease the gods and revive her husband Lakhinder. In so doing, she has violated every conventional norm of patriarchy.

The story of Manasa is deeply tragic, disturbing and also empowering. And it has provided solace for centuries to a community doubly marginized - both by caste and gender. Countless such stories exist among the indegenous traditions of India, and without a doubt, every Goddess in the Hindu Pantheon has had to earn her respect in real life just like Manasa did in this story.

If one finds this story distasteful and unreal, one must perhaps consider the hundreds of similar episodes in which established deities have nevertheless felt the need to demonstrate their power in order to receive worship - the Dakshayagna for Shiva, the Chyavanayagna for the Ashvins, the Pillar-born Narasimha Avatara for Vishnu - no deity, whether in Hinduism or elsewhere, has ever hesitated from smiting the disbeliever in order to establish their cult.

Thus in the Indian context, we find that there is inclusion of femininity in the idea of Godhead, but respect is scarce and dearly earned, and that worship is not purely beneficial to the lives of the women in India. In fact Prof Erndl's data seems to indicate, that the inspirational value of the Goddesses for the purposes of activism is more from the fact that the Goddesses are recognized and respected, than because of any actual veneration.

This is borne by the fact that one of the key areas of research done by Prof Erndl were the interviews and observations of women who were said to be "possessed" by the Goddess - women who would go into trances and frenzies, and instead of being dismissed or institutionalized, these women would be considered as the voice of the Goddess, and would not only be heard, but obeyed. She has written no fewer than 6 essays on this subject, over and above the interviews included in the Victory to the Mother. Worship the woman of the house she is the form of Goddess for us in India. Stay blessed! #kishoreshintre #possessedbywritingspirit #ks800articles