Listen to this article:

A weird scene is going viral on social media today. The boss is sitting in the White House surrounded by what appears to be a group of evangelists fervently praying to God for wisdom, grace and strength for the man who leads this one nation under God. Is it AI, you wonder?

“Sometimes the broiling sea of imbecility gets too much. Wave upon wave of cretins,” notes Edward Luce elsewhere about Trump’s America. Sadly such a mindset is not limited to one country. A new wave of conservatism – political, religious, and deeply hostile to liberals, peace-lovers and feminists – seems to be sweeping across the world as the shadows of war grow larger.

Ever since it began, mankind has seldom been so oblivious to the International Women’s Day being observed today and the threat that wars pose to the existence of women and children already struggling with major changes in their lives and environment.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

In India it is an under-reported fact that both in cities and villages, large joint families are giving way to smaller nuclear units. The young families are migrating with their children, leaving the vulnerable elderly behind.

But even after the nuclear families have migrated out of their villages or small towns, there are practically no signs that the ideology of the patriarchal socio-political system has given way to a more gender-balanced outlook. Marriages are mostly being fixed along clear caste and community lines and celebrated with even more ritualistic fervour. Inter-faith marriages are even more heavily frowned upon and often undone by family-led violence.

Besides this, both available data and social media messages show that even after half a century of Mandalisation, India’s democratic institutions are being led mostly by upper castes from the majority community. As they reap the benefits of all governmental schemes, the poor, especially our marginalised minorities, women and children are increasingly becoming invisible and largely irrelevant to the growth story.

As proof of the above, look at the image of a working mother promoted by governmental agencies and mainstream dailies. Most are smartly attired urban women striding along confidently or standing out in a crowd of scowling men, in work scrubs or helmets. Even the lower governmental functionary didis dress well and carry smart bags and clipboards. Working women in rural areas are shown clustered around self-run shops selling fresh produce or hand-made goods in front of gaily decorated walls or outside thatched huts.

In the meanwhile most homes, workplaces and boardrooms remain female-deficient and the latest statistics say only 7% of outstanding credit for MSMEs reaches women. The loquacious PR lady from Galgotias University seen defending charges of technical plagiarism against her institution was an arch-example of the gap between perception and reality.

Imagine this spectrum. At one end are rural landless families desperately trying to make sense of and access VB-G RAM G, the new avatar of MGNREGA. They subsist on daily earnings. At the other end stands a powerful political lab run by males with deep pockets creating educational facilities and medical colleges. They are funded  by the new billionaires with political links and get to display their ‘products’ in international seminars.

And at the same time political leaders who have never married, some in orange garbs of childless ascetics, tell women in all seriousness that each of them must produce at least five children or their race may soon be obsolete!

Rallies then turn into prayer meetings and bhajan-clubbing, whipping up fervour and lies about race, purity and vegetarianism.

In the meanwhile it remains undeniable that most of the labour in the country is still done by women – overworked, underpaid, under-represented in unions or boardrooms and seldom included in planning panels.

The question arises: if things are so desperate and women are such a precious vote bank, why have they not fought for better lives, equal wages and the freedom to choose their marital partners? It is because of the overarching dominance of men in rallies and the media talking endlessly about ‘tradition’ by projecting unending visuals of glittering Hindu marriages, pilgrimages, temples and pandits performing sanatan rituals.

Ironically as one travels to small-town and rural India, one finds each village and each dhani has a little votive sanctuary for a non-Sanatani Mother goddess who protects them all. Gauging the trust that has kept the myths of local goddesses alive can yield us valuable insights into how and where women actually repose their faith and logic to exercise a minimum of power and authority.

Most of these goddesses are without the glamour that Ravi Verma’s paintings associate with mainstream goddesses. They belong to small insignificant communities of farmers, cattle herders and forest dwellers. Most of them are still housed in humble stone dwellings in isolated spots amidst a grove of trees or on top of a mound or hillock. They are the real protectresses of the locals who visit them regularly. Even the itinerant taxi cab and truck drivers must bow to them reverentially if they are to reach their destination without a mishap.

Those of you who remember the sudden collapse of a tunnel in Uttarakhand where many miners were trapped would recall how villagers swiftly erected a shrine to a Baba Nag Dev, who had told them the engineers had not asked for His permission before boring a hole in his hill. An Australian expert invited to handle the delicate rescue operations also chose to first propitiate the Nag Baba before starting the operation with sophisticated machines that broke down earlier.

The primary deity of the poor is Earth Mother.

In Rajasthan she is worshipped as Rodi Mata (Mother Garbage). Much as the metro dwellers may moan and groan over the garbage reducing their cities to slums, to the poor farming communities, garbage is gold dirt. As Rodi Mata Mother Earth creates for them manure that encourages and sustains their meagre crops and all forms of life and fertility, she is formally invited in song by the women of the family to all family weddings.

To invite her, family women will go to their area’s garbage heap and sing as they drive a long iron nail in the middle: “Ari Rodi nootat Maa, ai miliyo puta dilari jode” (‘O Rodi Ma, I invite thee to a union of my son/daughter, with someone the chosen partner’).

Uttarakhand is an area full of rivers and mountain peaks, all of which have long-regarded powerful female Mother goddesses as their true guardians. The fabled Dhams after being sold as tourist spots to the religiously inclined rich are being fast diminished and polluted.

But area folk still venerate not only Gangotri and Yamunotri, but also all smaller springs and tributaries. Tribals on the Indo-Tibetan border still maintain that it is not the bridges made of steel but the river goddess Dhari Debi or Kali Debi that can protect them. So when crossing a particularly volatile stretch of the Kali River, the oldest Bhutiya woman in the group immerses a sweet in the waters for the Mother.

In water-scarce areas, the Betwa, Narmada, Ghaghara and Chambal are all goddesses. Narmada is deemed by tribals as a celibate mercurial river whose course-change for the big dam they resisted volubly and for long.

The rich have their SUVs but the poor mostly walk when on a pilgrimage to the Mother rivers. As a road deity they have dreamed up a Path Wari Mata, the Queenly Deity of the road, praised in songs as one who offers food to the hungry and waters to the thirsty ones: “Pathwari Mata, Path ki ai Rani, bhookhenai Bhojan Mata, tisiyenai pani.”

Psychology and psychoanalysis have placed a high priority on the “primal” relationship assumed within old communities and identified older women as the ones who pass down such history and wisdom to the next generation. While wars rage all around us and nations are under grave threat of running out of water, the above prayer makes sense, ‘O Queen mother of all roads, just make sure the hungry and poor get food and when parched, enough water’.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.

© The Wire