Why Do We Treat Women as Property?
Ankit Tyagi: I was just going through one of your books, and this is the new edition of the “Bhagavad Gita”. And there are some very interesting thoughts that you have put in this book, though you quote Gita and then of course your interpretation — but they are quite, you know, apparent in the current context as well.
I want to start with one, and then I will bring you to a question. I'm quoting from a page — from page 60 of this book — which says: "What else does Arjuna believe in — “Women as property?" It's a very patriarchal mindset when he says that, you know, women should not be allowed to mingle with people from the so-called lower class — as if women cannot decide on their own, as if Arjuna — that's what you — this is what you are saying — “as if Arjuna is the great and the final patriarch on whom rests the responsibility to protect women's chastity and minds.”
I want to probe you on this because you've written this. Isn't it very contextualized in today's terms as well? Men find it very hard to give up some sort of ownership of women even after they move on, even after a relationship does not work out, even after the woman does not want to give you any sense of that ownership.
Why do you think that happens — that you find it so difficult — and you want to treat them as a property?
Acharya Prashant: You see, that's the reason why the Bhagavad Gita has an eternal relevance. Chapter 1 is what sets the tone for the remaining 17 chapters. But Chapter 1 is also the least quoted chapter, and least understood chapter, and given the least importance.
What Arjuna is saying, "I do not want to fight," and that is well known — Arjuna didn't want to fight. But not many people pay attention to the reasons he was quoting in support of his decision to not to fight.
He's saying, if we fight here — the Kshatriyas — and we get killed, most of us, then the women will go and they will mingle and mate with those of the lower Varnas, and then their offspring — they will be Varna-Sankars.
There is something called Pratiloma Vivah — not in Vedanta, not in real religion — but in popular culture, okay? In popular culture.
So Pratiloma Vivah is when, somebody from the higher Varnas — a woman especially from the higher Varnas — marries somebody, a man particularly from the lower Varnas. And, then the offspring is a Varna-Sankar. And Varna-Sankar are looked down upon.
And Arjuna says, if a Varna-Sankar is born, then he will not be able to offer the right kind of prescribed sacrifices. He'll not be able to participate in the holy rituals, especially when it comes to occasions like Śrāddha, when the souls of our deceased ancestors have to be pleased with offerings. They'll not accept the offerings from a Varna-Sankar. So they'll go hungry and thirsty. As a result, a great curse will befall the kingdom.
And that's the reason he's quoting to Shri Krishna — that's Chapter 1 of the Bhagavad Gita. And from there, Shri Krishna proceeds to annihilate these notions. That's the Bhagavad Gita, which means just as the message of the Gita is eternal, these tendencies inside us — the tendency you asked of: why do we treat women as property? Why do men find it so difficult to really move on? Inwardly, they retain an idea of ownership even after the relationship is no more.
Why does that happen? Because that's a basic animal instinct. That's got nothing to do with the current culture or civilization or something that has recently happened, or something that is dependent on a period of time, that was there so many thousand years back. That is there today. And as long as we remain genetically who we are, that will remain.
That's our animal tendency. That's our animal tendency — to be territorial, to be opportunistic, to be possessive, and to really want to own, control the sexuality of the other person, the other gender — so that we can maximize our own pleasure. And not just maximize it — secure it.
You know, when you own something, then there is a sense of security — this thing is with me, not only today, it's also not going to go away tomorrow. So I own it with security.
And that's the reason why men have wanted to control women's sexuality since time eternal. That's there in the Bhagavad Gita. That's what we find happening today.
You see — you look at the current conflict — what we have just witnessed, the unfortunate deaths and the Pahalgam massacre — you see the clear gender angle there, right? The terrorists come, and then they are sparing the women and shooting all the men. And they're telling the women, "Now you'll be left alive to bear this agony all your life. Go and relay this back." And then the operation too was code-named Sindoor. You see the gender angle?
Ankit Tyagi: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: And then you also see how the daughter of the diplomat, who would appear on screens —
Ankit Tyagi: Foreign Secretary.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, the Foreign Secretary — how she was targeted. Probably the said diplomat also has sons, he himself is a man. Even if he does not have sons, but the one chosen to be targeted was a woman — his daughter. So there is always a gender angle to all our animalistic, primordial instincts. Because that's how the animal in the jungle is. He wants to fight for territory. He wants to fight for women. And inwardly, we are still animals.
Ankit Tyagi: No, but then, what you picked up on — you know, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's daughter being trolled online and all that vicious, you know, messaging around her — and does that come from the insecurity of weak men? Because you treat women as somebody's property, and the only way you can hit back at that man, in your head you think, is to take away or to damage the property that man had — and hence, the woman.
Acharya Prashant: See, you said insecurity of weak men — that's rightly put. But there can be a more precise and refined way of putting it: that comes from the animal within us. If we say weak men, we say strong men — that does not really take care of the narrative.
What we call as our weaknesses are actually our inheritances — what we have inherited from our jungle past.
We are recently, very recently, emerging from the jungle. And whatever we are carrying forward from there today can be called as our weakness — and that includes our attitude towards the other gender. We want to own it, we want to suppress it. You look at war and you look at women — there has always been a relation. Genghis Khan, the biggest conqueror Asia has seen — India he spared, but the rest of Asia, almost all of it, plus parts of Europe — he totally ravished them.
He was not only a conqueror, he was also the biggest rapist the world has seen. So much so that a big proportion of the Indian — of the Asian population — still bears the stamp of his genes because there were just so many women he personally raped.
War and women — they go together.
We know of the genocide in East Pakistan — Bangladesh. We know how rape was a big part of it. We know how rape was a big part of the pre-partition riots in India. We also know how rape was a big part of the motivation of the Japanese forces in China — the rape of Nanjing, and the pleasure girls, the comfort girls, and all those things.
We know of all these things. The animal that sits within us, that wants to fight, that wants to capture territory, is also the animal that wants to possess women. There's a clear relationship — and that has been since the day we got really conscious. It was there in the jungle, and it has continued with us.
And the Bhagavad Gita presents a solution to that. So the Bhagavad Gita is actually offering a solution to an eternal problem, which is obviously relevant even today and will be relevant even in the future. That's the reason why I chose to teach this, and why it is benefiting so many people.
Ankit Tyagi: I want to quote something from your book, but before I do that, very quickly I want to ask you something, because it's a very common phrase, because we are talking about women as property, and from the time of Bhagavad Gita and how it was, what Arjuna said, and how it was in a way demolished by what — the arguments that Lord Krishna gave.
But Ghar ki Izzat — Why is the onus on the women? And hence, we see that women become the biggest casualty of a war, right? I mean, the whole notion of ravaging a woman becomes putting a nation down or putting a family down.
How is it — how does one break those shackles of thinking that women hold all the...
Acharya Prashant: By simply asking: how does one define the term "honor"? If honor refers to my ability to keep my women subdued in the name of safety, then 'two hoots to such honor.' Who wants this kind of honor?
And that's what has happened. A person is honorable, a father is honorable, a family is honorable, a village or a tribe is honorable, if it can keep its women disciplined, in order, marry them off as per the prescribed notions, and then everything can be said to be honorable.
And if anything goes astray — if a woman decides on her own, rightly, wrongly, whatever — but she has decided on her own to deviate — then it is dishonor. And since it is dishonor, the answer can be honor killing. That's what we witness.
So all these are very, very flawed, very violent, very ignorant notions of honor. And the real purpose of culture is to keep discarding such notions and cleansing itself from within. But instead, culture often becomes rigid and chooses to retain all the rubbish of the past. The concept of honor, also the concept of shame.
Ankit Tyagi: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: These are two very related notions. No? Haya and Izzat — Sharam and Izzat — Lajjā and Sammān. These are honor and shame. These are related notions. And therefore, one has to take it with a pinch of salt when somebody says, "You are shameless." What does the word "shame" mean in the first place? One has to specify that.
Ankit Tyagi: Yeah, I mean why should women bear the burden of the honor of any family or anybody else?
I want to quote from your book since we are talking about this on page 78. You say — Arjuna says, "You see, if I fight, all the Kshatriyas — like you were talking about — "the men will be gone and they will be corrupted." Once again, even in this, isn't this orthodox notion, how do you completely dispel that?
Acharya Prashant: By understanding that, you can have no lasting pleasure or completion, fulfillment, contentment by owning anything — including a person, including a person of the other gender. That is not going to give you anything.
Just that in the course of history, the principal source of energy was the physical muscle, and men happened to be more muscular in the course of evolution than women. Therefore, they acquired a more primary role in the state of social affairs. But that is no more the case. Today, there is so much energy being expended here that's not coming from our muscles. We have alternate sources of energy.
Men and women are actually equals when it comes to their contribution, their ability in the society.
So, these things have to be kept aside. But when there is this idea that whatever is flowing in from the past is necessarily wonderful, then that obfuscates the bare fact in front of you. Then, you can't see reality because you worship the past so much.
