Dr. Padma V Mckertich
It was the day after my son was born that I realized how differently religious groups dealt with the post partum female body. Having been brought up in a not-so-orthodox Brahmin household which nevertheless followed many practices of menstruation related isolation, I was completely flummoxed when a nurse at the hospital offered me a packet of sacred kumkum from the nearby Amman temple. I hesitated; my mother stood somewhat aghast by my side. No doubt to pre-empt any blasphemous act of religiosity or spirituality on my part — after all I was bleeding and ‘unclean’ — my mother informed the nurse that I ought not to take the kumkum. “Oh”, replied the nurse, “but this is OK. It is from the Goddess. She is a woman”.
That the Goddess’s sex would allow me, a woman, the freedom that religiosity to a God depicted as male could not, came as a surprise and a welcome relief. That Amman was, like me a woman and therefore someone who would understand me and my body was a completely new idea, not one I had ever been exposed to.
Temples to the Amman dot every corner of Tamil Nadu, indeed, every part of South India. Considered especially powerful, religiosity to Amman is heavily mediated among Tamil Brahmin households by a patriarchal control over the female body and female desires. While I religiously visited the Amman temple near my house, I really approached her using the heavily tinted lens of Brahminical patriarchal orthodoxy.
As I grew older, and I hope wiser, I became increasingly aware of these tints. While preparing to teach a course on Bhakti literatures from around the world, I also became aware that the Goddess was always a mother figure, never the beloved or friend that Krishna often was. I wondered why; like any human woman, was the Goddess too seen only in her maternal aspect? At the same time, the unbridled celebration of the female body in Andal’s poems appealed to me at a level that I still have not been able to fathom. Married into a Catholic family, the figure of Mother Mary too felt inexplicably close to me. To me, the virgin birth always felt a celebration of the female body, just like I always felt that Mary’s meeting with her cousin Elizabeth was an intensely feminine experience. I consciously began to look for traditions that celebrated the female body and female desire. It was thus that I came to goddess centric practices from around the world.
With my reading on women’s issues and gender studies fresh in my mind, it did not take me long to discover that almost all religions have a strong ‘feminine’ strain in them, a strain that is often suppressed. Able now to deconstruct cultural practices with more confidence than before, I began to notice that families around me that worshipped some form of Amman were far more welcoming of girl children and understanding of the female body.
Today, at middle age, I realize with more clarity than before that Goddess traditions celebrate change, aging, death and rejuvenation, that they encourage us to keep in touch with the rhythms of our bodies and they offer space, community and courage to speak out against forms of injustice. For these spiritual traditions to make meaning to me, I need to temper them with my own experiences and approach them from a point of view that is simultaneously my own and larger than me.
I also realize that all of us need to draw upon all the spiritual heritages that we are heir to, while being courageous enough to draw the contours of new heritages that our descendants can have recourse to. Like the image of the moon and waters that connects goddess traditions around the world, we need to be open to change and transformation, especially of things closest to us.
About the Author:
Dr. Padma V Mckertich is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Stella Maris College, Chennai, India. Her PhD (University of Madras) was on Indian fiction in English and the bhashas in the 1980s and was published by Orient Blackswan as Fiction as Window. Her articles on areas such as Indian Literatures, Literature and Science, and Bhakti Studies have appeared in a number of national and international journals. She has also translated S Ramakrishnan’s Tamil play Aravaan into English and co-edited a collection of translations titled Four Tamil Plays and an anthology of essays on interfaith dialogue titled My Faith and Others.
