Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (57 page)

Catching a cold during the period, says Savitri, will lead to its sudden arrest and that can become a source of many ailments. Therefore, she claims, the visionary chroniclers of the shastras had argued in favour of isolating a menstruating woman: ‘Such a provision helped the woman in carrying out her dharma (duty) and protecting her health.’

Sarala then asks about precautions to be taken during pregnancy. Again, a woman must abstain from sex during this period—Savitri says even in normal circumstances the husband and wife should not share a bed, and this should be even more strictly adhered to during pregnancy. The rest of the rules are more in the nature of common sense—a pregnant woman should not lift heavy things, she should not consume tea, coffee or bhang, or any medicine without consulting a vaidya, she should wear light and clean clothes and avoid fighting, shouting or crying. An expecting mother is advised to frequently eat small quantities of nutritional food, drink clean water, maintain cleanliness in the house and bathe at least once every day. For positive energy she should keep photographs of sadhus or brave men before her, avoid anger, greed and arrogance, not listen to immoral stories but instead select sections of scriptures like the Shantiparva of the Mahabharata, the third and the eleventh chapters of the Bhagavadgita, the
Ramcharitmanas
of Tulsidas and important stories from other religious texts.

Savitri assures Sarala that if the rules of pregnancy are followed, a woman can have a child like Prahlad, Dhruv, Narada, Harishchandra, Buddha, Sita or Savitri—this would be beneficial to herself and to the world.
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The birth of a male child was not about chromosomes, but the responsibility of the mother. ‘An intelligent, talented, brave and religious male child’ could be produced only if she followed some additional rules of piety and self-control.
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These included not piercing the nose or any part of the body; not touching impure things; not conversing with cunning people; not stepping out of the house without tying the hair, covering the body and keeping words under check; not eating food served by a shudra; not sleeping with her head towards the north or west; not sleeping in the evening; and not sleeping next to anyone else. In the morning, a pregnant woman was expected to wear washed clothes and worship the cow, brahmin, Narayan and Lakshmi. The husband was to be venerated separately with sandal paste, garland and food items.

The regimen for a woman desiring a male child kept getting longer and more complex, curious and comical. Citing Charaka, Poddar said that a woman who wished for a healthy and famous son should have a darshan of a white bull every morning after her bath,
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as the Hindu shastras clearly spelt out that whoever a pregnant woman saw in the morning impacted her mind and a similar child was born. He claimed that a white pregnant woman, whose room had a picture of an African, gave birth to a son who also looked like an African, and in another case, a brahmin woman who had seen a Pathan man in the morning became mother of a son who in life became a ‘characterless Pathan’. In order to dissuade women from having sex during pregnancy, Poddar created the disturbing possibility of this leading to a fetus without limbs.

At the time of childbirth, there were more rules to be followed. Apart from emphasizing the cleanliness of the place where the child was to be delivered, Savitri stressed the importance of the personal hygiene of the dai (traditional midwife). Further, it said that since most dais were either Muslim or belonged to the lower chamar caste—two communities outside the realm of twice-born (brahmin, kshatriya and vaishya) and hence despised by caste Hindus—their cleanliness was a major issue; besides, Gita Press was caught in a dilemma of sorts between the traditional system of dais helping in childbirth at home, and the new system of hospitals and nursing homes with doctors and nurses trained in advanced Western methods of child delivery, that was slowly making inroads in cities and small towns.

Significantly, Savitri makes it clear that no distinction be made in rearing a male and a female child. The importance of mother’s milk and its nutritional and medicinal values is stressed, and those ‘fashionable educated women’ who do not breastfeed their children for fear of losing their youth are criticized. Like a doctor, Savitri prescribes feeding at fixed intervals and provides a clear chart of the time and quantity of milk that a child should be fed. She warns against overfeeding or under- feeding a child, and says a mother should avoid feeding when angry, excited or sorrowful.

This positive discourse on mother’s milk turns regressive and patriarchal once again when it comes to a new mother’s sexual relationship with her husband. Savitri states that early resumption of the sexual relationship has an adverse impact on mother’s milk and by extension on the child’s health. More to the point, she warns, ‘Repeated pregnancy permanently destroys her health.’
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Regarding the health of mother and child, Savitri tells Sarala that older women in the family have more knowledge and wisdom than doctors or vaidyas. Further, good health is considered a by-product of a healthy and clean mind that, again, is possible only if one follows a strict regimen of self-control, piety and devotion to God.

Even in the 1940s, by which time modern medicine had taken deep root in India,
Nari Ank
listed four reasons why women fell ill, one of which was their indulging in too much fashion—wearing high-heeled shoes, applying cream, powder and lipstick.
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However, more plausible reasons were also given—lack of exercise, irregular food habits, leading an extravagant life. Women were told to maintain a healthy lifestyle and work hard; only then was it possible that ‘no man would cast an evil eye on them’. Grinding corn in a hand mill was showcased as the epitome of hard work that could prevent ill health. Most of the health issues mentioned in
Nari Ank
related to the menstrual cycle (irregular, excessive bleeding), childbirth and stomach ailments. Women were advised to resort to home remedies, and only consult a vaidya if these did not work, never a modern medical practitioner.

Goyandka specifically warned women to avoid foreign medicines as he claimed they consisted of a mix of garlic, onion, alcohol, meat, animal fat, blood and eggs—all of which ‘destroys religion and health’.
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Western medicine was included in the long list of prohibited foods for women, like biscuits, ice, soda water, lemonade and foreign-made syrups. Also to be avoided were foods that were sour and tasty, including betel leaf and betel nut.

Further, only children of those mothers who were careless and themselves led an undisciplined and thoughtless lives fell sick.
Nari Ank
offered indigenous remedies for twenty-one common ailments among children, ranging from the common cold to stomach ache, with express advice to mothers not to give any other medicines—or administer only small amounts if need be.
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Even today, Gita Press continues to dole out home remedies for children’s ailments, though its resistance to doctors has ebbed somewhat.
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However, when it comes to AIDS, Gita Press invokes morality and blames the prevalence of the disease in India to the erosion of ‘self- control and traditional values’ under the influence of Western culture.
Kalyan
traces the cause of AIDS to ‘illegitimate, immoderate sexual relationships’, and recommends the study of religious texts, the Ramayana and the Gita, as the best way to curb such desires.
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Gita Press’s patriarchal stranglehold over a woman’s sexuality was not limited to her biological self but also extended to deciding what she should wear.
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Prescribing a certain style of dress was not just about protecting women’s modesty, but was directed against women who were challenging traditional notions of appropriate attire. Gita Press highlighted the ‘magical or transformative use’ of clothes ‘in which the moral and physical being of the wearer/recipient was perceived to be actually changed by the innate qualities of the cloth or the spirit and substance (holy, strengthening, or polluting) it conveyed’.
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Ramcharan Mahendra, a writer from the Gita Press stable who penned many monographs, made a distinction between Hindu and Muslim dress.
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Mahendra’s thesis was that dress had a relationship with culture and religion. While this itself was nothing new, Mahendra highlighted the relative superiority of Hindu dress—sari, dhoti and kurta—‘worn by the likes of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit even abroad’. Hindu dress was considered the best for its cleanliness, beauty and dignity.

On the other hand, he demonized the culture of the Christians and Muslims: ‘Angrezi (Christian) and Islamic religion and culture are based on the concept of pleasure. Obscenity, frivolousness and nudity are prevalent in them. They only stress external beauty. By consuming alcohol and meat, they have forgotten human values and indulge only in pleasure for the senses.’ He asked people to wear Angrezi or Muslim dress and experience its influence on their thinking and attitude: ‘Just like the military dress gives rise to the feeling of violence, animal instincts, terror, pride and desire to oppress others, the dress of Muslims gives birth to sensual desires, selfishness, exhibitionism and frivolousness.’

Such a moral twist to dressing, howsoever powerful, could not have made much difference had it not been married to the economic factor of threat to Indian textiles from cheap British imports. As Emma Tarlo explains, the nationalist movement wove together ‘political, economic, aesthetic and moral arguments under the leadership of Gandhi who tried to encourage all Indians to revert to Indian dress’.
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The Gita Press template on women’s dress, as on every other issue, was provided by its forty-six-page all-time best-seller
Stri Dharma
Prashnottari
and reinforced in
Nari Ank
. Arguments based on morality, religion, politics and economics were blended to dissuade women from wearing Western clothes or using too much jewellery. Any woman breaching this code was considered as challenging the very notion of simplicity, the hallmark of a devout Hindu wife. Such an attitude was termed a ‘love for luxury’ and included in the inexhaustible list of ‘corrupting characteristics of women’ (nari ke dushan).
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In the Sarala–Savitri dialogue, Savitri says a woman should dress up only for her husband’s happiness and not to show-off in public. A woman who moves around shabbily at home but dresses up before venturing out, commits a huge mistake, she says. One, there is a fear of getting robbed. Two, ‘jewellery and clothes become a reason for women to start fighting within the family that often creates division among brothers and even father and sons. Such developments sound the death knell of the family.’
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When Sarala inquires whether it is wrong if a woman who dresses up at home makes demands on her husband for clothes and jewels, Savitri replies that too much interest in make-up, clothes and jewellery takes a woman on the path of luxury and she starts shunning household work. ‘Making constant demands on the husband reduces love between the two. A woman should be attached to her husband. It is also the duty of the husband to provide clothes and jewels to his wife from time to time. If he is stingy, it is his fault, but it is the husband’s task, so only he should think about it. A woman’s happiness lies in what makes her husband happy. If the husband does not have the economic wherewithal to get new clothes and jewels and his wife harasses him every day, it has an adverse impact on him.’

In tune with the nationalist narrative, Savitri also advises women to discard foreign-made silk clothes. Besides arguing that the use of foreign cloth causes a big loss to the nation’s economy, she introduces the old concept of pure versus impure, ethical versus unethical. Foreign or mill- made cloth, Savitri says, consists of animal fat: ‘Lakhs of tons of animal fat is used to make such cloth. Similarly, silk is made after killing innumerable worms. Therefore as far as possible you should wear hand-spun (khadi) clothes. They do not consist of fat but help poor brothers and sisters to remain employed . . . animals would not be killed, purity would be retained, lajja (shame or sanctity) would not be lost and dharma would be saved.’
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In this demonizing of foreign cloth, ‘arguments far removed from Gandhi’s’ were often made—for example one of Gandhi’s associates telling people in Gujarat that cow fat was mixed in the manufacture of foreign cloth, or a leaflet stating that a thousand pounds of coloured Manchester cloth consisted of 300 pounds of cow and pig blood.
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On his part, Poddar argued that khadi should be worn both for the sake of Swaraj and of religion: ‘I consider khadi to be of help in artha (economy), dharma (religion), kama (sexuality) and moksha (freedom from rebirth).’
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Even after the attainment of Swaraj, he appealed to people to adopt khadi, as the ‘moment it is worn a person forgets all his desires and loses many defects of character’.
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Birth Control and Abortion
Even though, by the mid-1930s, Poddar’s relationship with Gandhi had started wearing thin on many counts, certain ideas and principles the Mahatma held helped the Gita Press counter threats to its views on women’s sexuality. One such threat was the use of contraceptives by women as a means of ‘birth control’—a term coined by Margaret Sanger, the American feminist and propagator of the slogan ‘every child should be a wanted child’. The use of contraceptives by women was still in its infancy worldwide and was being resisted by conservative elements, and Sanger was tirelessly lobbying for a woman’s right to choose when to have a child.

At the end of 1935, Gandhi in a long interview to Sanger had argued that the remedy did not lie in contraception or any other artificial birth-control measure but in women saying ‘no to their husbands when they approach them carnally’.
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Confident that husbands, not all of whom were ‘brutes’, would understand this resistance from their wives, a method he claimed to have taught to many women, Gandhi upheld another principle—that physical union should take place only to produce children. Otherwise, he told Sanger: ‘When both want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer the consequences of their act it is not love, it is lust . . . When a husband says, “Let us not have children, but let us have relations”, what is that but animal passion?’