LESSON-3 WOMEN NOT THE WEAKER SEX -Mahatma Gandhi

UNIT-I

 LESSON-3

 WOMEN NOT THE WEAKER SEX

-Mahatma Gandhi

 

If I was born a woman, I would rise in rebellion against any pretension on the part of man that woman is born to be his plaything. I have mentally become a woman in order to steal into her heart. I could not steal into my wife’s heart until I decided to treat her differently than I used to do, and so I restored to her all her today as simple as myself. You find no necklaces, no fineries, and the slaves of men. Refuse to decorate yourselves, and don’t go in for scents and lavender waters. If you (women) want to give out the proper scent it must come out of your heart, and then you will captivate not man, but humanity. It is your birth-right. Man is born of woman, he is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. Come to your own and deliver your message again.

Woman must cease to consider herself the object of man’s lust. The remedy is more in her hands than man’s. She must refuse to adorn herself for men, including her husband, if she will be an equal partner with man. I cannot imagine Sita wasting even a single moment on pleasing Rama by physical charms.

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity. To me, the female sex, is not the weaker sex. It is the nobler of the two, for it is even today the embodiment of sacrifice, silent suffering, humility, faith and knowledge.

Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realize what a tremendous advantage she has over man. As Tolstoy used to say, they are laboring under the hypnotic influence of man. If they would realize the strength of non-violence they would not consent to be called the weaker sex.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not greater courage? Without her man could not be. If non-violence is the law of our being. The future is with woman……. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?

Had not man in his blind selfishness crushed woman’s soul as he has done or had she not succumbed to ‘the enjoyments’ she would have given the world an exhibition of the infinite strength that is latent in her. The world shall see it in all its wonder and glory when woman has secured an equal opportunity for herself with man and fully developed her power of mutual aid  and combination.

Women are special custodians of all that is pure and religious in life. Conservative by nature, if they are slow to shed superstitious habits, they are also slow to give up all that is pure and noble in life.

I am uncompromising in the matter of women’s rights. In my opinion she should labour under no legal disability not suffered by man. I should treat daughters and sons on a footing of perfect equality.

I believe in the proper education of women. But I do believe that woman will not make her contribution to the world by mimicking or running a race with man. She can run the race, but she will not rise to the great heights she is capable of by mimicking man. She has to be the complement of man.