View Comments

• Pranam Prabhu.

  If women can never be Brahmanas , then why there was this concept of anuloma and pratiloma in the marriages in the vedic culture ?

  • Pranam Prabhu.

    Let me answer your question in less technical terms so that everyone can understand it quickly and easily. For more technical details or clarifications, you may call me.

    According to the technical terms of dharma-sastras, women do not have varna, however, in principle (in terms of modes of material nature), they do have a varna --that is sudra. Please see the following:

    “Prabhupada: In, actually, in Bengal, Bengal has lost its original culture. In other provinces the brahmana class, they are keeping very strictly the original culture. Even a brahmana would not accept foodstuff prepared by his wife, because woman is considered sudra. The woman, when she becomes the wife of a brahmana, then she is called brahmani, but she's not offered brahminical culture. She remains as sudra. So therefore a strict brahmana does not accept foodstuff prepared by his wife. Still there are in U.P. The wife will arrange for cooking, and he'll sit down and cook dal, capatis. Then he will eat, and whatever remains, that is there, that will be taken by her. But he will not take foodstuff cooked by his wife even.” Room Conversation--August 2, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm)

    Let me clarify this a bit. The technical definition of Varna is applicable to the combination of guna and karma according to BG (4.13). Thus, unless there is karma associated with guna, a woman cannot be said to possess a varna because her duty is only assisting her husband (just like a sudra assists his master). One may then question why women are not called sudras? The answer is there could be many reasons:

    (1) Apart from assisting one's husband, a woman has a distinct function of giving birth to children that separates her from just being a sudra.

    (2) The social role or varna of children depends upon the social hierarchy of the varnas. For example, a male child born of a brahmana-father and brahmana-mother will act as brahmana in the society. A brahmana-boy cannot marry a girl born of sudra father or a sudra-boy cannot marry a brahmana-girl, for this will lead to confusion of varna of that child (which we all are facing today). When the social hierarchy amongst varnas is well maintained, then there is less cavos in terms of deciding someone's varna. Generally, when Vedic culture is maintained strictly, varna is decided just by birth, for that is the most practical and easiest way of dealing with allocating varna to anyone. Nowadays, there is somuch varna-sankarya (mixing of varnas) that it has become a little troublesome to ascertain someone's varna by observing someone's symptoms yasya yal-laksanam proktam SB (7.11.35).

    (3) One may question but when women are sudras anyway then what difference does it make to distinguish between brahmana-woman or sudra-woman. The answer is: The rules of dharma-sastras are aimed at promoting dharma (in contrast to kama or sense gratification -- one of the purusarthas) in the society at large, that is more conducive for spiritual life. From the point of view of kama, there doesn't appear anything wrong if a brahmana-boy marries a sudra-girl or a sudra-boy marries a brahmana-girl, however, life is not just meant for kama but for spiritual elevation that can be achieved only when we have prominence of dharma or dharmic people in the society.

    (4) Furthermore, the social dealings (in terms of respect or accepting food or gifts) between all varnas will be disturbed if a brahmana-boy marries a sudra-woman or sudra-boy marries a brahmana-woman.

    (5) The mixing of varnas gives rise to pratiloma-marriages (girl born in a higher varna and boy from the lower varna). The pratiloma-marriage is generally discouraged because that reflects the prominence of kama (not dharma) in such relationships. And, when there is prominence of kama in the society (as we see today), we cannot expect good progeny or dharmic-population in the society.

    Furthermore, how should we correctly understand and recognize the manifestation of these guṇas within a woman?

    Just like, within sudras, based on the mixture of various gunas, there are brahmana-sudras (artists), ksatriya-sudras (military assistants), vaisya-sudras (business assistants) and sudra-sudras (laborers), a woman born of a Brahmana father is a brahmana-sudra (having some intellectual capacity/talent), a woman born of a Ksatriya-father is a ksatriya-sudra woman (having ksatriya-spirit) and so on. Thus, a brahmana-sudra woman is more conducive to support a brahmana-husband, a ksatriya-sudra woman is more conducive to support a ksatriya-husband and so on. And, therefore, we see a strong expectation of marriage within the same caste in older generations. There are many other social considerations as well, as mentioned just above.

    Women, in general, are called sudras because they are by nature sudras -- dominated by mode of passion and ignorance. Moreover, they also share a common nature of sudras --that is lamentation (socati iti sudrah). Even great ladies like Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi were seen lamenting over loss of kingdom and relatives, hence, no woman is an exception to this.

    CONCLUDING REMARKS: Women, by nature, are sudras, however, they have particular duties (giving birth to good progeny and sanity) in the society that they have been often classified everywhere in the sastras as a separate class though their duties (karma) and samskaras (jata-karma ityadi) are similar to that of sudras. (both women and sudras are like children, and therefore, they need to be under someone to be protected both physically and mentally, spiritually of course!)

    Men and Women are never equal. The rise of feminism has destroyed society. Please watch this:

    https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17tf6P2NLr/?mibextid=wwXIfr

    and

    https://youtu.be/xN1keAUqohM

    Hope this act of mine pleases Sri Hari-Guru-Vaisnavas,

    dasabhasa, jay nityananda das.

• Devotee is a neutral gender - we can’t discriminate between genders in terms of any kind of learning - be it formal education in schools, colleges, any academic institution or for that matter spiritual education in the form of “Guru & Sishwa” - mentor and disciple.

• Very strong argument against female Diksha Guru, GBC must consider the voice of ISCON devotees. We are Prabhupad followers and Srila Prabhupad, never introduced this. This is against the teachings of Srila Prabhupad.
  Hare Krishna🙏🙏🙏

  • If the argument is that Srila Prabhupada did not name any females in the initial list of eleven white male devotees, then why does the GBC allow Black, Indian, Oriental, Mexican and other Latinos, to be allowed to initiate, when in fact he only mentioned the names of eleven White American male devotees, most of whom fell down.

    • Prabhu, please read ALL of the quoted purports of Srila Prabhupada before commenting - with all due respect.

      Prabhupada did not distinguish as you have. He distinguished between members of the three varna, bramanas, kshatriyas, and vaishyas, the "twice born" and the shudras. He wrote that shudras can be elevated to becoming brahmanas, but NOT women. Please read and re-read what Prabhupada taught.