What Lies Beneath: Mapping Repressive Practices Against Women In Meitei Society
- Part 2 -

Shreema Ningombam *

REPRESSION OF WOMEN: SYMBOLS AND POSSIBLE MEANINGS

The beginning of the domestication of plants and animal in human history called for the need for some one to stay at home and take care of the herd, farm and family especially children who were considered pool of the future labour force. Men by dint of their sheer physical strength acquired women as property then subjugated them and bound them home.

Thus, originates the first form of subjugation and the first form of acquisition of private property in the form of women. Friedrich Engels postulated the above hypothesis in his classic The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State. Women became the first property to be privatized by men. Without going into the nitty-gritty over the rationale behind the claims by Engels, the idea of commodification of women in Meitei society can be analyzed from various practices both symbolic and real. Beginning with the caution that the practices I shall be describing are not the outcome of generalization rather, they are random selections from my discussions with colleagues and my own observations.

The first thing I would like to take up is the issue of touching men's feet by women at least on the day of elopement or on the day of marriage. Secondly, married women sometimes eat only after their husbands or in-laws have eaten. Thirdly, in any religious feasts or Ushob (a Manipuri derivative of the Sanskrit term Utsav), the highest pedestal is occupied by the patriarchs and women are further excluded in any serious ritual practices. Fourthly, the ostracisation of women during their menstrual cycle called "mangba" or impure.

Next, I would like to take up the issue of serving the wife with the leftover of her husband's on the day of marriage, the essential social qualities for a yatra-pubi/lai pubis or ritual parade leader, the stigma attached to a women who had eloped and last but not the least, the issue of the notion of the sight of phanek (a kind of sarong/wraparound worn by Meitei women) as inauspicious.

However uncomfortable, we should at least make an attempt to understand whether these practices are the remnants of the infiltration of the Hindu practices or not. Do they carry intrinsically the very notion of 'inferiority and subordination' of women. Some might opine that the following are just the outpourings and feelings of disgruntled women but I request all to desist from making a water-tight distinction between subjective rhetoric and objective analysis for a while as one reads them. The purpose is to be reflective and initiate a dialogue at the same time.

THE SUBSERVIENT TOUCH AND THE WORLD OF LEFTOVERS

What ritual practice was followed when a woman exhibit reverence to her husband. Before the advent of Hinduism or Vaishnavite tradition in Manipur whether this act was in practice or not is left to our researchers to investigate. What I am concerned at the moment is the fact that in the existing plethora of art, literature or folklores of the land, there is nothing to suggest instances of women touching her husband's feet predating the coming of Hinduism in Manipur.

This suggests that there is ample evidence that this practice proliferated after most Meiteis became Vaishnav Hindus. One should clearly understand the subtle difference between "Luk Nonba' and the 'touching of the feet'.

The virtual motive behind this act is to show a mark of respect or reverence or love to their husbands. But the real motive ingrained deeply in the act is that women are subservient or subordinated to their men folk. If this symbolic act is just to represent respect or reverence, why do men refrain from doing the same to their wives? Obviously, they do the same to their mother. The underlying text or the sub-text behind this act seems to suggest that women lay at the mercy of their husbands and their egos.

A woman with all her sense of objectivity and subjectivity will constantly question the existing status quo. What about men? Are they still going to endorse this act merely because this act symbolizes their manhood and power? This question, I feel not many Meitei men would love to answer. Nevertheless, it is left to the moral responsibility of those who choose to opt for an equitable society regardless of sex or gender, so that they can at least rationalized the act or denounce it as an act of domination and oppression. One should never forget that chivalry does not lie in dominating the weak but in respecting the other however weak or different they are.

The phenomenon of women eating only after their husbands and male family members have eaten might have lost its relevance to most of my readers who hail from open and nuclear families. But this act is quite common. In the first formal dinner as a member of her husband's family, the wife is served with the leftover (chak aremba) of her husband. Mostly, the custom is executed nominally without even knowing the meaning and the purpose of the performance

The problem here is the meaning, the hidden intention and the latent idea that the act carries and symbolizes. The act symbolizes the wife's subordinate position to her husband from the first conjugal night onwards. It symbolizes man's domination over women not physically but psychologically as well. The act is considered so natural that the performer as well as those who socialize her to perform this act find nothing wrong in the custom. The norm is so entrenched that questioning it would seem like questioning the process and purpose of breathing itself.

The very phenomenon denies the women the right to eat whenever they are hungry. We often talk of human rights and even the rights of animals but the rights of women seem to elude every one's mind. One might argue that women perform such acts with all their consent but one fails to realize that this very act is constructed and ingrained in the minds of women through the process of socialization "to be feminine".

Women should not be feeling hungry until and unless their husbands and in-laws are hungry. It seems even the biological clock of a woman is timed by her husband and in-laws. This entails that a woman is a robot, a machine that can be made to do multiple work ranging from washing, cleaning, cooking to changing diapers but the very fuel that runs this engine is filled by her husband and in-laws. It is the moral responsibility of every man to transmute his robot into a real woman in flesh and blood, a woman whose heart beats, whose lungs breathes, whose mind works and whose will is just as same as his.

OSTRACISM: BLOOD, SWEAT AND SARONGS

One of the most touchy issues that have afflicted thinking women have been the practice of 'purity and pollution' based on a woman's menstrual cycle. During menstruation period women are not allowed to touch any 'clean' object of the kitchen, they are not permitted to worship the household deities nor are they allowed to have conjugal relation (at least superficially). These practices when glanced from a perspective, looks as if women have been given a week long vacation from the household chores, services rendered to the gods and of course conjugal/sexual obligations to their husbands.

In reality, during these period most women are made to do all the mucky activities of the household ranging from wiping floor to washing clothes to cleaning dishes. Women do not claim that they are desperate to occupy a permanent space in the kitchen and keep on working even during those five days of menstruation in a month. There have been many who have argued that ostracizing of a woman during her menstrual cycle have certain logic.

If menstrual blood is considered unhygienic and unclean, so it is true even for all excreted matter like urine, faeces, or sweat. There were times, when women during menstrual period were prohibited from even going near sources of water like leikais (community) ponds and wells. And women during this period is called 'mangba' connoting and suggesting that the women during this period are 'impure' as used in the context of an object. There have been many feminists who argue that the whole notion of impurity of menstrual blood is a social construct to marginalize women.

From this very blood, life springs forth. In some Meitei customs, piece of mother's phanek (a sarong worn by Meitei women) used at the time of birth is put inside a tiny copper cylindrical container and carried as a talisman by the woman's offspring whenever the person goes to far flung lands. This was used to ward off evil spirit and ill omen. This signifies the importance given to the mother's blood in the pre-Hindu days.

Another interpretation is that the lai-tin (evil spirits) does not like to touch a person who is 'polluted' as the person associated with her mother's piece of phanek which is polluted, so, she is free from the fear of harm done by evil spirits. We can see the idea of pollution has even infiltrated the interpretation itself in later stages.

Women are not considered fit for any ritual practices because of the notion that women are impure as they menstruate and has to go through the process of childbirth. This must have been a later day notion that seeped through the arrival of the Brahmanical practice into the Meitei culture which was originally unknown to them. An alien practice that upsets the very egalitarian balance in our society needs to be uprooted.

to be continued....