Daughters have lit pyres before Covid
WITH reference to the column, “The curse of the caste”, by Sumit Ganguly (the POST, May 12-16).
It states: “Five years ago, when Modi first swept into power, many Dalits believed his promises to uplift the country’s poor and duly voted for him.
“However, after the divisive leadership of his first term in office and their experience in the lockdown, many Dalits are now disillusioned with him and his Bharatiya Janata Party.”
So if his assertion is true, why did the recent West Bengal election show something different?
An article in the Telegraph India dated May 3, 2021, titled “The results of the West Bengal assembly elections deserve a close analysis”, states that a breakdown of the recent West Bengal election results indicated that in 2019, the strongest support for the BJP came from the other backward classes (OBC) and Dalit communities.
According to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Lokniti findings, it secured 49% support from OBCs, 59% from Rajbanshis, 58% from Namashudras (including Matuas), 52% from other Dalit communities and 46% from adivasis.
In the same edition of the POST, the column “People forced to change rituals”, Natasha Mikles said: “Young women may be the only ones available to light the funerary pyre, which was previously not permissible.”
Nowhere in ancient Hindu texts are women excluded from the honour. However, it is a sad reality that foreign imposition has had an adverse effect on the more liberated, less restrictive lives that women in ancient India enjoyed. Men are usually chosen as the supposedly stronger sex.
In 2014, Maharashtra BJP leader Gopinath Munde’s daughter Pankaja Munde lit the funeral pyre of her father in front of the country’s political elite in a bold message to the conservatives.
In November 2016, four women shouldered the bier of their father Yogesh Chandra Upadhyaya to the cremation ground and lit the pyre at the Harishchandra Ghat cremation ground to perform the last rites.
“Our father was proud of us and never thought of us any less than a son. We will perform all rituals of shradh as per the tradition,” said Garima, who took care of her ill father for one-and-a-half years.
Former BJP prime minister Atul Behari Vajpayee had chosen his adopted daughter, Namita Kaul Bhattacharya, to light the fire in 2018.
So it is not Covid-19 that is forcing daughters to do the honours. It has been done before.
SANU SINGH Reservoir Hills