The author of a modernist apology for the "synthetic culture" of the Indo-Aryans makes claims which are simply untenable in the light of available material on the early history of India. He says contradictory things in the same breath. On the one hand, for ex-ample, he claims that the Indo-Aryan culture is a synthetic product while, on the other, he holds that "it was the highly educated brain and the organizing Aryan genius which played the determinative part in giving that product the shape and direction it is seen to have taken" (Ghose 1988: iii). He speaks of `mass conversion ceremonies' (Vratyastoma Yajnas) organized by the Indo-Aryans to Aryanize the non-Aryans and then he claims that the former borrowed many beliefs and customs from the latter. His book is on the whole replete with confused and confusing generalizations or Indo-Aryan literature and culture. But two of his general propositions call for a critical scrutiny. One of these propositions contends that the incoming Aryans did not confront or subdue the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Indus Valley simply because there was, he believes, an interval of at least a thousand years between the 'catastrophic' disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization and the advent of the Aryans into the Indus Valley region (cf. p. 241).
Historical opinion on the real cause of the disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization (or the Harappan Culture) is divided. But a number of historians agree that the advent of the Aryans was the most probable cause of such disappearance. The Aryans came to India with fire, sword, chariot, horse and a radically different culture. It was only natural that they confronted and subdued the native inhabitants (cf. Thapar 1966: 34, Allchin 1968: 143, Majumdar et. al., 1978: 14, Smith 1981:32 & Mahajan 1990: 47). Apologists like Ghose have therefore to be continually reminded that the history of Hindu-ism derives its identity from the systematic Aryanization of the non-Aryans as much as from the firm institutionalization of Aryan customs, beliefs and manners. There seems to be little doubt that those who established Hinduism as a system of faith and a way of socio-political behaviour were the tall, fair-skinned, long-nosed, 'hand-some' and powerful Aryans who took excessive pride in their cultural advancement, intellectual maturity and physical superiority and who intensely feared and hated the relatively shorter, dark-skinned, snub-nosed and less sophisticated inhabitants of pre-Aryan India. The Aryans and the pre-Aryans represented the polarities of a human population. They differed from one another in so many ways and to such an extent as there was hardly anything common between them. Pre-Aryan customs, beliefs and institutions were treated with contempt by the invading Aryans. It was just a quirk of fate that the pre-Aryan inhabitants could not cope with the superior arms and fighting strategies of the incoming Aryans and history took a turn that it did. Now, looking back over the millenia, no academic should try to ambiguate or cover up a fact of history that so pointedly stares us in the face today.
I consider it a great privilege to have been able to go through the manuscript of Dr. R.P. Sharma, Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, on his serious literary work Woman in Hindu Literature. I also consider it my professional duty to gladly accept his request to write an introduction to this very important work. The reason for assigning me this task is the author's decision, since I do not claim to be an authority on Women's Studies in general nor on Hindu women in particular. Though I am a resident of India (Bharat) and an Indian (Bharatiya) by birth, the task is much more difficult for me in view of the fact that, by birth in the periphery of the great Indian tradition, I am a non-Hindu by faith, belonging to a non-patrilineal society and professionally trained in a discipline other than literature. However, this does not deter me from trying to understand the problem of Hindu women as depicted in the present volume as I am a part, perhaps, of what is called Indianness (Bharatiyata). It is with this conviction that with great pleasure I am writing the following few words on the literary work of Sharma who professes himself to be a Hindu.
Women's studies occupy an important place in the curricula of so many educational institutions in our country. For centuries women, all over the world, including India, have been an oppressed lot. After India's independence, our Constitution makers had pledged themselves in the Preamble to the Constitution of India "to secure to all citizens... equality of status". But so far there has been no remarkable achievement in the direction of the actual improvement of the status of women. True, after 1956, some legislative enactments were made for improving the lot of Indian women, particularly in the field of property-ownership. There were also attempts to im-prove their conditions in the fields of education and employment. However, whatever improvement was achieved was by and large the outcome of the general processes of social change or evolution in the country rather than through state legislation. That was why the Government of India thought it necessary to constitute a committee on the status of women by a resolution of the then Ministry of Education and Social Welfare on September 22, 1971 to examine all questions relating to the rights and status of women and to recommend useful guidelines for the formulation of social policies regarding women. The Report of the Committee which was ready by December 1974 was presented to the Government of India in 1975 coinciding with the celebration of the International Women's Year. The International Women's Year was later on extended to the Inter-national Women's Decade (1975-1985). Ever since that time there has been a spurt of activities in studying the status of women in our country. I only hope that our International Women's Year and Inter-national Women's Decade will not turn into an International Women's Century.
In the Preface, Sharma refers to some studies on women carried on in the country. It is the casual nature of such women's studies which really irritates him. These studies fail to raise relevant questions such as: Who is the real woman? What is her real entity? Has she an identity of her own? In the absence of such relevance, the problems of women in India have not been critically examined. There are no doubt some studies of a serious nature on the specific question of the status of Hindu women but he questions their validity too. It appears to me that he takes a stand between the modernist apology of the "synthetic culture" of the Indo-Aryans and the post-modernist defence of the Hindu caste system. In order to take up this difficult position he has to indulge himself in an exercise of self-criticism too. It is to his credit that he has been able to do so as the following pages of this book would indicate.
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