Social Evils Manifesting on Hinduism in Medieval India

      The period after end of classical Indian period of 6th century is generally called early medieval period which goes until end of 12th century CE. This was not a good period for Hinduism on the Indian sub continent in many ways. We have seen how Adi Shankaracharya established his order and spearheaded a great campaign which resulted in substantial success in uprooting the home grown religions of Buddhism and Jainism. But other than this, there were not many examples of good environment for religious growth.

Evil Sati Practice

      As discussed earlier, post-Gupta Dynasty, kingdoms from all directions including those from east, south and northwest tried attacking the Kannauj power for its attraction of Doab, well oiled administration and fertile lands. These brutal fights led to military actions of unforeseen proportions. Finally, after lots of bloodshed, Rajput Kingdoms of various sizes ruled large portion of north side. These rulers were very obsessed with chivalry and feudalism. Another key characteristics of this period was development of regional societies which had very fluid boundaries and their politics was defined more by languages and dialects, sectarian affiliations and temples rather than administration or welfare of subjects. Constant skirmishes on different sides took away long-term perspective from all the rulers. If today is not secured, tomorrow is always forced to wait in desperation. This was the darkest period of Hinduism as all one can hear from this period is gods, temples, inspired poets and sectarian philosophies.

      Situation in South of India was comparatively better as most part was ruled by dynasties for comparatively longer periods with rulers having more energies for promoting all forms of expressions including arts, architecture, dance, music, literature and poetry. The size of the kingdoms was good enough to force all the rulers to maintain the balance without involving violent confrontations. That is the precise reason that one can trace better economic and religious advancements from South throughout the early medieval period.

      But situation in North was deplorable. Most of the northern kingdoms were constantly fighting with each other and going to extra length to weaken the enemy by going to any extremes. The conquering side was to take over what ever they could lay their hands on, including treasures and womenfolk of the losing side. The losing side was either getting killed or run away and waits for regrouping to prepare for counter attack. Everyone was constantly looking to befriend with the actual or possible enemy of their enemy. History is full of examples from this period where one side entered into treaty with some other side to stand by them when attacked.

      The women who were overpowered met with great insult and humiliation. They were treated like prizes and got appropriated, exploited and ill treated, as there was no one to stand for them. In any case, the position of women in higher classes of Brahmins and Kshatriyas was much worse than their counterparts in Vaishyas and Shudras. It is because women in lower class were to contribute towards family occupation and hence it's earning. As opposed to this, higher classes were engaged only in priesthood and martial duties with practically no role for the women except to be a sexual partner to the husband, have children and help them grow. This class division of women in higher and lower classes will be very clear as soon as we relate it to the major evils involving them in later sections.

      Because of this economic usefulness of women, there have been a clear gender divide in higher and lower classes. Higher class families were also supposed to accumulate large resources for marrying off their daughters as marriage functions involved large feasts and gifts for the groom's entire family. The acceptance of another family's daughter as a bride was considered some sort of benevolence that needed to be responded in material terms. As against this, lower class used to welcome addition to the family as another earning hand and has been known to provide cash and other considerations to the family of bride to part with their daughter. These practices of this time sound quite reasonable as they respond to simple economic principle of demand and supply.

      The established practice of monogamy; where one male person could marry only with one female, resulted in worsening of the situation. As a natural phenomenon, the proportion of females is higher than males and India was no exception. With many males getting killed in constant wars (and wars always involved males from regenerative age group) there was double whammy on availability of suitable matches for many daughters. Many people felt that by accepting a bride, the groom and his family is taking up a onerous responsibility of supporting the bride for the rest of her life. In addition, there were inheritance issues where daughters were not entitled to share in her parent's estate post her marriage. This resulted in one-time settlements by handing over some portion of her share at the time of her marriage to her new family. Even Vedic systems provided for the best scenario of a Brahmins daughter's marriage where he gifts her to a suitable boy invited at her parent's place and where the bride's family was to hold a feast for groom and his family and friends. These factors covering religious, economic, demographic and traditional aspects got combined resulting in what we call dowry system.

      Another important off shoot of our class based segregation, especially during early Medieval India period, was a blind desire in lower classes to adopt traditions and customs of higher classes. The superiority of higher classes projected them, at least in the eyes of lower classes, as ideals for social behaviours. Since the beginning of our society; every section sitting on lower step of the social ladder has been aspiring to move up the ladder, sometimes by aping the norms and rituals followed by higher class. As we will see slightly later in this very section, this tendency will give rise to many social evils that infected the Hinduism during this period where things relevant for one higher class (which was like an exception under specific situations) became a general norm for other lower placed castes.

      There was yet another crude attack on social customs of this time after arrival of Turks beginning with first wave of invasions beginning 10th century. These invaders came with the background of tribal culture from Arabia where woman were treated as an object of possession and enjoyment. They and their soldiers were freely roaming around most of the time and used to pick up females mostly unmarried and take them away with them as part of loot. Such events had happened even before when Rajputs were fighting Rajputs but the practice was different with Muslim invaders. While Rajputs were to loot women from ruling clan only, the Muslims would do that at random without looking at class as they didn't care for class segregation. Picking up of a girl by an alien person with a different faith was to bring great disrepute on the entire family to which that abducted female belonged. As the chances of such abductions were higher with unmarried girls, presence of a young unmarried girl in the family was considered a potential invitation to disaster. By the time the Delhi Sultanate settled down in India, most people in the North of the country were found wanting marrying off their daughters at the earliest opportunity. This tendency kept reducing the bride's age and ultimately reached to the cradle. This is the background of early marriage and child marriage which are considered as great social evil of Hindu society.

      By this time, another factor of sub castes also became dominant. For some unknown reasons, the similar profession based sub-class identity; the system of caste and sub-caste took over bulk of Indian social strata. To my understanding, it was leftover impact of sectarian division which always had regional colour attached to it. Somehow, similar occupation-carrying families got identified with caste or sub-castes and many of them under a single region came under influence of some sectarian saint or local deity. Occupational commonality brought them together and forced them to aspire for separate identities leading to strong cult like feeling for their caste. The typecast became stronger and stronger over the period and gave rise to many other customs including early marriages. Increase in feudalism, rivalry, personal honour, hereditary animosity and friendships encouraged parents to fix up matrimonial relations with each other family to avoid any possibility of their young ones going against their caste under juvenile passions. Since the social structure was village based, any cases of person or family going against these customs was heavily penalized. The diktats of Khap Panchayats that we come across even today coming out with their nonsensical sermons are an unfortunate continuity of the system described above.

      The ruling kingdoms and fiefdoms resorted to grow each others juveniles in cross families as a safety for keeping the treaties intact in testing times. Military alliances played bigger role for these kingdoms to create, maintain or destroy balance of political and economic powers among competing kingdoms. Establishing matrimonial relations was considered even more long lasting alliances. Since these alliances were for ensuring power balance, factors like age were not given much importance. This led to many marriages without proper mutual suitability between bride and groom. Many a times, even set traditions of monogamy were kept aside to make way for these alliances. The cultural difference with Muslims chieftains gave rise to another strong reasons for erstwhile fighting Rajput kingdoms to come together against common enemy. This resulted in added urgency for yet another combinations of alliances. The fanatic zeal of foreign aggressors and their brazen and brutal ways of dealing with defeated enemies added only fuel to the fire. It was unfortunate that every such development has to end with added atrocities on women rights and resulted in their increased suppression and exploitation.

      The combined effect of such social, cultural, religious, political and economic factors combined together to bring many social evils throughout Hindu society of this time. The major such problems which created severe road blocks in growth of Hinduism, coupled with foreign rules of Delhi Sultanate followed by Mughals, pushed Hinduism to one of its darkest period. For a long time at this stage of history; a bit of progress by bhakti period movement was the only silver line that encouraged ordinary Hindu to get attached with his cultural roots of some kind. Let us look at some of these social evils in brief details:

1. Gender Inequality: This was the period that reinforced position of male gender as the main earning member and one providing physical protection to his family. The enhanced gap in gender inequality converted women to third, grade members of the society in general. This resulted in substantial drop in their exposure to education and forced, them to observe norms like covering of head in public places. It basically pushed them inside four walls of the household and took away economic freedom.

2. Dowry System: Tracing of this problem will take you to classical Hinduism time of Dharma Shastra of Manu which recommends how a daughter's marriage should be solemnized. A man with daughters became a cursed soul due to impending expenses involved in marrying them off. The social taboos forced parents to spend on daughter's marriage beyond their own financial capacity. Customs forced them to take loans and sell their land holdings to ensure meeting marriage expenses. The original system of voluntary gifts to grooms family got to the state of negotiated demands. Alas, the custom is still prevalent in many parts of the country. The unfortunate part was that tribals and lower caste people who were known to pay for getting bride, also adopted the dowry system leading it to get infected all strata of society.

3. Caste Discrimination: Vedic society was based on four classes that were based on professions of the people. In due course it became hereditary in nature where class got decided by birth and not by profession. With increased number of professions, even in Classical Period of Hinduism, the class got expanded into castes to accommodate new professions. By the medieval time, the exponential increase in caste resulted in unthinkable rigidity forcing number of social interactions within very close range of own casts. This system soon percolated down to village level with even stronger biases. This was the time when eighty per cent of Indian population was still living in villages. Villages were as it is suffering from lack of education and covered with ignorance were facing lots of superstitions. Rigid caste discrimination brought in deep divides among various castes and sub-castes resulting in greater social barriers in terms of access to places of worship, celebration on festivals, say in administration, employability of weaker section, untouchability and such other social interactions got impacted.

4. Female Infanticide: Female birth got compared to curse from God. This prompted parents to take extreme steps of killing their new born girl child to avoid social stigma and potential hardship to the finances and honour of the family. The main problem behind this evil is burden of dowry. First of all the problem got reported among Jats in Punjab region but later it was well acknowledged in other areas spanning from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh. This soon resulted in unbalanced proportion of male and females. The basic problem which converted to evil was the fact that originating with higher classes, it got spread to lower classes as well and most unfortunately, even after the social mis-balance reported, the problem could not get eradicated. So, what started as an economic problem got transformed into a social evil. And as is the case always, the worst effected of this were the backward classes that suffered the most.

5. Sati: Self immolation by wife of a deceased person on his pyre got social acceptance and was looked as an ideal step by the widow to protect the husband's family's honour. This was preferred by Kshatriya women to save themselves from worse than death treatment if they were captured and taken alive by the conquerors. In other classes, the real reasons were largely economic. Prejudices of sanctified virginity of a bride prevented any chance of remarriage. A widow, specially a young widow, was feared to fall for her sensuous passions and was treated as a burden for the family carrying potential risk of bringing bad repute.

      Her very presence, after her husband's death, was taken as a dead weight around the neck of the family. Her sight, her voice, her touch and her very name were considered a bad omen. She was to keep away from every good event of the family including festivals or marriages. It is not hard to believe that most cases of immolation of the wife, along with the deceased dead body of her husband, were inspired, encouraged or tacitly executed by the family members by playing on the weak emotions and sensitivity of the unfortunate woman.

      While one could have justified some stray cases involving some Rajput families going for group suicide by ladies to avoid capturing by enemies, as in case of Rani Padmini of Chittor in Rajasthan, in most other cases Sati was encouraged to get rid of the unwanted wife. It was yet another example of double standards favouring males, as being widow did not make males underprivileged lot. The females were treated like cheap commodity, which can be easily dispensed with. The people in-charge of religion matters encouraged such practices as false pride.

6. Polygamy: The evil of Polygamy crept into Hindu society in due course forced on the social practice where it was mandatory for every girl to get married but many males were adopting the life of ascetic that forced them out of counting. Many others were also known for taking celibacy as a preferred way of life. Originally; this practice was to correct the gender imbalance but later influential persons used it to secure more than one wife just for pleasures. But finally, it was in 1952 that the legal provisions were introduced to ban this wrong practice.

      Inspite of relative different circumstances of South India, the impact of social evils had infested that region as well albeit in varying proportions. The position of women in South was marginally better than North and the imparting of education to female also was far better. But untouchability and sectarian divides were far stronger in South. Caste based inequalities were equal in all regions. South had yet another custom of having Devdasis attached with Temples who were like married to the deity and lived on Temple resources. They learned classical dance forms and performed before temple deity with full social sanctions.

      Some of them also had marriage with already married patrons from outside temples. Society respected them well and their children were extended due acceptability. The number of Devdasis attached with a temple was in proportions to the financial capacity of the temple and its patrons Kings included. As per one record, the temple of Tanjavur patronized by Cholas was having four hundred Devdasis on its roll. Dance and music was a necessary part of daily Puja of Deities at Temples. The tradition was based on old scriptures as Kalidasa's Meghdoot is quoted to have references to dancing girls present at functions in the temple at that time. But destructions and plundering of temples under West Asian attacks depleted financial resources of the temples. Even capacity of patron states went down to continue support. This scenario brought most of Devdasis on street forcing many of them to join the world's oldest profession. The understanding of Britishers for these girls was, like in most other cases, very wrong, as they compared them and treated with petty dancing girls on the street and dealt their plight with their well-known casual and high handed approach. Here again, the ultimate sufferer of the social customs was the woman once again.