Awaken The Divine Durga Within — the power of good over evil
In India we worship Goddesses with all splendour and glory. Goddesses who are all mighty and strong, whom we look upto to protect us. Among them Goddess Durga is the symbol of strength a woman has in her. Mother Durga, the Goddess in the Hindu pantheon is known for fighting against evil and eradicating evil forces.
Dasara/Dusshehra, is a ten day Hindu festival which celebrates Goddess Durga. The ten armed warrior goddess is known for killing the demon Mahishasura. It is such a marvelling fact that one of our biggest festivals celebrates a Goddess, that too a warrior Goddess. She is shown holding different weapons in each of her ten hands, riding a lion in the act of killing the curly dark haired demon Mahishasura. Durga Maa took on her warrior role at the request of her husband Lord Shiva.
On one hand, one of India’s biggest festival celebrates a Goddess, a warrior Goddess known for her fiercelessness and invincibility and yet on the other dark side our women are plagued with unfathomable and ghastly crimes. We spend our time, effort, money and invest our emotions worshipping a warrior Goddess and on the other side treat our women so badly by not providing them that safe pedestal in the society. Staying neutral when a fire is raging, is standing with the ones who lit it.
In today’s era the women in our society are afflicted with gruesome violence against them. With the horrendous acts of rape and crime happening to the young girls and women across India, it seems doubly absurd with people having such double standards for the Goddess and the real women in flesh and blood. Routinely innocent women are raped, killed and ghastly crimes are oppressed upon them. In a country where men look upon Goddesses in the form of their Mother, it is such a horrific fact that some of these men commit horrendous atrocities upon women. Rape, sexual violence, harassment, human trafficking including forced sex slavery and prostitution, forced labour and domestic servitude are the different facets of the crimes perpetuated on women.
It is very vital that women need to be empowered but empowering women alone will not do. We have time and time witnessed grisly crimes being committed not just upon women who don’t come with privileged background having access to a better lifestyle, good education and urbane. But empowered women with privileged background are also victims of heinous crimes. So let’s stop saying and thinking that if women are empowered, sexual violence against them will not take place, it’s not the fact. Definitely women must be empowered across all the strata of society in their own terms and in every possible aspect. But now in these times it’s about those men who commit these crimes. Empowered or not empowered woman, one common woman’s physical strength cannot match upto four men’s physical strength when they forcefully violently gang up on her.
It’s the sick disturbed minds of such kind of men in the society that innocent women are becoming a victim of. Punish the men who assault, rape and kill their women victims so that anyone else dare not think of doing it. Just punishing would not suffice for a complete stoppage of these heinous acts. This has to be ingrained in everyone’s mind and thought that sexual violence against a woman is a crime of highest degree ethically, morally and just not legally. This is where everyone have to step in right from each one of us as responsible individuals, then us as a society, then entire community and the law makers. Practice, profess and preach the ones around you to treat women with respect.
Do these men perpetuating these acts would dare think of some bad thoughts for Maa Durga or any other Goddess for that matter? Absolutely not, because it is ingrained in them, then why should it be different for the real women they come across?
Today the dark contrast is that rape of a young girl or a woman is scarily the representation of the demon Mahishasura as today’s evil force which is oppressing and threatening the existence of women. Durga today must be his nemesis.
The festive period of Durga Puja is over technically for this year. We all are looking forward and eagerly waiting for her arrival next year. The little girl or the budding teenager celebrating it today should be a part of it tomorrow. Let us pray to the Goddess who strides a lion to slay the Mahishasura of hypocrisy, viciousness, savageous and vehemently brutal monstrous acts upon women whom they think as the weaker species. Durga, the Creator and the Supreme Power in each of us is waiting to strike, irrespective of our genders.
The immense love we have for Goddess Durga has to be ignited for this cause, to stop these inhumane acts destroying the lives of the women in our society. Let us all come together united in our thoughts, feelings and actions against these atrocities upon women and save womanhood whose basic survival is being threatened with each passing day.
Women are not goddesses but try to see the essence of the divine goddess in them and not see them as the weaker species and vehemently destroy their soul and existence.
