This bulletin from Breathing India celebrates the Festival of Holi and International Women's Day. It explores the concept of feminism in ancient India, highlighting how women were honored for their wisdom, courage, beauty, and sacrifice. The story of Rishika Sulabha, a learned scholar and renunciate, is shared as an example of Indian feminism. Sulabha tests King Janaka's emancipation and challenges his understanding of identity and interconnectedness. The story emphasizes that Hindu texts have diverse teachings and are not gender-biased. The bulletin encourages a deeper exploration of Indian traditions from an Indic lens.
Namaskar. Hello and welcome to this very special bulletin from Breathing India. Today we are all commemorating the Festival of Colours, the Festival of Holi and interestingly and incidentally this is also the International Women's Day. So today we wish to commemorate both these occasions in a very special format and today we are coming with a special story of Rishika Sulabha. Who she is and whose she is. The classical tale of Rishika Sulabha which will entail as to what kind of feminism in this Sanatana Bharat it used to be practiced.
So Women's Day is a day of celebration of womanhood and of showing respect, love and appreciation towards all women. Western feminism has had its own trajectory in its efforts to be free from Christian misogyny along with the biblical exhortation of that women should not have authority over man. Even the feminism arising from Western modernity it struggles with privileging traditional masculine roles and measuring the success of women by that sole yardstick and by their commercial objectification. On the other hand in the Indian context women were always honoured for who they were for their wisdom, for their courage, for their beauty and for their sacrifice.
There have always been women exemplars and role models from Sita to Draupadi to Kunti to Mandodari in the Itihasas and Vedic Rishikas like Gargi and Maitreyi to Kshatriya women like Lakshmi Bai and Rudrama Devi or saints like Meera Bai and Andal. They all represent various facets of womanhood and can serve as inspiration for generations of women to follow their inner calling towards actualization. Today let's dive deep into this integral and intellectual notion of Indic feminism which has been out there in India for eons altogether.
The account of Saulabha it appears in the Shanti Parva of Mahabharata. She was a learned scholar, Rishika a single woman and a renunciate. Mahabharata describes her as a woman belonging to the mendicant order who practiced the duties of yoga and wandered over the whole earth. The Saulabha shakha of Rig Veda Sanhita is attributed to her. She is also listed in the Kaustiki Brahmana among the list of teachers to whom salutations must be offered. So while Saulabha was wandering from one place to another as was the routine of renunciates, she heard from fellow renunciates that the king Janaka of Mithila was very devoted to the path of emancipation and had become emancipated even while living the life of a householder.
Desiring to personally interview Janaka and test whether he had indeed become emancipated Saulabha travelled to Mithila. Now using her yogic powers, she transformed herself into a faultlessly beautiful young woman and presented herself to the king as a young renunciate. After receiving respectful welcome from Janaka, wishing to now test whether he had indeed attained emancipation Saulabha again by her yogic power entered the understanding of the king using her own understanding. Immediately grasping her presence inside his mind, Janaka became agitated Interrupting her, he asked, O holy lady, to what cause of conduct are you devoted? Whose are you? From where you have come? Janaka then told her, O lady of the mendicant order, I cherish an affection for you but that should not prevent me from telling you that your behavior does not correspond with the practices of the mode of life which you have chosen for yourself.
He continued that he doubts whether she had even subdued her senses after all she was so delicate, shapely and beautiful. He then told her that by entering his understanding with hers, by uniting with him through the mind, Saulabha had committed many faults and was unfit to be a renunciate. Though rebuked in such harsh words, Saulabha did not become embarrassed and replied to Janaka calmly. After briefly explaining the verbal faults and faults of judgment that may occur in speech, she directly addressed the Janaka's question of who she is and whose she is.
After stressing how primal elements were same in all objects and beings, she said, I, you, O monarch and all others that are endued with body are the results of that Prakriti. She then questioned Janaka, as you see your body in your own body and your soul in your own soul, why is it that you do not see your own body and your own soul in the bodies and souls of others? If it is true that you are an identity within yourself and others, why then did you ask me who am I and whose am I? If it is true that you, O king, have been freed from the knowledge of duality, that erroneously says this is mine and this other is not mine, then what use is there with such questions as who are you, whose are you and from where you came? What indications of emancipation can be said to occur in that king who acts as others act towards enemies and allies and neutrals and victory and truce and war? What indications of emancipation occur in him who does not know the true nature of the aggregate of three as manifested in several ways in all acts and who on that account is attached to that aggregate of three? What indications of emancipation exist in him who fails to cast an equal eye on the agreeable, on the weak and the strong? Unworthy of as thou art of it, your pretense of emancipation should be put down by your counsellors.
Then addressing Janaka's allegation about her committing fault by uniting with him in the mind, which Janaka compared to physical union, Sumbha asked, when I have no real connection with even my body, how then can I be said to have any contact with the bodies of others? O king of Mithila, I am staying in you without touching you at all, even like a drop of water on a lotus leaf that stays on it without drenching it in the least.
Notwithstanding instructions of Panchashika, Janaka's guru of the mendicant order, your knowledge has become extracted from the sensual desires to which it relates. You have, it is plain, fallen off from the domestic mode of life, but you have not yet attained to emancipation that is so difficult to arrive at. You stay between the two, pretending that you have reached the goal of emancipation. Sulabha continued, Only those that regard the soul to be identical with the body and that think the several orders and modes of life to be really different from one another are open to the error of supposing an intermingling to be possible.
My body is different from yours, but my soul is not different from your soul. When I am able to realize this, I have not the slightest doubt that my understanding is really not staying in you, though I have entered into you by yoga. A pot is born in the hand, in the pot is milk, on the milk is the fly. Though the hand and pot, the pot and milk and the milk and the fly, they exist together, yet are they all distinct from each other? The pot does not partake the nature of the milk, nor does the milk partake the nature of the fly.
The condition of each is dependent on itself and can never be altered by the condition of that other with which it may temporarily exist. After this manner, Varanayan practices, though they may exist together with and in a person that is emancipate, do not really attach to him. How then can an intermingling of orders be possible in consequence of this union of myself with you? Having listened to these words from Sulabha and perhaps realizing his own fault, King Janaka stayed silent.
Sulabha is one of the most interesting persons in the Hindu tradition. She was a realized woman who was fiercely independent and acted out of conviction. Regarding her being a renunciate, she boldly says that since no husband could be obtained for me that would be fit for me, she chose to follow the path of renunciation. Thus following her inner calling, she chose renunciation out of free will. Her renunciation, her arrival at Mithila, her conversation with King Janaka, all show her as an extremely confident woman who was deeply knowledgeable with a strong inner conviction.
Her responses to Janaka's query about whose she is shows how even a person like Janaka who was widely known for his wisdom was still incomplete in his understanding. Sulabha's teachings to King Janaka which are in sync with teachings in other Hindu scriptures show how contrary to modern assertions that much of Hindu texts were written by men and have a gender bias. The texts have no gender bias and their diverse teachings are only an outcome of the necessity to address the needs of people with different competencies.
So here this was a small rendition of the classical tale of Rishika Sulabha on this International Women's Day which happens to fall on the lovely festival of Holi. We hope that this small presentation would really come handy in understanding the intellectual traditions of the integral intellectual traditions of Sanatan Bharat of India and would really give us a different perspective and would really invoke us, would really make us inspired to explore further, deeper into these grand Indian traditions, rethinking India from a essentially Indic lens and not from the European or the Western lenses which due to their limitations of understanding the Indian motive or meaning they generally touch it from the outer periphery itself.
So thank you so much Namaskar and have a very happy and colourful Holi and also International Women's Day. We will be back again with yet another rendition. Till then Namaskar.
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