View: The bindi as the equalizer and Hindu women as seekers – Economic Times

There is a new game in town. It is called: I-can-outdo-you-and-create-the-most-implausible-and-zany-comparisons-to-trash-Hinduism. This is score-settling blather, and juvenile. A bizarre bandwagonism is at play here as you notice that a massive and concerted effort is afoot to deplatform Hindus and their Sanatana Dharma.

The good news is that this deplatforming is not likely to happen, even though Hindus worldwide are ominously threatened today, subject to Hinduphobia, as their faith is pilloried, misrepresented and blatantly lied about.

In the last few days, much flack has been flying around about the Hindu bindi -- variously called pottu in South India, and tika or elsewhere. Both Hindu women and men wear bindis on their foreheads, and it was traditionally available in myriad hues of red, and sandalwood paste, or saffron: it could be round in shape, a streak, a line, or in more decorative forms; it is now worn in other colours too. The spot on the forehead where the bindi is worn marks the ajna chakra, which contains the pineal gland and the hypothalamus, and is represented by the Omkara.

There are two points on which Varma falters. He says that the bindi is a symbol of patriarchy: hes wrong. The fact that both men and women wear a bindi should dismiss any specious conflation of it with patriarchy - a word so sloppily bandied about in ubiquitous Hindu-bashing discourse today that you have to be cautious using it.

Second, and more intemperate, is his equating the bindi - a symbol of liberation and beauty, on a wholly visible female face - with the burqa. What is Varma's false- analogy-creating, faux-oppression-mongering gambit, I wonder? Why does he create these counterfeit and dangerous equivalences? Which master dialogue is he in vassalage to?

The bindi does not signify bondage; the case is quite the contrary. Varma's equating an attractive and liberating symbol to a loss of freedom for Hindu women, and, following this, equating it to the burqa, are flat out preposterous. First, you see the entirety of a woman's face when she wears a bindi; the burqa hides women's faces - it is meant to conceal and shut out women's faces and bodies. Also, the bindi symbolizes liberation; I'm not sure we can say that of the burqa, which has only recently been repudiated as repressive by a roster of Afghan women embracing the magnificent colours of their traditional attire, which empowers them into showing their charmante faces and not be badgered into concealing them.

The bindi represents the chandrabindu/anusvara on the pranava, the Omkara, or Om - the sound of cosmic creation, from which all sound and knowledge originate: hence, Udgitadpranavagitah sarva vagishwareshwaraha. The Om is believed to grant human beings viveka and jnana, or discrimination and wisdom. Women in rural India and small towns wear no makeup: the sole splash of colour on their visage is the bindi. Colour is raga; as well, it is ranga (the colour of the numinous, the spirit, and, per ancient, sacred Hindu texts, present in all humanity and creation). When Americas legendary Modern Dance choreographer, the late Merce Cunningham, a devotee of Paramahamsa Ramakrishna, was with us at Carnegie Mellon, he inevitably alluded to the colour in India, with delight and reverence.

Fence sitters inevitably bark on both sides. They fought across continents a few years ago to ban the oppressive burqa; now, chameleonic apologists think it is okay for women to be forced into wearing it and obeying the diktats of a male cabal.

Liberation, or the possession of higher and more meaningful inclinations, and a turning of the mind towards the sublime -- such as the intended achievement of a metaphysical/mystical union with the Infinite, the beyond, and the ever expanding frontiers of both the universe and human consciousness -- is what is signified by women wearing a bindi. There is no compulsion at all, but most Hindu women in India wear it through the day, with pleasure. When I was a little girl at Rishi Valley School, in south India, my classical dance teacher would insist we come to class with a bindi. Why? Because she said that with the bindi our little faces looked romba azhahrka, or very beautiful, in Tamil.

My maravilhoso, well-dressed female household staff in India always wears bindis, and if they forget to wear them, they tell me they feel incomplete: theres no patriarchy here. Also, Varma does not speak for them.

What Hinduism now witnesses is an awakening, and a culture of resistance, pursuant to centuries of colonial diminishment and atrocities, followed by current, coordinated worldwide attempts to demonise innocent, faith-loving Hindus and render them marginal. Hindus dont accept western domination and its dirigente ideas any longer; they have, and will always be, open to absorbing the best thought from other faiths and philosophies across the world, other echoes (that) inhabit the garden, (Eliot), but they recognize the treasure of dharmic knowledge that is theirs for the asking. It is this deep, neglected lake of wisdom that Hindus now wish to further explore, ignoring bogus equivalences and their creators.

(Oopalee Operajita is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. She advises world leaders on public policy, communication, and international relations.)

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View: The bindi as the equalizer and Hindu women as seekers - Economic Times