Rohini Bakshi’s essay titled “Manusmriti is harsher on men than women. Read the text before you ask to burn it” echoes the suffering meted out to men like death penances—prayaschittas—on particularly upper-caste, or dvija, men. Bakshi brilliantly defends the phallocentrism in this text.
In the words of scholar A H Salunkhe, she uses selective English translations to defend this text. She mistakes the central dogmatic and disciplinary mechanisms, the core arguments of this text under review. She nitpicks specific clauses, missing the real-time consequences of this text.
The core of Bakshi’s essay is misdirected. She is listing the gruesome punishments prescribed for upper-caste men, as under Manusmriti 11.91–92. She argues with interesting, similar citations, where, for male sexual misconceptions, especially elitist ones, the penalties have been very harsh and even harder on men, and nobody talks about that!
Punishment does not mean equality
The answer to this can be found in BR Ambedkar’s analysis in his texts, Castes in India, and, more prominently, in his Philosophy of Hinduism. For Ambedkar, these texts function entirely on graded, systemic inequalities. Their core mission is to maintain “purity” of the upper castes, whose burden falls on women. Thus, as per Ambedkar, the one who has experienced the caste system in reality knows that harsh rules for a Brahmin man are not a sign of his oppression.
Ambedkar states that, historically, the Brahmin has been the ideological gatekeeper of the purity of the caste system. If the gatekeeper himself becomes impure, the divine excuse for exploiting everybody beneath falls flat. When an elite insider, even a Brahmin, is punished, one must understand that his basic human status remains untouched as compared to a Brahmin female or other lower males. The text prescribes the following for the Shudra, the lower castes:
“A Kshatriya who defames a Brahmin shall be fined one hundred (panas); a Vaishya one hundred and fifty or two hundred; but a Shudra shall suffer corporal punishment.” (Manusmriti 8.267)
“If a once-born man (Shudra) insults a twice-born man with gross language, his tongue shall be cut out; for he is of low origin.” (Manusmriti 8.270)
“If he arrogantly teaches Brahmins their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears.” (Manusmriti 8.272)
I feel Bakshi does try to balance the mutilation of the underclasses within the graded hierarchical order of the varna with the policing sanctions of the master class. For the gatekeeping class, it is a code of conduct, but for the women and the Shudras, it unleashes the reign of terror.
Trying to rebrand the text’s heavy control over women as a stressful male “burden of protection,” she refers to the verses that order men to guard their wives. Feminist thinker Uma Chakravarti has exposed this “protection” as a tool of surveillance. She has stated that in a society that is organised on caste lines, women’s sexual choices are completely crushed. This is to make sure that marriages must be restricted only within endogamous caste ghettoes. The reason, again, is to maintain the purity of the bloodline. It is also to ensure that material assets are confined to elite patriarchal families. I reproduce some lines below:
“In childhood, a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.” (Manusmriti 5.148)
“Day and night, women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families… Her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons protect her in old age; a woman is never fit for independence.” (Manusmriti 9.2–3)
Also read: Manusmriti is harsher on men than women. Read the text before you ask to burn it
Patriarchal control
The male “burden,” as she describes it, I, as a male, understand, is simply the anxiety of an owner guarding an asset. It forces upper-caste men to watch their wives. An Ambedkarite and feminist pedagogical understanding proves that any breakdown of this control destroys the family’s social status.
The same text bluntly compares women to enslaved people, having no legal or financial rights:
“A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is regularly acquired for him to whom they belong.” (Manusmriti 8.416)
Even the famous verses apologists love to quote, such as Manusmriti 3.56 (“where women are honoured, the gods rejoice”), come with brutal conditions.
A woman is only praised if she completely submits to her husband, even if he treats her terribly:
“Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.” (Manusmriti 5.154)
Bakshi criticises the critics for not learning Sanskrit. She feels that reading the literal verses in their original, isolated context is an injustice to Manusmriti. From a Dalit feminist standpoint, especially drawing on the writings of Sharmila Rege, I consider this demand a reproduction of elite brahmanical gatekeeping. The fact that Bakshi is amnesiac is that the text itself bans women and marginalised castes from reading it. What can be more apt than Ambedkar’s recounting in Waiting for a Visa of not being allowed to study Sanskrit and being forced to opt for Persian instead!
I am reproducing the following verses to make my argument clearer:
“If a Shudra listens to the Veda, his ears shall be filled with molten lead; if he recites the Veda, his tongue shall be cut out; if he remembers the Veda, his body shall be split in two.”
The women and the lower castes were sentenced to death if they happened to read these classical texts, and Bakshi’s argument of reading them now to understand their essence seems to be a bit paradoxical. She also nudges us to read, if not Sanskrit, the English version, but it seems like just glossing over her core demand.
Also read: Manusmriti is the silent counter to constitutional equality. That’s why BJP-RSS is rattled
Exposed phallocentric discourses
Theorist Roland Barthes has stated, “A text’s true meaning belongs to the society that lives under it, not the person who wrote it.” We need to take cognisance of the fact that the Manusmriti operated as a coercive penal code that justified the inhuman practice of untouchability, the banishment of communities, and, more importantly, the total objectification and complete subjection of these communities. Bakshi’s arguments are ignorant of the intersection of gender and caste that Ambedkar brilliantly foregrounds in his preliminary text, Castes in India.
Finally, Bakshi points to the Valmiki Ramayana, the killing of the Shudra Shambuka and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which allows a man to beat his wife if she refuses sex. She states that the Manusmriti is being unfairly singled out. This comparison misses a clear distinction between an epic and a law. The Ramayana, as a text, is not consulted to determine the legal fine for defamation or property ownership. It is viewed as an epic.
On the other hand, Manusmriti represents the core legal handbook of penal jurisprudence. The episode of Rama’s execution of Shambuka is carried out in accordance with the laws laid down in Manusmriti 8.270–272. The violence mentioned in the Upanishad is the application of the property dynamics in Manusmriti 8.416.
Bakshi’s argument does not prove that Manu is innocent; rather, I feel, she is labelling the entire canon as sharing the same exclusionary logic. While reading her essay, calling Manusmriti’s burning “tunnel vision”, I felt it was like accusing anti-apartheid activists of tunnel vision for targeting the Group Areas Act in South Africa, rather than tracking down every prejudiced poem written in South Africa.
As regards Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmriti, he has written extensively about it, and it has been discussed abundantly; it need not be reproduced here. A better way would be to read his original writings and speeches. For me, Bakshi’s essay is a sophisticated version of an old defensive brahmanical strategy to defend patriarchy by using legal technicalities, translation debates, and literalist readings.
It was used to hide on-the-ground situations. But now I feel that so much has been fleshed out by the feminist movement across India and the world; no amount of vocabulary or jargonistic jugglery can change or shield the exposed phallocentric discourses.
Nikhil Sanjay-Rekha Adsule is a lawyer, an alumnus of TISS, Creighton Peden Scholar, USA, and a Senior Scholar at IIT-Delhi. He tweets @Surajya_Raje_. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)