In ‘Manusmriti is harsher on men than women. Read the text before you ask to burn it’, Rohini Bakshi nitpicks specific clauses, missing the real-time consequences of this text.
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Modern India might have been conjured up in the image of Gandhi. But India was never a Gandhian state. Founders of the Republic, be it Nehru or Patel, nursed zero such notions.
Real-time consequences?? Indian courts routinely draw on Manusmriti’s ethical principles to reinforce modern constitutional rights.
Supreme Court just used it in an incest case. Karnataka HC brought it up in a 2025 bail ruling. Rajasthan HC quoted it when ordering 3 lakh compensation to a minor victim.
Cherry-picking? No. When the law says protect women and Manusmriti says honor women, citing both doesn’t weaken the constitution.
Adsule comes across as pesky and petulant, as if the very mention of Manusmriti is the problem.
Self-proclaimed experts like Adsule live in a permanent double-standard. When “critics” like him quote Manusmriti line-by-line, it is lauded as “critical textual analysis.” But when Bakshi cites verses imposing strict penalties, poverty vows, and severe corporal punishments on upper-caste men, Adsule dismisses it as “cherry-picking” and “apologia.” Whom is this guy trying to convince?
When Bakshi highlights severe punishments levied against men for moral or social infractions, Adsule reinterprets these legal duties as mere patriarchal asset management. Under his dishonest framework, any responsibility or liability placed on a man is magically reframed as a secret flex of power. Deliberate deflection but does not eacape the mind’s eye.
Notice the deliberate intellectual fraud.. line-by-line textual evidence is valid only when it supports his narrative. The moment Rohini Bakshi quotes the exact same source to show penalties for upper-caste men, Adsule screams “Brahmanical gatekeeping.” This is the same tired atrocity literature cooked up by Marxist commentators and regurgitated by disciples like Adsule.
Dismissing primary source citations while offering zero textual counter-references of his own is pure intellectual cowardice. When confronted with receipts, Adsule doesn’t debate the text he hides behind buzzwords like “phallocentric,” “Dalit feminist pedagogy,” and “Brahmanical patriarchy.”
Ultimately, Adsule’s logic eats itself. He insists the text was an enforced legal statute, yet the moment someone reads the actual clauses written inside it, he panics and claims the text itself is irrelevant.
Kahan se aate hain aise log… aur kyun yeh samajhte hain ki chaar angrezi ke buzzwords phenk dene se inki jahalat par vidvatta ka thappa lag jayega??
You can’t always defend a text by creating yet another interpretation of the Sanskrit. The issue isn’t simply what one verse can be interpreted to mean today, but how these texts were historically understood and actually implemented in society.
What matters too is the lived historical experience of Dalits and women, how ideas associated with these texts were used to justify discrimination, exclusion, and suffering.
There’s a familiar habit today: pick one verse, give it a modern or preferred interpretation, and then use that interpretation to defend the entire tradition. But that doesn’t address the historical reality of how these texts and ideas were understood and applied.
If we’re discussing the impact of Manusmriti, we have to examine both the text and its social implementation, rather than selectively reinterpreting individual verses while ignoring the consequences those ideas had for real people.
Otherwise, demonetisation would also be a “masterstroke,” as many interpreted it at the time! 😉
Real-time consequences?? Indian courts routinely draw on Manusmriti’s ethical principles to reinforce modern constitutional rights.
Supreme Court just used it in an incest case. Karnataka HC brought it up in a 2025 bail ruling. Rajasthan HC quoted it when ordering 3 lakh compensation to a minor victim.
Cherry-picking? No. When the law says protect women and Manusmriti says honor women, citing both doesn’t weaken the constitution.
Adsule comes across as pesky and petulant, as if the very mention of Manusmriti is the problem.
Self-proclaimed experts like Adsule live in a permanent double-standard. When “critics” like him quote Manusmriti line-by-line, it is lauded as “critical textual analysis.” But when Bakshi cites verses imposing strict penalties, poverty vows, and severe corporal punishments on upper-caste men, Adsule dismisses it as “cherry-picking” and “apologia.” Whom is this guy trying to convince?
When Bakshi highlights severe punishments levied against men for moral or social infractions, Adsule reinterprets these legal duties as mere patriarchal asset management. Under his dishonest framework, any responsibility or liability placed on a man is magically reframed as a secret flex of power. Deliberate deflection but does not eacape the mind’s eye.
Notice the deliberate intellectual fraud.. line-by-line textual evidence is valid only when it supports his narrative. The moment Rohini Bakshi quotes the exact same source to show penalties for upper-caste men, Adsule screams “Brahmanical gatekeeping.” This is the same tired atrocity literature cooked up by Marxist commentators and regurgitated by disciples like Adsule.
Dismissing primary source citations while offering zero textual counter-references of his own is pure intellectual cowardice. When confronted with receipts, Adsule doesn’t debate the text he hides behind buzzwords like “phallocentric,” “Dalit feminist pedagogy,” and “Brahmanical patriarchy.”
Ultimately, Adsule’s logic eats itself. He insists the text was an enforced legal statute, yet the moment someone reads the actual clauses written inside it, he panics and claims the text itself is irrelevant.
Kahan se aate hain aise log… aur kyun yeh samajhte hain ki chaar angrezi ke buzzwords phenk dene se inki jahalat par vidvatta ka thappa lag jayega??
Bro, you lit the Manusmriti again! 🔥
You can’t always defend a text by creating yet another interpretation of the Sanskrit. The issue isn’t simply what one verse can be interpreted to mean today, but how these texts were historically understood and actually implemented in society.
What matters too is the lived historical experience of Dalits and women, how ideas associated with these texts were used to justify discrimination, exclusion, and suffering.
There’s a familiar habit today: pick one verse, give it a modern or preferred interpretation, and then use that interpretation to defend the entire tradition. But that doesn’t address the historical reality of how these texts and ideas were understood and applied.
If we’re discussing the impact of Manusmriti, we have to examine both the text and its social implementation, rather than selectively reinterpreting individual verses while ignoring the consequences those ideas had for real people.
Otherwise, demonetisation would also be a “masterstroke,” as many interpreted it at the time! 😉