Drawing on sources ranging from the Rigveda and Devi Suktam to the Manusmriti, Arthashastra and Bhagavad Gita, this comment examines the tension between the exaltation of the feminine in Indian sacred thought and the historical constraints imposed on women in social life. It argues that the civilisational tradition is neither monolithic nor static: alongside patriarchal formulations exist powerful affirmations of women’s autonomy, learning and authority. The author highlights Kautilya’s emphasis on accountability and Ānvīkṣhikī (critical enquiry) to show that reasoned reinterpretation is integral to the Indic tradition itself. The essay contends that a civilisation which venerates Shakti must reject practices that limit women’s freedom and instead create conditions in which their safety, dignity and aspirations can flourish.
Nine nights (Navratri), one question
Navratri brings nine nights of a civilisation remembering who it believes holds up the universe. Each night unveils another face of Shakti, and the journey ends on Vijayadashami, or Bijoya, when Durga stands over the slain Mahishasura. She is not the rescued but the rescuer.
There is something extraordinary about a culture whose very word for power, shakti, is feminine. That inheritance is also a mirror. A society that bows before the Devi for nine nights sometimes returns, on the tenth morning, to imagining her daughters as fragile, and calls that culture sacred and eternal. Bijoya leaves us one question: what do we keep of her, once the pandals come down? The answer is not to worship less but to let worship mean what it must.
The Goddess who speaks for herself
The idea of women seers speaking for themselves is ancient. In the Devi Suktam the rishika Vak Ambhrini does not pray to the Goddess. It is one of the most celebrated hymns of the Rigveda. It appears in Rigveda, Mandala 10, Sukta 125 and consists of eight verses. The seer is Vāk Āmbhṛṇī, a woman sage, who speaks in the voice of the Divine Feminine. She speaks of herself as:
अहं राष्ट्री संगमनी वसूनां चिकितुषी प्रथमा यज्ञियानाम्।
तां मा देवा व्यदधुः पुरुत्रा भूरिस्थात्रां भूर्यावेशयन्तीम्॥
(I am the sovereign Queen, the gatherer of treasures, the wise and discerning one, foremost among those worthy of worship.
The gods have established me in many places, making me widespread, with many abodes, and causing me to enter many things.)
I am the rashtri, the sovereign of the universe, the knower of Ultimate Reality. This is not a goddess waiting to be defended. She is sovereignty, knowledge and righteous force, declared in a woman’s own voice. The same tradition gave us Gargi, who questioned Yajnavalkya, and Maitreyi, who chose knowledge over wealth.
What the Shastras also said: Tradition's Other Voice
The dharmashastras are often held responsible for the distance between the Goddess and the woman, though the record is richer than that. The Manusmriti carries the much-quoted:
पिता रक्षति कौमारे भर्ता रक्षति यौवने।
रक्षन्ति स्थविरे पुत्रा न स्त्री स्वातन्त्र्यमर्हति॥
(Chapter 9, Verse 3)
(Her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons protect her in old age; a woman is not considered entitled to independence.)
Yet the same text declares in an earlier chapter:
यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवताः।
यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः॥
(Chapter 3, Verse 56)
(Where women are honoured, there the gods rejoice; where they are not honoured, all religious rites become fruitless.)
Protection, Power and Responsibility
Kautilya’s Arthashastra, in Book II, Chapter 23, on the Superintendent of Yarn (Sūtrādhyakṣa), offers a striking illustration of how the ancient Indian state could approach the protection of women through administrative regulation rather than social restriction. The chapter deals with the organisation of yarn production and identifies several categories of women who could be employed in spinning, including widows, unmarried women, female ascetics, women in need of subsistence, and others who might have limited economic options. It also makes provision for women who cannot leave their homes to earn a livelihood, arranging for work to be delivered to them through female attendants of the weaving establishment.
The most remarkable provision concerns women who come to the workplace to exchange their yarn for wages. Kautilya directs that the transaction take place early in the morning and stipulates that the workshop should have only as much light as is necessary to examine the yarn. The reason becomes apparent in the next injunction: if the superintendent looks at a woman’s face or engages her in conversation unrelated to her work, he is to be punished with a fine. The relevant Sanskrit reads:
सूत्रपरीक्षार्थमात्रः प्रदीपः ।
स्त्रिया मुखसंदर्शनेऽन्यकार्यसम्भाषायां वा पूर्वः साहसदण्डः ।
The first sentence prescribes that the lamp be used only to the extent necessary for examining the yarn. The second prescribes a penalty for looking at a woman’s face or speaking to her about matters unrelated to her work. The provision appears in Arthashastra 2.23.13–14, with minor differences in the numbering and translation of individual passages across editions.
The significance of this rule lies not merely in its prohibition of inappropriate conduct, but in the direction in which it places the burden of responsibility. The woman is not instructed to withdraw from the workplace, conceal herself, avoid the official or forgo her livelihood to escape unwanted attention. Instead, the official exercising authority over the workplace is required to regulate his own conduct. The state establishes a boundary around the woman’s working environment and makes its violation punishable.
None of this should be mistaken for a modern conception of gender equality. The Arthashastra is a work of statecraft concerned with the efficient administration of the kingdom, and its provisions reflect a hierarchical social order. Its treatment of women is not uniformly emancipatory: the same chapter prescribes severe physical punishment for women who receive wages but fail to complete their work, or who are accused of misappropriating materials. Its employment provisions also identify women through social circumstances that often indicate vulnerability or economic dependence. The text therefore combines protection with discipline, and opportunity with coercive authority. Kautilya’s state does not make the woman responsible for preventing the official’s misconduct. It makes the official responsible for not committing it. In this limited but significant sense, Kautilya’s provision offers a striking counterpoint to approaches that respond to the vulnerability of women by restricting women themselves. Its central proposition is simple: protect the woman’s space, regulate the official’s conduct, and preserve her access to economic activity.
From Reverence to Control
If both voices belong to one tradition, how did they come to part? The divergence between the exalted status of the feminine in sacred thought and the lived position of women was neither instantaneous nor uniform. It grew through the interaction of normative texts, customary practice, social institutions and changing material conditions. The authority of Vak Ambhrini, Gargi and Maitreyi coexisted with later juridical formulations that increasingly located women within the structures of the family, and even within the Dharmashastra tradition, the record cannot be reduced to a single position.
Every text carries the worldview of the people who wrote it. The hymns belong to an age that made room for women as seers. The legal literature that followed was composed as settled households, inherited property and lineage became society’s central concerns, and its authors, writing as men of their time, spoke of women chiefly in relation to the family. Even the verse on independence is framed as guardianship, with father, husband and son each keeping watch in turn. It reads less as a verdict on a woman’s worth than as the assumption of a household-centred world. Over centuries, custom repeated the regressive assumptions, until they felt like the core of the scriptures they were quoted from, while the scriptures had elements that smacked of ambivalence.
What changed, then, was not the disappearance of the feminine principle from our religious imagination, but its uneven translation into social practice. Shakti remained divine, sovereign and unconstrained in the sacred sphere, while the principle of autonomy of women was allowed to be mediated by custom, family structures and patriarchal readings of tradition that dominated the social sphere. Neither the reverence for women nor the reflex for irreverence towards them is foreign to us. Both are constitutive elements of our culture that remains ambivalent about woman’s role and status in society.
Dharma as a Living Conversation
Which one we carry forward is a question the tradition itself prepared us to answer, for it never claimed to be fixed. The very Manusmriti that records the household’s rules also observes that dharma is not constant; it differs from age to age, even if It is pejorative about the decline in quality of dharma:
अन्ये कृतयुगे धर्मास्त्रेतायां द्वापरेऽपरे ।
अन्ये कलियुगे नृणां युगह्रासानुरूपतः ॥ (1.85)
(“Different are the duties prescribed for human beings in the Krita (Satya) Yuga, different in the Treta Yuga, and different again in the Dvapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga, in accordance with the decline of the ages.”)
Sri Krishna gives that understanding, its grammar:
धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥ (Bhagavad Gita 4.8)
Krishna does not say here that there is an immutable ‘Dharma’, which is in danger and he would like to re-establish it. The understanding of Dharma in Hindu philosophy is not based on fixed ideas or written dictums, rather it is understood as ensuring a balance of cosmic order and morality as it is appropriate in that age. Krishna’s life is itself a reflection of such challenges to traditions that he eventually reformed: challenging Indra the god of rain, running away from the battlefield, using (what apparently looks) unfair means to win a war— all pointing towards the contextual understanding of Dharma. Hence, dharma may not be equated with dogmas or diktats written in the dharmashastras. Even Kautilya clarifies in his treatise that when there seems a contradiction between the dharmashastra and visible evidence, only the ruling of the king at the time shall be considered as the final word. Hence, reestablishment of dharma that Krishna alludes to should be looked at from this lens.
It is useful to aver that Dharma is not set once and preserved in amber; it is re-established in every age. Civilisations endure by shedding what has worn out so that what is of contemporary relevance may continue. Even the Constitution of India, barely 76 years old, has been amended over a hundred times because the society it serves is alive and such room for change needs to be there (even if all amendments are may not necessarily be for the betterment of society or mankind). Continuity depends on change.
The Civilisation of Critical Enquiry
To read the old texts as living thought is therefore not to defy them but to follow them mindfully. Their authors reflected the values of their age; ours is to reflect our own. Here one can bring in Kautilya’s concept of Ānvīkṣhikī (the science of critical enquiry). It is a discipline that teaches a person how to think, reason, examine evidence and distinguish between what is right and wrong. It teaches examination rather than blind acceptance It was not merely abstract philosophy; it was a practical intellectual instrument for governance, ethical judgement, strategic decision-making and the pursuit of knowledge. In the Arthaśāstra, Kautilya places Ānvīkṣikī among the four principal branches of knowledge that a ruler must study. Its significance lies in his recognition that political power and practical experience alone are insufficient: a ruler also needs the ability to reason independently, evaluate competing arguments and assess the consequences of alternative courses of action. The relevant passage is found in Arthaśāstra, Book I, Chapter 2:
सांख्यं योगो लोकायतं चान्वीक्षिकी।
It says, Ānvīkṣikī comprises Sāṃkhya, Yoga and Lokāyata. Sāṃkhya is associated with the analysis of reality through the distinction between puruṣa (consciousness) and prakṛti (material nature), and with an account of the principles through which the manifest world develops. Yoga, in this context, is a philosophical discipline concerned with the mind, consciousness, self-discipline and liberation. Lokāyata is particularly interesting because it represents a current of thought distinct from the religious and metaphysical traditions that became dominant in many later philosophical systems. Kautilya’s stance here is that a proposition should not be accepted merely because it is asserted by a powerful person, inherited from tradition or supported by superficial appearance; it should instead be rigorously examined and evaluated. A civilisation rooted in such a profound tradition of critical enquiry must bring that spirit to contemporary debates on women's rights. Doing so requires discarding ideas that depict women as weak, subordinate to men, or dependent on them, and challenge the belief that their sole dharmic place is within the four walls of the home.
The Case for Freedom
Restricting a daughter’s freedom of movement instead of making the streets safe for her, or scrutinising a woman’s clothes instead of holding an offender accountable for his conduct, is not the preservation of our civilisational values; it is a distortion of them. A society that places the burden of its failures on women, rather than on those who threaten their safety, mistakes control for protection and conformity for morality. Such practices do a profound disservice to a civilisation whose intellectual and political traditions placed a premium on learning, reason and the responsibilities of those entrusted with power. Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra, for instance, reflects a statecraft attentive to the consequences of administrative negligence—even to the point of prescribing a penalty for an official who failed to regulate a lamp which burnt excessively bright. The larger principle is that those in positions of responsibility must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions and omissions. Why, then, should women be expected to surrender their freedom because society fails to guarantee their safety? The goddess Saraswati we invoke before examinations holds the book and the veena in her own hands—symbols of knowledge, and creativity. Her daughters, too, must be free to pursue their education, fulfil their ambitions and participate in public life without fear or imposed restrictions. If we truly revere the values our civilisation professes, our duty is not to confine its daughters in the name of their protection, but to create a society in which their freedom and safety reinforce, rather than contradict, each other.
The victory we celebrate: What Bijoya asks of us
The Devi Mahatmya tells the story of how the gods, unable to defeat Mahishasura, pooled their radiance to create a single feminine form and placed their weapons in her hands. She did not need their protection. She needed only their trust—and she prevailed. Its best-loved hymn salutes her in every being:
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु शक्तिरूपेण संस्थिता ।
(To the Goddess who abides in all beings in the form of शक्ति—power itself—we bow.)
She is there in every being, not only on the altar. The hymn celebrating the sovereign Devi belongs to a tradition in which women, too, were seers, composers and interpreters of sacred knowledge. The rules governing the household, meanwhile, were codified largely by men, reflecting the social hierarchies and assumptions of their times. Between these two inheritances lies a question that each generation must confront anew.
What is written next belongs to us. Every generation of this civilisation inherits not only its sacred texts and social codes, but also the responsibility to decide what it will preserve, what it will reinterpret and what it will leave behind or discard. The pen passes from one generation to the next; the responsibility for its use cannot be passed on indefinitely.
The Devi has already answered what a woman can be: शक्ति, knowledge, courage and sovereignty. The question that remains is how we take this message forward.
When a daughter stands at the door with a book in one hand and a dream in the other, which of our two voices will she hear—the voice that invokes the Goddess in worship, or the voice that asks a woman to diminish herself in life?
Shubho Bijoya!
Tejusvi Shukla is a Doctoral Scholar at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. Her research focuses on national security, with an emphasis on Chinese security affairs and classical Indian statecraft. The views are her own.
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