Sati pratha and Bal wiwah in Hinduism

Hinduism in contrast to other organized religions is not governed by dictates from prophets once and and for all. The more appropriate word for Hinduism is Sanatan or Vedic dharma. Sanatan means ever new and ever changing. 'Ved' means knowledge. Hinduism never advocates to stick to the old knowledge and always accepts developments in our understanding of human being and also the universe around us. There are many such evidences where you find conflicting argument in upanishads and also the manusmruti was revised for almost 17 times. As time passed this process of argument and counter argument slowed down and everything became stagnant. This is also natural because from a bacterium to a human society a law of sigmoid curve of growth is applicable. During the plateau phase of our culture in the history we have all kind of short sighted customs incorporated which were never part of our philosophy.

| शास्त्रात् रुढी बलिर्यसि | It means customs become more powerful than the philosophy in course of time during period of stagnation. During this period we had all such customs which we are still following. Sati, child marriage, untouchability, cast based on birth, samudra bandi are few to name. We will talk about probable reasons for first two in this article.

Sati pratha:

Hinduism accepts woman as complete as man and she was free to learn (eg. Gargi, Matrayi) and marry (eg. Swayamwar system) with her choice from beginning unlike in europe where woman was thought to be produced from a rib of a man for his entertainment and granted voting right as late as 1920 AD. So the point is, custom of sati was never inherent to our philosophy. The major reasons i could see are:

1) Stagnation of our culture leads to virtually stopping women education and thus compels them to be at mercy of men in both family and society.

2) Evolving Buddhism as a fallout of fading vibrant vedic culture made our society vulnerable to outside attacks.

3) Hapless women were the first target of barbaric invasions who believes in enjoying women as their legitimate right.

4) We never thought women as pleasure object and hence physical intimacy was always for reproduction instead of just animal instinct. That leads to moral values still we believe in, as explicitly mentioned in Geeta (1.41) Thus protecting virginity and/or monogamy becomes utmost important for a woman by religion.

5) This lead to encourage sati trend of widow who is absolutely unprotected after the death of her husband.

Bal Wiwah:

As mentioned earlier marriage and subsequent reproduction was primarily for continuation of the species. In that case it hardly matters when ones marry because in any case the couple stays together only after attaining puberty. During brahamcharyshram one is suppose to stay with guru and then after coming back one use to start grihasthashram with a early wedded guy or gal. If you look positively then the major issues we are facing today may become irrelevant. But i am not for reviving it because it certainly does not fit for todays society where individual matters most over family or society.

I am not here to justify the things. I am simply trying to put things in perspective. They may not even look logical for few. But if you follow the process of evolution and apply it not only to individual but to society as a whole then according to me nothing is good or bad, true or false, etc. The customs that we follow today (e.g. dating) my become totally irrelevant after few centuries. That doesn't mean that it is wrong today. We are living in ever changing world (Sansar by meaning is changing)

So now in toadys world where Hinduism is coexisting with other religions we first should start the internal debate which will help to get rid of outdated customs (like sati etc which may be suitable for that point of time) and inculcate new customs which suits for toadys world. But for this healthy debate we first have to look to our culture without western angle or any prejudice. Then we are in better position to change it for generations to come. If we want to distance from all we had in the name of 'wrong' or 'inhumane' then not only we do injustice to our forefathers but also to ourselves because by law of 'survival of fittest' we as a race never would have survived for so long if there are so many wrong customs with us. The only thing lacking is that we forgot how to evolve as a race. If we could restart at any point of time then our philosophy is the best possible answer for most of the problems facing by modern civilization.

I would like to add a ending note that, this changes need to be done by highest religious authorities like Shankaracharyas and not by government or law or by NGOs.