Women in the Mahabharata, Part 1: a different Perspective
A few days ago, Hindu Blog posted an interview with me on Sons of Gods. A couple of the questions concerned a subject I was planning to write about in the near future, so let’s see what I said there: Who do you think is the most tragic woman character in the Mahabharata? The Mahabharata is a book about men, yet the few female characters are powerful indeed: the goddess Ganga, the Pandava’s mother Kunti, the Princess Amba, and of course the Pandavas common wife, Draupadi. Of them all, I find Amba the most tragic, as well as the most interesting, and I tend to identify with her. As a woman, how do you see the treatment of women in Mahabharat? Is your view reflected in the book? When we consider the women in the Mahabharata and their treatment, it’s important not to see them through the prism of Western feminism. This is a story set in an age and a place far removed from our own world. Different standards were valid in that age, and it wouldn’t be fair to ...