Chanakya and his views about women

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Chanakya was famous Indian philosopher who
was responsible for the overthrow of the last
ruler of Nanda dynasty and start of Maurya
dynasty. He played very important part in the
establishment, growth and preservation of
Maurya Empire. He was teacher and mentor to
the first Maurya emperor Chandragupta.

He
was man of great tactics who made great
contributions and was instrumental in
changing the course of Indian history. It is
said that Chanakya had been personally
offended by King Nanda and he had vowed to
keep his long sikha (pony tail) unknotted until
he saw to the demise of the contemptuous
ruler and his drunken princes. Chanakya
helped Chandragupta in raising large army
and defeating King Nanda there by fulfilling
his vow. He roughly lived between the periods
350-275 BC. He was also known
as Kautilya and Vishnu Gupta. Chanakya
functioned as Chandragupta's counselor and
advised him in many matters related with
state. A treatise on the science of politics
"Arthashastra' is the most famous work of
Chanakya. He is considered as pioneer of the
field of economics and political science. He is
considered as one of the great teacher,
thinker and diplomat. His intellectual genius
commanded lot of adulation and respect
during his time and subsequent years. Later
on people even tried to attribute authorship
of several works dealing with various subjects
ranging from sex (Kamasutra), to astronomy
and mathematics to him but only
'Arthashastra' and "Neetishastra' or 'Chanakya
Neeti' are the two books attributed to him.

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He is considered as great economist and
revolutionary. He was a great strategist of his
time, and also considered as
ruthless manipulator who was determined
to achieve his goals by using fourfold policy
of Conciliation,
Donation, Punishment and Division ( साम,
दाम, दण्ड , भेद). His works of wisdom are more
than 2000 years old, still many of his
teachings are relevant and useful in today's
world. There are some arguments about his
exact place of birth or date of birth etc. but
these technical details are not that important
than critical study of his works.

There are also
different opinions about type of person he
was, common beliefs are that he was a crafty
politician, ruthless manipulator who cared
little for means used in the achievement of
ends. Some critics criticized his ways and
methods but his work is very widely
appreciated and studied even today. The scope
and range of his intellect should be self
evident with the variety of subjects he dealt
with, in his works one can not only see the
versatility but also notice accuracy,
applicability and relevance of many of his
ideas.

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Some of his famous quotes are,

If the rulers are righteous, people
are righteous. If they are sincere, people are
also sincere, like ruler, like people.
Governance is possible only with assistance. A
single wheel doesn't move. Hence ministers
should be appointed and their
counsel listened to.
A ruler with contiguous territory is a rival.
The ruler next to adjoining one is to be
deemed as a friend.
One should fight with an inferior enemy but
sign a treaty of peace with ones equal and
superior.
Enemy’s actions should be watched.
The weak should seek refuge in the strong.
One who desires speedy accomplishments of
tasks does not look to the stars to know his
fortune. Rational prognostics are superior to
stars in guidance.
Equal attention should be paid to the
performance of righteous duty
duty, acquisition of material wealth and
enjoyment of physical pleasures. Any of these
if excessively indulged harms itself and the
other two.
That mother and that father are enemies who
do not give education to their children.
Children should obey their parents and should
look after them when they are in difficulty.
The mirage looks like water. An enemy can
look like friend.
In the fight between the dog and pig, the
ultimate victory is that of pariah who gets the
meat to eat.
A dog on land drags crocodile. A crocodile in
water drags dog, the place of fight is
important.
Anger is the origin of all legal disputes,
murder also results from anger.
One should not argue with intelligent, the
foolish, friends, teachers and the beloved.
One who is not calm and collected cannot
accomplish the task.
One should decide first and then commence
the task.
Prosperity lasts long for one who acts after
proper consideration.
The one who knows the means makes
impossible possible.
Those who blindly believe in destiny do not
achieve anything.
He who does not see action is blind.
The one who knows cow's nature gets the
milk.
Flawless jobs are rare.
There is no attraction equal to gift.
Sting of words is stronger than fire.
Avoid him who talks sweetly before you but
tries to ruin you behind your back, for he is
like a pitcher of poison with milk on top.
I can go on quoting him like this, there are
many meaningful quotes like these
mentioned in his books 'Arthashastra' and
'Neetishastra'. These quotes cover variety of
subjects starting with ethics to economics,
politics to philosophy, sex to scholastic .
After reading his most of the work there is no
doubt that he was visionary and his
theories of administration are one of the
best. But as V. K Subramanian says “i t will be
however incorrect to assume that his
thinking was not limited in certain aspects,
especially his views about women” . This
might be because of social environment of
that time and his limited personal experience
with women. He lived in male
dominated society where women had limited
influence and scope. This must have created
heavy bias in his views about women, some of
his views about women are not very kind and
not at all relevant in today's world.
I don't know what made him to conclude that:
women cannot be trusted and
have inherent tendencies of low moral
character and falsehood. May be he wrote
these things on purpose to avoind distraction
of his male students but some views he
expressed about women are totally
outrageous and insulting to them,
for example have a look at following lines,
One should not place trust in rivers, animals
with horns, armed ones, women or in ruling
families.
Women are fickle minded. He also says 'Only
women could speak falsehood'
Untruthfulness, rashness, guile, stupidity,
avarice, uncleanliness and cruelty are
women's seven natural flaws.
Fire, water, women, fool, snake and the royal
family, beware of all these, they can prove
fatal.
Courtesy should be learned from princes, the
art of conversation from pundits, lying from
gamblers and deceitful ways from women.
Women have hunger two fold, shyness four
fold, daring six fold and lust eight fold
compared to men. (One wonders by what
means Chanakya measures these abstract
qualities of women)
According to him good women is the one who
is pious, expert in household chores, true and
faithful to her husband and who never speaks
lie to him. A great intellectual like him also
was not free from male dominant attitude.
He even says 'A women who keeps fast
without permission of her
husband shortens the life of her husband. She
goes to hell and is punished with great
horrors of hell.' At some places he even treats
women like commodity, 'For good
days one should save money, women should
be protected even if it takes the money saved.
But for self preservation the money and the
women should be sacrificed!!.'
So one can see that such a learned man also
was not free from bias against women, his
teachings related with politics, economics
and governance are superb and should
be studied in great detail but it's better to
totally ignore his views about women. One
should not think that as Chanakya was great
politician and thinker all his views are right
and his views about women should not be
criticized because he was great administrator
of his time. We can see that his views about
women are totally biased and must be based
on his limited interaction with women in his
life and profession. It's also possible that
Chanakya may not have spoken or written all
these demeaning things about women
attributed to him. These texts are very old
and many people must have contributed to
preserve them and recover them, things get
modified, added or deleted sometimes, we
never know, but these views are present in his
books which are available today. May be its
time to challenge them openly and also put a
warning that some of those books contain
some derogatory remarks about women, so at
least reader is warned in advance rather than
getting shocked while reading them.
Some readers complained when
I criticized some purports from Prabhupad's
book 'Bhagavad Gita as it is' in which he
makes similar comments about women. The
problem there was, he passed on his own
views as something from Bhagavad Gita which
is not true at all, those are clearly
Prabhupad's own views about women. The
views expressed in Chanakya's book are also
his own, he doesn't take shelter of any
scripture or try to give any divine angle to his
views. That's the difference between these two
views, I think readers will understand what I
am trying to say here. This is not an attempt
to criticize Chanakya as a person or to malign
his image. Many times we try to divide world
into either all good or all bad, we try to paint
either white or black (this results in attitude
either accept everything whatever is said or
reject all) but many times its mixture of both
good and bad (grey). So let's keep what is
good and reject the rest.
I already mentioned in some of my posts that
prejudice and bias against women was very
strong, it's not less than a miracle that they
survived and fought back to reclaim their
position in society. Let's not encourage such
comments anymore which insult their spirit
and womanhood.

Thanks for reading and please share your
views on this topic.

Links:

1. Chanakya-Niti-Shastra
2. Maxims of
Chanakya:Kautilya.

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