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Found thanks to Sepia Mutiny, this is the text of a piece of science fiction written by Rokeya Hosain in 1905, where the protagonist goes to a land dominated by women, and where men live lives of suppression.
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Nice, now let’s think about female priests please.
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Because we are so gullible and because our faith in gods, institutions and suchlike easily crumbles especially if in the form of art, literature and movies. What puzzles is this – the book has sold by the truckloads in India. Is it that books are seen as
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Week long Gay Pride Festival organized by Equal Ground. “The only organization in Sri Lanka serving the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning (LGBTIQ) community as a whole, EQUAL GROUND accepts all persons, irrespective of sexualit
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About Da Vinci Code, that is exactly what I was discussing with a friend who works for a movie production house here and she says, ‘You see people here don’t anyway read, but everyone watches the movies!’
Of course, it sounds most flawed… but is rather funny.
Da Vinci Code, I always see the boys who come up to the traffic signals (selling half a dozen books, mostly non-fiction) carry along with them. So if they are to believed that is the only fiction that sells! :)
And while non-Brahmin priests in temples is all good, but it is really funny how one election can make things come a full circle. The first thing that newly elected DMK government did, was to bring back the Kannagi statue and re-instated her at the Marina! This is the Newtonism of TN politics – Every government must have an equal and opposite action to the previous one!
Primalsoup: I think the government may be underestimating the number of people who read, and the impact of pop-fiction anyway. No?
About the temples – I think it might have to do with temples and finance as well. Think of the amount of money these temples rake in! But the boards of these temples already have nonbrahmins, so that really does throw my conspiracy theory down the drain. But I am puzzled by the fact that women still aren’t allowed to be priests in the big temples. (Apparently some of the smaller temples and groups do have them.)
Kannagi – now that issue deserves a post by itself.
Oh yes, that they are. Sometime back we had done some research on trying to understand the SOM (Share of Mind) of books versus movies versus music and it did very clearly tell us that books were IT for the average Indian. Of course, books are guilt-less and what even your mom approves, so that helped I suppose! It is more acceptable to profess love for it! :)
Though, one can conclude that perhaps the government doesn’t read much!
I think women becoming priests in temples will take a really long while. After all, conventional “wisdom” tells you that during the wrong days of the month god is out of bounds and prayer is after all a daily thing. Unless we are able to view menstruation as just a biological phenomenon (which is what it is) and not correlate that to purity and such like!
The good thing about the move of letting non-Brahmin priests is also that, now the priests can conduct prayers in Tamil and not necessarily in Sanskrit. And while Sanskrit is a great language, it is infinitely better to know what your prayer constitutes. I think, I always pray in English!
Oh and please do post on Kannagi, there doesn’t seem to be enough available literature on her. I am not entirely sure that why she is anti-feminist.
Jeez, I now seem like a spammer/stalker!
Primalsoup: If only I was blessed with a stalker of your ilk. :) My guess is that nonBrahmin priests will have to clear the same exams. So they’ll have to mug up pretty much the same stuff and recite it off rote.
This much is sure – if a family decides that a son can have the sacred thread ceremony and not the daughter – then it is sexist.
Kannagi post eh? i did one a long time back, but I’ll be glad to do one more. So many arguments on the anti-feminist aspects of her character. You just got my epic veins running! Expect a post on that soon.