The Well of Ignorance

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” — Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ASV)

Pandita Ramabai's story begins with a woman reciting poetry. Anant Shastri Dongre was a Brahman scholar from the Mangalore district of south-western India. As a young man studying in Poona, he heard one of the ruler's wives reciting Sanskrit poems in the palace. It astonished him. The law-books taught that women, like the lowest castes, could not study the Vedas, and most learned men held that women should not learn Sanskrit at all. He decided to teach his own wife. She refused, and so did his family.

Years later, after his first wife died, a father on pilgrimage met him bathing in the river Godavari and offered him his nine-year-old daughter in marriage. Ramabai told the story herself, without names, as an example of how carelessly girls were married off: “All things were settled in an hour or so; next day the marriage was concluded, and the little girl placed in the possession of the stranger, who took her nearly nine hundred miles away from her home.” The stranger, about forty-four, was Anant Shastri. The little girl, Lakshmibai, became Ramabai's mother. Ramabai did not hide her judgement of that careless father, though she admitted “the little girl had fallen in good hands.” Her husband would teach her.

When his family objected again, he took his young wife up to a forest on a peak of the Western Ghats. Summoned before his guru and an assembly of scholars, he defended teaching women from the ancient authorities, and won. “He cared little for what people said, and did what he thought was right,” his daughter wrote. He did not question the Hindu religion; he was “a very orthodox Hindu.” What he rejected was the rule that women must be kept ignorant.

Ramabai was born in that forest in April 1858, the youngest of three surviving children. Her father fed every pilgrim who came, and before she was a year old the money was gone. “She placed me in a big box made of cane,” Ramabai said of her mother, “and a man carried it on his head from the mountain top to the valley. Thus my pilgrim life began when I was a little baby.”

For years the family lived as Puranikas, reading the sacred Puranas aloud in temples and by rivers. At about thirteen she was at Dwarka, where, the legend said, Krishna's golden city would rise from the sea for the sinless once in sixty years. At sunset the clouds glowed gold.

Many people did not dare to say that they did not see the city, for that would be confessing that they were sinners. They kept silence about it and so did we. But we were convinced in our inmost hearts that we saw no city but saw the ordinary clouds which we were accustomed to see, almost daily, at the time of sunset.

And her parents gave her one more gift. Brahman girls were usually married by eight or nine, sometimes as babies. Hers refused. “My father and mother did not do with me as others were in the habit of doing with their daughters,” she said, “i.e., throw me into the well of ignorance by giving me in marriage in my infancy.” It cost her father his standing among the Brahmans.

Moses told the parents of Israel to teach their children “when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way.” Ramabai's parents did not know the God of Israel, but they did exactly that. Long after she left their religion, Ramabai would not let anyone say in her presence that her parents were lost.

Honour what your parents got right, even if you come to believe differently. And remember Dwarka: a whole crowd pretending, because the truth felt shameful. That happens in churches too. God would rather have your honest questions than a polite pretence.

One thing to do this week: tell a parent, grandparent or guardian one thing they taught you that you are glad to know. And notice one moment when you are tempted to pretend, just because everyone else does. Be honest instead.