THE MYTH that women have been oppressed for years has been busted. The gruesome fact is that it is the men who have been oppressed since centuries together, which they have silently borne and also tolerated the false allegation that men are violent. Read the following excerpt from the unedited version of the greatest epic ever, the Mahabharat, which clearly entails the double standards the society has for crimes committed by women and those committed by men. Men are punished for their crimes, while women are worshipped. Kansa was killed, Ganga is worshipped even today.

I was reading the Mahabharat, the full unclipped edition printed by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. I’ve read it many times before but today was a very different experience. Most novels start with a simple introduction. Mahabharat starts with a bang! It starts with King Santanu, who ruled from Hastinapura. Hastinapura in those days was capital of our beautiful country, Bharat or Bharatvarsha. King Santanu was childless. There is no mention of King Santanu having other wives. One day, out on hunting trip, King Santanu meets a beautiful maiden with whom he falls in love immediately.

He was a King of the nation, which was supposed to have character and substance. So, how could the King fall in love with a woman before he knew her name? Anyway, let us continue with the story …the beautiful maiden as it turns out was river Ganga in her human body. She too liked King Santanu and agreed to marry him but on a condition that he will never question her. He promises not to challenge her and they get married. The bride sets a precondition before her marriage that she will live exactly on her terms and will never ever tolerate any challenge from the groom. Who was calling shots? The Man or the Woman? And we are told a bunkum fiction that modern day men demand dowry for getting married. Men marry women for all reasons other than money. Coming back to Mahabharata, King Santanu was a brave man amongst men. Still he did not hesitate to think that Ganga was perhaps, an enemy spy who might just turn and give away his kingdom to someone else. There is no mention of him consulting his ministers.

And, King Santanu gets married to Ganga.

As it happens in with every healthy man-woman union, a child was born to them. A son was born to the King. It was the first child born to King Santanu. The mother, Ganga takes her first-born male child and dumps him into her river form.

She killed a new born male child in broad daylight by throwing him into a river! She killed the first born son of the King of the Bharatvarsha! The mother killed her own infant, her own child! Why did she kill her own child? What kind of woman would do that? Well these are kind of the questions that run through our mind. There is no mention of it crossing through the mind of King Santanu. Even if they did, he does not utter them to his wife Ganga and keeps his mouth shut as per his promise to protect his marriage.

A King of the land keeps quiet and does nothing against the murderer of his first born son. A King has to stay quiet to save his marriage. A King! What a sacrifice King Santanu had to make to keep his marriage? Just imagine what would a modern husband do for his marriage?

Reading of it for first time 5000 years from its happening made me sit up and bow my head with reverence to King Santanu! The country that you once ruled has been ruined by the ministers who lark that women are oppressed and make more and more laws to oppress men. Every man, woman and child of your country is in danger. Every marriage in India is on guillotine. My marriage was butchered.

Minister Renuka Chowdhury, Kapil Dev and god only knows who else proclaim loudly on TV and say that killing a female new-born is a crime. Maybe they should also advertise for male infanticide. It is documented as being a phenomenon since the time of Mahabharata. Indian history says that one such child killer was Ganga who killed her own. Another such child killer was Kansa who killed children of his sister. Kansa was punished to death by Krishna within 10 years. What happened to Ganga? She was felicitated and called mother of the civilisation.

Back to Mahabharata! If killing one newborn male child is bad, the story of Mahabharat gets worse. Ganga kills her six more new-born children. And King Santanu has nowhere to go. There is no mention of the King talking to his ministers about the actions of his wife. Maybe those poor ministers were married too and no one liked fouling up the mood. King Santanu had no one to whom he could talk to. No one to counsel him and his wife Ganga. There was not even SIF in those days. So the poor King of the land, being a man had no option but to stay quiet. All for the sake of preserving his marriage. Some of you might even wonder what is wrong with the King Santanu?

After all he was a King. He is described as handsome and of course, he was rich. He expressed: “I love you and I’d like to marry you” within a flash of him seeing Ganga. And he stayed quiet. To be honest, silence of the King at the unceremonious murder of his seven newborn male children is not the most horrendous part. It is not even close to being horrendous even if you consider that each child was the natural heir who could grow into a King someday. The most horrendous part is that the King Santanu lived with Ganga and made her pregnant again and again. He made Ganga pregnant eight times.

Assuming that pregnancies were concluded as optimally and efficiently as humanely possible and were consecutive, this cycle of pregnancy, birth and infanticide continued for six long years. King Santanu with all his raging male hormones remained with his wife Ganga. He lived with Ganga who at any given point of time in those six years was pregnant for few months or at best cleansing herself for getting pregnant again.

I lived with my wife through most of her one pregnancy. My experience of living with a pregnant woman was that it was like walking in forest whose floor is fully hidden by dry leaves but one knows that a poisonous rattlesnake was hiding beneath these leaves. King Santanu lived with a pregnant woman for at least six years but did not get to name his child or play with him! And no, luxury that most of us enjoy was not available for King Santanu. Sending Ganga back to her parent’s home for pregnancy was not an option. Her former home is claimed to be Swarga. I bet after imagining the plight of King Santanu, you will never be able to poke an honest funny jab at the Indian government employee who has gargantuan beer belly. You will never be able to say APND “Always Pregnant Never Delivering” and not remember King Santanu.

Do you see, Renuka Chowdhury? Do you see the extent to which a man can handle oppression from women for sake of marriage, for sake of love? Modern men also do not oppress their women as often as women do. Men never ask ’Why’, although they are not bound by a promise as King Santanu was. Hell, I also have so many Why’s that I did not ask my wife. Many of my Why’s also got buried somewhere deep down. Maybe someone will answer on behalf of my wife. Why did you cook dal with shrikhand? Why did you not use the new tea leaves that I get for you? Why did you colour your hair blue? Maybe, just maybe, there is a light at the end of tunnel. Maybe this is what Renuka Choudhary wants from all us husbands. Never ever utter the word ’Why’ or she’ll go after your chromosome Y. Glad I’m a bachelor again.

Was the King Santanu stone-hearted? Or stoned? I know people did not use such things in those days. So what is it? Why then did he never ask Why? King Santanu did not utter ’Why’ because he was a man who was married and had made a promise in order to save his marriage. He faced oppression from his wife so that she may remain married to him. So that he can have a family. So that he can have an heir and continue his royal lineage. Feminism must have been a raging fire 5000 years ago. It must be so scalding hot that even the King of entire land could not dare to lift a voice on his wife or risk breakdown of his marriage. King Santanu was not a weakling. I imagine he would break the neck of men who’d dare to look at him or his subjects with malice but was as silent as a stone in front of Ganga.

As the story continues, he finally asked the ’Why’ as Ganga was about to drop the eighth child. Ganga looked at the King Santanu and told him “Now that you asked me a ’Why’, I will not live with you anymore. I will not be your wife from now. I will not dump this child into the river but make him into a man. And the King of Land had to accept that. He did not marry another woman as soon as Ganga left him. He longed to see his son for another 16 years. He met his son when he was a prince and a warrior. Ganga had done a great job at raising their only son, Devavrata.

Elsewhere, the epic explains that seven infants killed by Ganga were cursed souls who did not have genuine interest of living a human life even as Kings. So their kind mother, Ganga performed a cruel duty of killing them. Today, we Hindus celebrate Ganga as a mother of our Vedic civilisation.

Isn’t it ironic that Kansa used the same logic for killing his seven nephews but he was punished to death. Some might say that punishment of Kansa for killing seven children still continues.

We call India the male-dominated society from time immemorial where women play second fiddle to men. We felicitate the woman who killed seven of her own children as the mother of the nation. We say that if one takes a full dip into river Ganga, all our accumulated bad karma of past seven lives will be washed away. I say, India is indeed a ‘male-dominated’ society. In India males are dominated by females at every step of the way. Hats off to King Santanu. Hats off to his fortitude amidst such oppression. Hats off to his love to beget the child. Hats off to his faithfulness. Hats off to the one who wrote Mahabharata. Hats of to the River Ganga. Dear Renuka Chowdhury. Are you listening? Do I now have your attention.

King Santanu tried to live his life again and fell for fisherman’s daughter, Satyavati. Even in his second marriage, father of the bride called the shots. The poor fisherman extracted the unchallenged right to the throne of King Santanu. His son, Devavrata gave up his right to the throne for his father’ sake and in doing so, Bheeshma bonded himself into the service to throne. Even after living through seven murders of his own son by his wife, the direct lineage of the King Santanu eventually perished. His only surviving son, Bheesma died on January 16, 3122 BC. And the woman who did this to him is still roaming free and is worshipped. The dynasty of King Santanu was carried forward by sages like Parashar, Vedvyas and eventually with divine intervention from Dharmaraj, Indra, Vayu and Ashwini Kumar. This is the crux of the drama in the first nine pages.

Before the Western feminist ideologies were even born, men in India respected woman. A respect so deep that even 5,000 years and countless foreign regimes have not managed to cause a dent. Indian men are gentle. Men like King Santanu were epitomes of word ‘gentlemen’. He did not misuse his power unlike modern day female ministers. So whatever imported ideologies you are using to justify liberation of women is a big farce. Be Indian. Use swadeshi. Use Mahabharata as an example. Even 5,000 years ago, the King of the land was helpless against his wife. Women do not need protection. Governments just need to protect men