The Womens Question in Nineteenth Century India Research Paper

The Womens Question in Nineteenth Century India - Research Paper Example Here, the social institutions of caste and patriarchy combined leading to the oppression of women in more ways than one. On the other hand, the pressures of modernity that arose from the colonial quarters was something that led to reformers within the Indian society feeling the need for change in the way the society was structured. The burden of this modernizing impulse was then transferred onto the women of the society. This followed, again, a traditional notion of women being the bearers of the honor of a society. This move in the direction of modernization was something that can be seen to be an expose of the chinks in the Indian society and the blindnesses that it was prone to. The reformers often made the mistake of viewing upper caste Hindu society as Indian society, ignoring the members of the lower castes, the Muslims, the Sikhs, Christians and Parsis and so on and so forth. This tendency was due to the privileged position that many of these reformers came from and this cloud ed the judgement that any of them made in this regard. The writings of many women writers of this era however, posed questions to these movements and made them aware of the need for a reassessment of the problems that pre-colonial traditions posed and the ways that were being employed for the purpose of engaging with them. The complexities of the situation can be assessed from the fact that there was a great deal of differences as far as the hierarchies of caste within the different parts of the country. In Haryana, for instance, as Prem Chowdhry points out, the Jats who were primarily cultivators, held one of the most important positions. They were considered to be as important or more, as the Brahmins and the Rajputs who held higher positions than the cultivators in most other parts of India (Chowdhry 307). This had many implications for the condition of women and the colonizers’ ideas regarding what needed to be done for them. An understanding of this situation requires kn owledge of what the economic conditions of the time were in a place like Haryana. The economy was almost entirely dependent upon the agriculture of the place. As a result of this, the position of the cultivators was quite important in the larger scheme of things. Here too, there were certain changes that the role of women underwent as a result of the

Paul Gauguins illusion In The Paint Where Do We Come From What Are We Essay

Paul Gauguins illusion In The Paint Where Do We Come From What Are We Where Are We Going - Essay Example Paul Gauguin had presumably referred to this soul. In his painting â€Å"WE† does not refer to material world that are unreal and that which our mind personifies.This paper is trying to establish intellectual and philosophical aspect of gauguin’s painting on this ground. The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in it’s publication â€Å"Aspects of Vedanta† has said: Sankara is not alone in drawing our attention to the illusory nature of empirical life. Plato, Kant, and Hegel adopt the same view, and in recent times, Bergson, equipped with all the knowledge of modern science, arrives at the same conclusion. The intellect,he says, disguises reality, misrepresents it, and presents to us a static world, †¦ The painting of our topic very much reflects this illusion suffered by the artist, though, it seems, he very much understood that â€Å"real† is different from this illusion. Also, Paul Gauguin relflects the illusion suffered by this world. Ingo F Walther in his book â€Å"Paul Gauguin 1848-1903 The Primitive Sophisticate† has mentioned: The spectrum of human activity encompassed by the painting spans all of life, from birth to death, in all its wondruous diversity. The new-born child lying in the grass, seeing the light of day for the first time, marks one boundary of Gauguin's stage, and the careworn old woman who looks so downcast as she meditates upon the past marks the other. Between the two lies the copious adult world of fears and joys. The exotic idol in the background, and the two people walking (possibly lovers), are there for atmospheric effect, and bridge gap between Man and the natural setting. Gauguin reveals considerable ambition in the way in which he placed some favourite subjects in his panorama - the relaxed reclining nude, the figures sitting lost in the thought, the cult statute. The figures are there to evoke associative meanings, rather to explain or illustrate. Gauguin was not concerned with being understood: rather, he was interpreting life as a great mystery. The world's lack of understanding, which was pushing him towards suicide, was obliquely expressed in his emphasis of the impenetrable and incomprehensible.# Footnotes: **Page 45 and 46 in "Aspects of Vedanta" #Page 80 in "Paul Gauguin 1848-1903 The Primitive Sophisticate" By Ingo F Walther The painting by depicting the various stages of life, in effect has carried the message that life is full of changes and life is nothing but an illusion. Even the animals and birds found in tha painting undergo the changes of life which is an illusion. The blue sky found in the painting is also an illusion. The painting depicts the convulsions of his mind and his yearning to show the world the difference between the 'real' and 'unreal'. The other side of illusion But, interestingly, illusion is having another side. Swami Lokeswarananda in his translation of Mandukya Upanisad has said: Even to