Theism is a belief that there is an omnipotent, omnipresent,
omniscient creature, creating all of us so that He, Himself, is out of
nothingness and shaped us so that He can keep our ashes as trophies of His
creation for no audience, admirer of His. It goes on to explain that He designs
and determines every moment and on the day of resurrection He will punish or
reward for what was already preordained by Him. And of course it makes perfect
sense.
With this definition of theism in mind, we will now see how
religious faith has taken up femininity, poverty and what was the real cause
behind the torment of womanhood and poor? Although I am unsure whether religion
has anything in the origin of poverty, I am confident that it helped to sustain
and establish poverty as something which is self-evident. And faith did it with
a tool called Fate. Similarly, feminine roles were also made concrete by
religion. At first, a superficial glance will say that poverty and condition of
womanhood has nothing to relate, but surprisingly they have. That common thing
is “weakness”. What is your take on why poverty first raised its head? Weakness
of an individual to protect what he claimed was his. Saying in a different
manner- power of another individual to snatch and stamp a title of his own
name. Weakness can be mental or physical. And there you see a striking
similarity between poverty and condition of women. Don’t compare it with
contemporary times. I am diving into the origin. What could have caused the
predetermination of fate in various societies about the figure called woman?
Definitely weakness of women! Now you see it clearly, the origin of both highly
mystified things, poverty and plight of women. Often they are intermixed with
fate and religious dogmas, all culminating in a mysterious being called God. Nobody
needs to feel outraged if I call him/her weak because my purpose is not to
brand humans of contemporary times as weak or strong, but to show them how
things could have been when they were shaping themselves up.
Let us look at it objectively. I am assuming the much
prevalent belief of Abrahamic religions that Adam and Eve were the initial
beings on Earth. Nothing religious that I want to say. Societies let us say,
sprang from them. So in a society which
was not that much sophisticated enough to have complex institutions, aims and
goals, concrete laws, well defined possessions and their only focus was to
survive, what can be the deciding factor at that time? I guess you don’t need
to think that much. It can be only power- physical as well as mental. What
decided all further things? It was power. Power that started individually
became complex day by day with institutionalization. But even today the conclusions
of its origin (i.e. power) are standing like any unshakable rock. To sustain
those conclusions you look onto an imaginary being- originator of fate. This
fate stops us from discovering what is hiding in the darkness of caves. It is not at all coincidence that both woman
and poor were treated in the most gruesome of ways by societies and that too on
common grounds. They have one thing behind them- weakness. To support it you
can always imagine why God has always been related to a dominant male figure- a
king. More than anything else power is important. And that’s why God is
powerful. Everything that is weak or was weak in the past originated in
punishment of God- meaning punishment of powerful. Already determined fate
supporting almost everything in society! Fear of powerful, omnipotent led to a
poor and a hapless womanhood.
