KRISHNA THE VOYEUR OF GOPIKAS !

KRISHNA THE VOYEUR OF GOPIKAS !

Hindus are confronted by other religions on the issue of a story of their God incarnation Krishna in his teens stealing the dresses of the women while they were bathing in the river and hanging them from a tree nearby. The Gopikas had to come on shore naked and beg for the dresses. Sceptics ridicule the attitude of Krishna in this part of the story and brand him as a voyeur and pervert ! The true meaning / explanation is not understood by many (including the Hindus)

Some preamble here. Krishna is portrayed as the supreme soul and is regarded as the incarnation in its expressive best. The bodies of all living things are generated by the soul only including the male and female. The designer of such bodies do not have to peep to see the bodies ! It can see the bodies in open without any sense of shame or weakness. Just like the designer of a dress might view his creation from different angles, the designer of bodies might have gone through the verification of perfectness even before the bodies were created. Now there is no requirement for the designer to develop weakness for his own creation simply because he can create any number of even better ones in future. So the theory of voyeurism does not hold water. Then what does the story imply?

There are several such instances of ambiguity or situations which are open to criticism and analysis in Hindus stories. These stories could have been very well censored / avoided by the compilers if they felt that the stories were in bad taste. Instead the stories are indeed retained there for everyone to read. The compilers could have altered the stories to like ‘too good to be true’ to portray their gods in good light. Instead of doing that the controversial aspects and portions of the stories are retained as such. There should be a logical reason for the same.

Women by nature are shy of their bodies. Men are not. This is the way Indian culture is developed. A woman’s body is nothing but a man’s body with breasts and female genitalia. Vice versa is also true. The soul is considered as male and the nature (maya) is considered as female. Thus in a man, the soul’s qualities are normally more pronounced such as fearlessness, Protective nature, playfulness etc. In a woman, the sense of body is more pronounced. So while a man finds nothing wrong in walking in the open with a bare chest, a woman may not do that fearing looks from a stranger. A man is not afraid of a woman seeing him naked (normally) but by nature a woman very much is or the culture makes her behave that way.

Now the purpose of life is to understand its meaning and not really to be proud of the beauty of the bodies or indulge in the enjoyment opportunities out there. Having said that there is nothing per se wrong with the enjoyments. Only thing is that do not get too indulged or in other words do not get carried away by the indulgences and miss the purpose ‘all to get her’ (the word ‘altogether’ is split intentionally for the male readers!). So while the male is naturally bestowed with the ability to think beyond their bodies (even though most such male thinking fall flat upon the female bodies !), the females are naturally or by culture is always made aware of her body far too much than the males, which puts her in a natural handicap to think beyond the body.

This shyness keeps a woman away from self realisation, as she is made to attend / be aware of her body in public and for most part of the day, where as the male does not have to attend the body or be aware of the body for most part of the day. The awareness of female and male bodies are thus at the extremes. To realise that you are not your body but the body is yours, one has to let go off the understanding that revolves around his / her body and go into higher / deeper realms of the mind. The soul is present at the bottom of the mind. Hence to reach it the mind is to be made thought free by practice and is to be meditated upon. Now a woman sitting among a few males would naturally be always aware of her body and the male minds may hover around hers thus making her more aware of her body!  The situation may be slightly  different for a gang of just males or females. However it may be tough for a female to devoid the mind of any thoughts of her own body in presence of others especially  males.

Who understands this better than the soul itself? Hence the soul when portrayed as incarnation, creates a situation to make the females to let go off their shyness about their body and rather understand that they are also the soul and not the body !

Now ask yourself. Was Krishna a voyeur ? Or was he beyond such feelings?