STUDY OF ARDHANARISHWARA AS A SYMBOL OF GENDER EQUALITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Abstract

India is amalgamation of different religions, languages, caste, classes, and creed reflecting various communities representing their own belief and perceptions of existence. In Hindu philosophy, we have a history of number of Gods and their relation towards humans and their lives. Ardhanarishwara, the mix of deities of Shiva and Shakti is the one who comes under this line. Its basic meaning represents the equality between the two entities of human society (male and female). Ardhanarishwara’s concept is male half as Purusha and female half as Prakriti. It implies that both have their defined roles towards the cosmos. Ardhanarishwara is the state of male and female energies, where it depicts how purusha and prakriti are important and interrelated to each other, how they are dependent on each other, how they are inseparable and how they are incomplete without each other. Moreover, this is the statue of gender equality. In the Hindu iconography women were sacred and being worshipped as Kali, Sati, Parvati, equivalent to male gods. But in the urban world identity of women and existence has totally changed, she has become the victim of male domination and patriarchy in personal and private realms. She just needs to follow the voice of the head of the society (patriarchy) manifested in the head of the house- father, and the head of her marriage –husband and when her kids grow up, she even needs to follow the words of her own children. She is the one who never gets the equality in her whole life and spends her most of life by losing her existence day by day which actually means there is no Ardhanarishwara in the real world.