Preface
In 1945 when I was 19 years old, I wrote a book in Sindhi entitled as “Muslim Aurat”, which in its 250 pages described position of woman in various social, cultural laws and civilizations. I had touched upon Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, pre-and post-Islamic Arabs, Sassanians, European and Northern American woman, central Asian woman under Russians and the position of woman in Sindh’s history. A chapter was written on the present status of the woman in Sindh’s history. In this book I had made compromise as regards position of women under Islam was concerned. Based on I.I. Qazi’s lectures and writings of 20th Century westernized Muslims I had insisted that Islam had given equal status to the woman in all spheres of life and that Islam had given equal status to the woman in all spheres of life and that Parda was un-Islamic, although I had never believed myself that Islam had given equal status to the women. This has now been proved by various amendments in the Law of Pakistan, making two women equal to one man as regards property rights and their evidence in the court as witnesses. Today I am three times as old as I was when this book was published. During the period I have travelled extensively over all the continents, read considerably on position of women in history, made analysis of anthropological works on the primitive tribes of the present and the past and have strongly felt that my book of 1945 was a very mild protest for rights of woman, who has suffered under subjugation for past seven millennia.
With this background I thought of recasting, what I had written years ago, but also make it more scientific and systematic. I had blamed all religions with exception of Islam for imposing unjust laws on women. Today I believe that religions have subordinated themselves to the economic and social needs of the times and even if religions by decrees and promulgations sometimes have given some rights to the woman, this has not been executed by the various cultural groups in larger interest of those societies. They have also interpreted religion as it situated them. There is very little scope for change in the three major Western religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but the Eastern religions have continuously developed ideas suiting he times. Such religions have been adopted and propagated by the State at various times; enforcing suitable laws which are given religious sanctity; for example, Hinduism as practiced by the Indians upto 500 B.C. is altogether different from writings of Manu written 4th century A.D., under Guptas. The Buddhist Councils sponsored by Buddhist monarchs every hundred years after Budha’s death were simply meant to promulgate religious laws suiting he economic and political requirements of the period.
The present book describes the position of the woman over the past ten thousand years, her slavery as created by the Neolithic Revolution and her struggle to regain independence due to economic conditions created by 19th century Industrial Revolution in the West. Reformers all over the world have periodically tried to reinterpret religious doctrines, so as to give better status to the woman in society of the times. Hazrat Bahaullah of Iran and Sir Agha Khan like many other reformers have issued religious injunctions or interpretation about granting equal status to the woman. The injunctions of the above two are accepted by their followers with all earnest and sincerity, but yet are omen equal to men in all the respects in these communities? A close examination would prove that they are not! The most important factor is economics. In any community as long as the man earns and thereby controls the household economics or contributes more to the finances of the house, he automatically is the boss. This situation is little realized and the present book would describe in detail what happened in history.
Are Men and Women Physiologically Different Beings?
The elementary study of human physiology invariably has described man and woman as physically similar. Even when it comes to sexual organs the physiologists have justifiably proved that the various organs although dissimilar apparently in a man and a woman, have similar functions and small differences are trifling. These statements have invariably been used as an argument by femininity in favour of equal rights. A detailed examination of he human physical functions and their mechanics have revealed to me some distinct differences, which are astonishing and are reproduced below:
1. Chemically the male and female brains are slightly different. It is now proved that the wary man and woman think and react is programmed by respective types of hormones acting on human brain before birth of a child, and thus the two sexes behave differently from the very birth.
2. Upper thigh joint with pelvis has a different angle in a woman than that of a man. Due to this major difference a woman can squat on her feet and move for some time without feeling tired, whereas it would exhaust a man and even produce pain in his knees, hip joints and pelvis area. The same joint is responsible for graceful way in which the body of a woman moves while walking..
3. When a man sitting on a chair relaxes, he keeps his legs crossed, i.e., one of his thighs above the other; whereas the woman keeps her thighs and feet wide apart to relax.
4. The trunk of woman as compared to her legs is proportionately longer than the trunk of a male as compared to his legs i.e., for the same height the man has longer legs and shorter trunk, whereas the woman has shorter legs and longer trunk.
5. Woman’s fingers are longer as compared to her palm and shorter in case of man. The male palm is also wider than female palm. Knowing this fact some women try to keep long nails to give more length to their fingers as a symbol of femininity.
6. Women have thick lips and men thin. To put more emphasis on their lips, women therefore, apply lipstick, which makes them more prominent and thereby more women thinner eye brows than men and they pluck eye-brow hair, making them still thinner and thereby emphasis on this feminine difference.
7. Man’s body in general is slender, but the woman has developed mammary glands or breasts. This is an additional weight, women have to carry on their front. This will make them walk with their trunk moved backwards fro balance, but nature has provided them a balance weight in the form of heavier buttocks and thus they are able to walk straight. The size of breasts would, therefore, control the size of buttocks and vice versa.
8. While waking a man must balance his body in walking one of the legs moves forward and the other is left behind. To balance them, one of his arms on opposite side of the leg has to move forward and the other backward. Faster a man walks longer is the oscillation of the arm. The leverage has to be properly balanced.
9. Woman’s body having been balanced by her breasts and buttocks, she does not need movement of the arms for balance while walking. A woman can be seen carrying a small load in her arms pressed against her breasts, and walking long distances. A man cannot do this and walk without getting tired.
10. In case of a pregnant woman there is an extra weight on her stomach in the front. Fore balance she walks with her trunk moved slightly backwards. Nature also helps her in adding weight to her buttocks in form of fats during pregnancy.
11. A girl starts speaking at an age of eighteen months and a boy after 24 months. A girl picks up two hundred words by age of two whereas a boy can catch up with this number at age of three. A woman on an average speaks twice as many words as a man, in their life time.
These physiological differences have played a decisive role in determining the position of the woman versus the man in economic sphere and her slavery which began with the Neolithic Revolution.
CHAPTER 1
Women in Hunting-food Gathering Communities
The man evolved some 14 million years back, when Ramapethaecus, the ape-like-man came on the scene for the first time. He went through various evolutionary stages, distinguishing himself gradually from the other animals by use of his brain. There is evidence of the man using tools since 5 million years ago. During the past 3 to 4 million years he made pebble tools and bone implements, hunted pigs and antelopes. He scavenged on larger game since one million years to one hundred thousand years ago, made hand axes and chopping and other small pebble tools. He developed power of speech, intellectual ability for concepts and in time developed hand axes with the help of which, he was able to kill large animals. During the period fire was known to him most probably by accident and he carried it from place to place for roasting his prey. He was now able to kill larger animals like mammoths, elephants, etc., which were driven into either deep mud or pits by setting fire around them.
It is at this stage that definite division of work between man and woman started. Hunting needed more physical strength, long hours or days of following the prey, a task which a pregnant woman cannot perform and the woman also had to look after children. Women’s activities in general therefore did not involve hunting but they contributed equally to the comfort of the tribe by roasting meat, gathering vegetable food, plant roots and fruits. They sewed animals’ skins together, for tents and costumes. Man had learnt to work wood with the help of hand axes. He made props for tents, built homes and also occupied caves. Women had considerable role to play as food gatherers and house-keepers, primarily because the carbohydrate rich, plant roots can be stored for a short while and some of the wild fruits could also be dried and stored for use at the time of dearth. They lived in bands of 30 to 40 people and when their numbers exceeded this limit, they divided the band into two and moved to adjoining areas. In terms of total calories production, to meet the family food needs, women as food gatherers were able to produce more than men, the animal hunters. This raised the status of women.
Life expectancy in these tribes was approximately 32 years. They produced a maximum of four children at an interval of four to five years. Since the parents would die young, the upbringing of the child becomes the responsibility of the community, and additional task for the living women. The bands kept moving and although they worked hardly three to four hours a day women did not collect adequate fat on their body. A woman can get pregnant only if she had 25% of her total body weight as fat. Thus the birth of a child was automatically adjusted to every 4th or 5th years, when after a long period of child lactation, she gained the required weight.
Life with the early man went on without too much change, i.e., hunting wild game, gathering seeds, fruits and roots of some vegetation and collecting honey.
Around ten thousand years back came another revolution, which automatically was to lead to further developments like Mesolithic, Neolithic and 19th century industrial revolutions. It was the development of Microlithic tools. This helped man in further development of tools from materials other than stone, i.e., bones and wood. Finally it was to lead to harnessing of energy other than that of his own body. This was a great improvement on tools, used between 100,000 to 35,000 years ago, when he had developed hand-axes, flake tools, pointed scrappers, triangular knife blades, hammer-stones and small hand axes. He had also mastered the art of hunting. In this period called the upper Paleolithic, manufacture of tools reached a very high stage of development. Bone and wood were used to part-blades from flint. Pressure flaking became very common. A variety of engraving tools came into use. Spearhead harpoons and other tools were also manufactured from bones of antlers and ivory. With process of pressure flaking, tools with increased sharpness were also produced.
An important cultural development of the period was painting and sculpture, at first of the animals of prey and then human, particularly the female. The human female was elevated to become mother goddess or the goddess of fertility for continuation of human race. This high status of the woman, evolved during 35,000 to 10,000 years ago, was so maintained by subsequent cultures until the Neolithic Revolution. In some of the hunting tribes the female as goddess, has continued to exist up to the present day, but only in agricultural societies evolved out of Neolithic, has the position of women in the societies been totally destroyed.
Microlithic tools are recognised from their micro-size, sharpness and utility for various purposes. Large number of tools were produced for different uses and some of the tools were as efficient as modern steel hand tools like knives, arrows and beaked double concaved scrappers. The also developed polished stone tools of all kinds for various uses. With this started Mesolithic stage which was transitory between Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic. There was a gradual beginning of agriculture. Hunters used the same type of tools as in the earlier stages but use of bone and horn increased. Bow and arrow were fully developed. Use of fishing hooks, harpoons, canoes and paddles made fishing a way of life in some areas.
Agriculture owes its origin to the woman. Women who were gatherers of seeds, roots, fruits and wild vegetative products had observed that seeds scattered over the ground after maturity of the plant, germinated in the following season, if moisture to sustain the plant was available during the coming growing season. They, therefore, planted seed, which was raised to maturity on suitable soil. Subsequently, a hoe was developed. This was a basic tool for seed-bed preparation. As already stated a woman could squat on the ground and keep moving over the field due to peculiar mechanical angle of their hip bone joint. She used hand-hoe to cultivate up to two acres of land in a season. In addition to this she could also gather wild food. Man still was a hunter. In the terms of calories produced, man produced less than a woman did. This gave the woman a much higher social status.
All this stage the man started domesticating some wild animals. Animals surrendered their freedom to him and by his intelligence he led them to rich pasture lands and suitable watering points. He thus could regulate the supply of meat for his requirements. He also resorted to occasional hunting, to gather extra food and sometimes purely as sport. Because the woman could definitely produce more food than man, the position of female goddess reached its peak during this period. An outcome of this was what is known as matriarchal society, in which a woman is considered the head of family and the family or the tribe was named after her. A remnant of this system has survived among the pastoral Mangols. To the Mughal rulers of India consultation with the mother and her consent and official seal although in name only, was essential to give any decision an officially legality. In absence of mother or after her death, these powers were inherited by the eldest sister and not eh wife. Even Aurangzeb had to entrust these powers to his sisters Jehan Ara and Roashan Ara.
CHAPTER-II
Women losses Position due to Neolithic Revolution
The gradual invention of agriculture by women spread over some two thousand years, since its beginning in the seventh millennia B.C. By mid of fifth millennia B.C., there came another great revolution the harnessing of bullocks in a yoke for ploughing. Man who reared cattle and thus had monopoly over oxen, after castrating bullocks in a yoke. With a crude stone-plough, he could prepare seed-bed and plant four times the area a woman could by plough hand hoe, and yet have leisure hours as compared to woman who could plant only two acres, while toiling her muscles throughout the season. Apparently one man could produce enough grain in a year to support a family six eight people. He needed occasional help from his family members for transplanting, harvesting and transporting grain and agricultural produce. He also learnt to feed agricultural wastes like straw, oil-cake, green vegetative material left after harvest and etc., to domestic animals. He became the main food earner of his family. He had inherited bullocks from his monopoly of domestication of cattle and grazing them. Since bullock ploughing needed lot of strength, he was more suited for this job than the woman. With this revolution the woman was relieved of the drudgery of agriculture, which at first appeared fine, but it made an important difference of far-reaching consequences in the day to day life of the woman. She no longer was the sole food earner and sole master of the house. She was made to surrender her freedom to eh man, who now controlled the means of production and was a capitalist in the true sense, whereas the woman was reduced to the status of an ordinary worker and her status reduced in proportion to calories she contributed to the family requirements of food by way of food-gathering, feeding domestic animals agricultural wastes, brought into the house from the farm, milking of animals and extracting butter and other products from it. Since man was away from the house most of the working hours of the day, the woman was charged with up-keep of the house raising of children, cooking and carrying food to the man in the field during his working house. This situation gave rise to what is known as patriarchal society in which the family or the tribe is known after man. The status of man versus woman under Neolithic society varied from situation to situation, i.e., how hard a man had to work to produce food for the family and how many calories did he actually contribute.
In rain-fed area the status of the man vis-à-vis women was different than in the arid zones. In the rain-fed area land had more humus and the draft on the plough was ¼ and much as on arid zones. Seed bed preparation was comparatively easy, as one or two ploughings would suffice. In case of arid zones situation was altogether different. Soil was hard having been backed by heat of the sun, humus was absent, there was lack of moisture and a number of ploughing had to be done before seed bed was ready for planting. Irrigation has to be resorted to. It meant additional task of maintenance of irrigational works and silt clearance had to be periodically done. This increased daily and seasonal working hour for man, who could under circumstances plant less area, produce less food than his counterpart in the rain-fed area. This affected the status of woman in the two societies, being the worse, in case man had to work more, to produce same number of calories from every member of house-hold.
The food calories produced by a farmer in an arid zone like Sind, were not even adequate to support his family. We have some records of the past and know that under the irrigated system of agriculture as in Sindh, there were 1.6 persons per acre of land irrigated. A family of eight, i.e., father, mother, 3 daughters and 3 sons could irrigate and cultivate only 5 acres. Assuming that the six children took food equivalent to four grown-ups, as will be the case in average family, and considering a maximum yield of 8 maunds of clean grain per acre, as was the case up to end of 19th century, the food available from above 5 acres was ½ Kg per person per day i.e., only 2000 calories per person or 12,000 calories for the family. The farmer toiling with spade and plough consumers 4000 calories per day leaving 8000 calories for rest of family equivalent to five grown-ups or 1600 calories per person. To make up for the rest of calories as well as clothing and house-hold requirements, the family had to work extra. Farmers usually resorted to animal husbandry as additional occupation. Young children took cattle to pasture lands, women milked cows and converted milk into various food products. Meat was also another source of food for the farmer and his source of food for the farmer and his family. They also resorted to gathering wild food. Wild fruits, and plant roots like Bih, Lorah and etc. Many times food, added this way, contributed to more than 50% of the calories shortages and surplus food found its way to urban centres. Occasional hunting too contributed to food requirements.
CHAPTER-III
Despotism – The Natural Result of Irrigation and conversion of Women into child Producing Machines.
In the mid-fourth millennia B.C. started the age of irrigated agriculture in Sindh. This had already started in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was responsible for the rise of four great civilizations of the old world, namely, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, the Indus and the Hwang HO. All these river civilizations had one thing in common, the irrigated agriculture. The Indus civilization on its fringe zones had some benefit from rain fed agriculture but the urban centres of the cultures in such areas were not very prominent, showing comparative lack of prosperity. Irrigation requires execution and maintenance of canals, taking off from a river or source of water adjoining major rivers. Such canals have by necessity to be large and have to cover many thousand acres of land. These canals cannot be executed by individual farmers, who initially have to work co-operatively to excavate a canal. This co-operatively leads to voluntary appointment of someone as a leader. Later on this leader is also accepted to be responsible for maintenance of the canal through the labour provided by individual farmers. He is also made responsible for distribution of water. Irrigated Agriculture would need large scale co-operation and more of it is needed if canals become longer in length, greater in their water carrying capacity and larger areas they are command. Annual clearance of water courses alone would take wary most of the free days of the farmer. Even voluntary operations would need a leader or an authority to work under. Such authority was easily developed by co-operating farmers on a canal. Initially the leader assumed the role of water maintenance ad distribution authority and soon became a despot, using forced labour at will and taking part of produce as a comp