Imprisoned in the body

Sukumaran C. V.

I know no woman—virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate—whether she earns her keep as a housewife, a cocktail waitress, or a scanner of brain waves—for whom her body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meaning, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its silence, its changes and mutilations, its rapes and ripenings.—Adrienne Rich

Karaikkal Ammaiyar was a staunch devotee of Lord Siva and one of the prominent Saivaite Saints (Nayanars) in the South Indian Bhakti Movement (circa 7th century to 11th century AC). The main thrust of the Movement was to help the agrarian development and the consolidation of Chola political power in South India. But if we look at the Movement  through a gender perspective, we can see that it also helped to consolidate the Patriarchal power over women. The story of Karaikkal Ammaiyar proves that even within the ideology of bhakti, the female is denied her agency and independent role.

Chekkilar’s hagiography (Periyapuranam) speaks about 63 Nayanars.  Of the 63, Karaikkal Ammaiyar is the only (prominent) female Nayanar. 

Before she metamorphosed into a ghoul, Ammaiyar was a beautiful lady called Punitavati. Chekkilar says that Punitavati was a staunch Sivabhakta and once when an old man, a Saivaite mendicant, visited her home for bhiksha, as she had not cooked the mid-day meal, she gave one of the two mangoes her husband brought home to the mendicant.   

Later, her husband Paramadatan, having eaten the tasty mango served to him, asked for the second one. Punitavati couldn’t reveal the truth. She went inside as if to fetch the mango and prayed to Lord Siva and there appeared a ripe mango in her hand! She served the mango, but noticing the unique taste, the husband asked the reason. Punitavati could not but reveal the truth. Paramadatan could not believe it. He mocked her and asked to pray again. Then, to his surprise, he saw a ripe mango appearing in the hands of his wife. Terrified, he left Punitavati to find an ordinary wife!

                             Punitavati gives one of the mangoes to the mendicant

As she was deserted by her husband, Punitavati asked Lord Siva to take away her female beauty and make her one of his ghouls—the bhuthaganas—and in that terrible form (Pey) she wandered in the forests of Karaikkal praising the Lord, and came to be known as Karaikkal Ammaiyar.

In this regard, it will be interesting to examine the attitude of some prominent male Nayanars towards their wives. Iyarpagai Nayanar was so great a devotee of Siva that he gave his own wife to a mendicant, when the mendicant asked. Another one, Tiruneelakanda Nayanar, deserted his wife because she had committed, according to him, a sacrilege by blowing off a spider which fell on a Sivalinga.  Yet another one, Kaliyar Nayanar, tried to sell his wife in open market in order to buy oil lamps for a Siva temple. Siruttondar Nayanar, a temple supervisor, cut off a queen’s nose for smelling a flower from the garland which was meant for the deity—Lord Siva. When the king, Kalar Singer, knew this; he proceeded to cut of the hand of, not the culprit Siruttondar but, the queen for taking the flower to smell! 

As Vijaya Ramaswamy says, “In all these instances the devotional fervour of the male Nayanars has been highlighted at the expense of the women who have been depicted as objects rather than as persons.” (Walking Naked: Women, Spirituality, Society in South India)

While we see so many instances of men’s devotional fervour highlighted at the expense of women, it is difficult to point out even a single instance in which the role is reversed. Let’s come back to Punitavati. She was a beautiful woman and wife before she became the Pey of Karaikkal. The role of a wife and that of a staunch devotee were not allowed to go together. That was why Punitavati, the beautiful wife of Paramadatan, had been deserted by her husband. We see many an instance of men being devout Saivaites or Vaishnavaites and at the same time husbands also.

The famous example is Sundarar (Sundaramoorthy Nayanar). He even marries two women and his deity himself helps him to accomplish his desire of having both Paravai and Sangili as wives. But in the case of Punitavati, when her husband discovers that her devotion to Siva gives her divine power, he deserts her, because, he was ‘deeply perturbed by his wife’s supernatural powers and convinced that she was no ordinary woman’. But Sundarar, with his Siva bhakti, produces bricks of gold, a large quantity of paddy etc.; and yet his wives never thought he was too divine to be a husband.

In the legend of Karaikkal Ammaiyar, what we see is that even the ideology of bhakti is deftly used by patriarchy to constrain the female in her body. A female bhakta, however devout she may be, is not free to use the public space with her female beauty. But the males are allowed to do it. Sundaramoorthy is called so because he was so handsome. He never finds it cumbersome to wander through the world. But Punitavati has to uglify herself to wander through the world!  

It may be interesting to compare this act of Punitavati with the more or less identical act of Tess in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Tess really makes her ugly for two reasons. As her husband deserted her, she no longer wants her beauty and she desperately wants to escape the lustful attack of the outer world—the public space.  

Karaikkal Ammaiyar lived nearly 1000 years ago and she realized that the public space was exclusively meant for the males.

Still public space is not meant for woman and girls. Still our culture is not ready to let woman grow beyond her body. We find manifold ways to make woman believe that she is only her body and that body is meant for man—to harass, to molest, to throw acid and to pass lewd comments at, to violate, to rape and to kill with virtual impunity.

It is high time we let woman grow out of and beyond the body. It is high time we made our private and public space gender egalitarian. It will be possible only if we get rid our culture of its deep rooted patriarchal, misogynistic traits.