14 July 2014 - QA 4

How is it that in Vedic times, men and women both were priests and teachers. What caused that transition that women were cut out from the knowledge?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

In Vedic times men and women were equal. There were women priests, women saints and all that. But later on, in the middle ages, when the Arab influence fell on India, at that time, slowly women’s powers were taken away, because India was ruled by the Arabs for about one thousand years. This is talking of the Mughal time.
There were some exceptions, like Kerala. Kerala and Tirpura was never under Mughal rule. There matriarchal society continued.
In Kerala, all the wealth goes to the girls. The mother is the head of the family. The husband lives in the wife’s house after marriage and not the other way round.
In Tripura also it is the same with the tribal. All the property, etc., goes from girls to girls.