16 July 2014 - QA 2

Dearest Gurudev, could you please talk about Manu and his role in all our scriptures.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Manu was one of the initial kings, like Adam and Eve. I don't know at what time period he was, but he has written the rules and regulations for society at that time.
Manu has written many good things, but one of the reasons why he has been bitterly criticized is because he has said that women are not fit to be independent.
He said that what a woman is young her father takes care, when she is middle aged, the husband takes care of her and when she is old, the son takes care of her. So she is not fit to be independent. She has to be dependent all her life.
This one line, 'Na sthree swathanthram arhati', which means that a woman is not fit for independence because somebody has to take care of her, is not the right thing. I don't agree with that. Maybe, at that time, in society, that was the way things are.
He never said that don't give women freedom, he just said that she is not fit to enjoy freedom.
Woman are called the fairer sex, or the weaker sex in every language, isn't it? So, one doesn't have to agree with everything one says. Manu has said some good things, just take that and don't latch onto this one thing that he said that women are not capable of handling freedom. That is not valid on today's society.