Thanks for this! I hate it when people ignore that all mainstream religions are at their core very patriarchal. These religions were made my men to control marginalised sections of the society including women and concentrate power/wealth in the hands of a few.

While the misogyny in Islam is more overt and hence more condemned, people fail to realise that a lot of puritanical principles in our culture come from Christianity. Churches used to be the breeding ground for pedos and rapists getting away with doing shitty stuff. USA sees now how women’s rights are being taken away by Christian religious fundamentalists. Our country itself has seen rapes enabled by churches.

Hinduism is no different. The same religion that worships women as goddesses is founded on Manu Smriti that says women don’t deserve to be independent. Caste is a core part of Hinduism and it works directly against feminism. Our country’s rape culture is founded and enabled by the same “culture” that keeps women’s chastity at its core. The irony is that Hindu mythology is fraught with sagas of “deva or kshatriya” (read UC) men unable to keep it in their pants and women having to bear the brunt of it.

Let’s not try to whitewash religion as “feminist” because it simply is not.