Published Paper Details:

Abstract: ‘The woman question’ is an umbrella term used for the theoretical concerns as well as the social campaigns which surround the discussion of women’s rights and issues. It is to be seen that Indian scholars and educationistsdepend on Western Feminist theory to understand and discuss such issues since the West seems to be taking the credit for giving rise to this phenomenon of social change. However, it is important to understand that Hinduism, in its essentiality, is not gender biased. The different manifestations of the Devi or the Goddess as portrayed in Devdutt Pattanaik’s 7 Secrets of the Goddess unleash a side of Hindu mythologies which has been hidden since the advent of the British rule. The heteropatriarchal face of Christianity contaminated the Hindu philosophies and in contemporary times we have to fall back on the Western discourses of feminism whereas women were always regarded as equal to men in Hinduism as reflected in the mythical narratives of the Gods and Goddesses. The seven faces of the Devi include Adya, the primal female deity; Kali, the violent destroyer; Gauri, the feminine principle; Durga, representing the victory of good overevil; Lakshmi, the preserver; Saraswati, the epitome of wisdom; and Vitthai, the manifestation of the principle that God is one, the feminine and the masculine fused into a single entity. Thus, this paper seeks to explore the contemporary relevance of these representations of the Goddess vis-à-vis the gender discourse.The expected conclusion will be that Hindu religious beliefs didnot essentially disseminategender discrimination. The image of the Goddess as a powerful, self-sufficient, affectionate yet destructive is what every woman today strives to achieve and hence there is a need to go back to history and re-read mythologies to find answers to our questions.