“More than equal – II”- 7 May 2014

Osho , the great master, does not consider that women are equal to men. He hates the thought.

But wait. Please don’t presume. For, Osho believes that women are superior to men. In his very beautifully presented speech on maturity, Osho asserts that it is futile for women to fight for equality. ‘Tell the men, they are no superior. Tell them, they cannot bear a child. Tell them, they are not as tough as women.  Tell them, in crisis, it is they who first give up’, the master says in effect.

And then, there was that great French philosopher – Voltair – who has a terrific message for women, but women have cared little to hear. When the French people were agitating against the emperor who was despotic, they gave speeches and shouted slogans and did sit-ins at squares and plazas. To all of them, Voltair said, ‘Look fellows, if you want to dethrone the king, first dethrone him from your minds. You seem to be obsessed with the king, and are talking about it so much all the time. Then, how can you dethrone him?’

This message is almost as if for women. They should stop talking about equality. For, as I said in the previous edition of ‘Persona’, the issue has long been settled. So, the best thing for us women to do is to dethrone men from our minds – of course not for wrong reasons, but for the right ones, in this case. Let us stop conceding to men that it is THEY who would give us the freedom we are looking forward to.

THEY – the men – do not grant us the freedom. We take it for ourselves, or leave it. It is there for the grabs, if we have the courage to take it.

Courage! Yes, that is the word, the emotion we must look for.

For, as everybody knows, freedom is not an easy business. It is quite tough, and complicated. To have freedom means first to have courage, to have a complete awareness that it also means responsibility.

But then, here the issue becomes very complicated. Let us look at it this way: Here, responsibility means being oneself, in Osho’s words. That is, in his words, being mature. Unfortunately, we have not matured as a gender collectively.

Of course, there is a little problem. For ages, we the women have often yielded to men’s conspiracy to tell us that we are inferior, and that we need their protection. Yes, some part of it may be true. And, what is wrong in that – to have protection from men? For, don’t we, too, protect them on countless occasions? Then, do we fuss about it? No. So, let us not fuss about the protection the men give us. It is our birthright, and their duty. And, duty is something that somebody need not be boasting about.

So, dear friends, we are more than equal and we must assert that.

But then, there would problems of implementation of this thought. How do we assert? How do we tell the society that we are more than equal?

That is not a difficult business. For, all we have to do is to follow Voltair’s advice: Dethrone the demon from the minds. And Osho, too, is there to help us.

The issue, thus, is settled.

More equals do not have to shout from the rooftops; they have just to behave in that manner, like the champions or winners do, in supreme confidence, in sureness of the mind that the world belongs to the winner.