Last Thursday, the Hindu community initiated nine nights of the worship of God as “female”. The Hindi equivalent of “nine nights” is “Nau Raat”, and it is by the latter name that the observances are commonly known.
Hindus accept that God is beyond gender, or even form; but for we humans to acknowledge this Divine Consciousness, in which all creation subsists, we create the forms to worship based on our own conceptions and limitations. As far as gender is concerned, God is worshipped as “male”, female, and even in Ardhanarishvara, a composite androgynous form of the Hindu God Shiva and his consort Parvati.
Growing up in Guyana, I discovered, while yet in primary school, that “God as Female” was a very strange notion to most of my friends. I attended Uitvlugt Church of Scotland School, and had to attend services in the church every Wednesday. I was more interested in the gleaming brass pipes of the huge organ, which we had to supply with air from bellows as Miss La Rose plunked away sedately, but I gathered the dominant idea from the sermons: that God was really a male who was somewhere “up there in heaven”.
When I attended mandir every Thursday night (in the beginning, more for the “parsaad”, I confess), arrayed in front of me was a complete pantheon of Gods – male of various visages, female of as many visages, half-man half beast, all beast, and seemingly everything in between. The “in-between” alternated between various symbols (Om and Formless Lingas), and even sound and silence.
So, as a Hindu, to worship God as “female” was as natural as breathing air. There was no “one way” of worshipping, and certainly not one conception of God to which worship was offered. To me, what was preached in the Church of Scotland was quite strange.
I was raised by my grandparents, and my Nana, born in 1896, was somewhat of a nonconformist. He didn’t attend mandir, and preferred to expound at home on his favourite text, the Ramcharitmanas – the exploits of Sri Ram.
He challenged me to think very early about whether a God that pervaded the entire universe — was “here there and everywhere” — could possibly have a particular form, much less a male, and not a female, form. His position was that whatever form you were comfortable with, that was the way to worship.
He often chanted the portion of the Ramcharitmanas when the incarnation of God (as Vishnu), Sri Ram, prayed to God as not just a female, but a “warrior” female – Durga Devi. Once you could get your head around that concept, there’s no going back to God as a grey-bearded man in the sky.
The interesting thing about Hinduism is that it starts from the premise that we are incapable of comprehending the nature of even the physical universe. If this was confirmed by the recent detection of an incomprehensible (to us) four-dimensional space-time continuum through the measurement of gravity waves, what about God, in which this universe itself in immanent? Can we dare to limit God by gender or number?
But all is not lost. Even if we cannot comprehend God, Hindus have discovered several paths through which one can directly apprehend God; and one of these is to love and worship Her in whichever way you can through whatever form you can respond to. Or no “form”, for that matter.
In Hindu semiotics, females are the signifiers of power, Shakti; and males are merely “inert”. The nine forms of Goddess Durga were manifested during the nine-day war against Mahishashura, whom even the Gods could not defeat. Allegorically, they gave Her their weapons, which She wielded with Her indomitable will. The final and the tenth day was when Mahishashura was slain by Goddess Durga, and it is celebrated as Vijayadashami.
The nine forms of Maa Durga, each representing different aspects of femininity and strength, are Maa Shailputri, Maa Brahmacharini, Maa Chandraghanta, Maa Kushmanda, Maa Skandamata, Maa Katyayani, Maa Kalaratri, Maa Mahagauri, and Maa Siddhidatri.
Durga was worshipped by Sri Ram before he went into battle against Ravana. While mothers are usually thought of as peaceful, we all know that no one would defend her children as a mother would. As such, we have a basis for appreciating the protective aspect of God from our own experience.
