The empowering image of the divine mother: A South African Hindu woman worshipping the goddess

The worship of the Mother Goddess by Hindu women in KwaZulu‐Natal is very popular, as an ongoing daily devotion, as well as at the Goddess's various annual festivals, especially the Draupadi firewalking festival. A crucial question is how far this veneration of a powerful female deity brings empowerment, both to a woman's sense of her own worth and as recognition in the community. Pat Pillay, of Pietermaritzburg, is an example of a woman with little education or social and economic status, whose devotion to the Goddess has brought her a considerable sense of personal empowerment and social recognition, as well as offering healing to numbers of women in her community. It has also motivated her to challenge an all‐male temple committee over their decision not to allow women full participation in the firewalking ceremony.1     

The Ramakrishna Sarada Devi Ashram for women in South Africa

The Sri Sarada Devi Ashram in Durban, South Africa, is not a feminist institution in the Western sense, and has no explicit aspiration to be such an institution. However, the author argues that, without the resident women being fully aware of it, the work being done there is contributing significantly to the education and empowerment of women in the Hindu community which it serves. The purpose of this article is to make its existence and contribution in the area of women in religion more visible and appreciated, and to suggest that, with some feminist awareness, this work has the potential to enable women, both within and outside the Hindu community, to become more conscious of, and confident about, the possibility of religion becoming a truly liberating and transforming force in their lives.     

Tales of Women's Suffering: Draupadi and other Amman Goddesses as Role Models for Women

Although Hinduism offers the greatest living resource for the veneration of the Goddess, there is an obvious discrepancy between the respect paid to these divine images and the daily realities of the lives of Hindu women. However, I believe that the ancient, indigenous south Indian Amman religion, dominated by female deities and brought to KwaZulu-Natal by the original Hindu immigrants, offers a unique and valuable form of Goddess veneration. It presents myths and rituals of women, both divine and human, violated, betrayed and exploited by men, but whose courage and purity brought them victory against males threatening to disrupt the social order. These powerful female figures, especially Draupadi, Mother Goddess and patron of firewalking, offer women empowering role models, encouraging them to challenge patriarchal structures and injustice perpetrated against women. Recovering knowledge of some of the Amman Goddess mythology could provide women (and men) with a potent feminist theodicy and a post-patriarchal spirituality with the possibility to bring about social transformation.