Draupadi and the paradigm of woman empowerment in Hinduism

Abstract

This article aims to bring insights from the philosophy of Hinduism to contribute to contemporary issues related to justice/injustice, empowerment, and liberation. To make important observations, and raise significant questions in this direction, it analyzes and discusses in detail the character of Draupadi from the Indian epic The Mahabharata. The article invites critics to debate the potential for empowerment in feminine virtues through the example of Draupadi who defends her importance and value on the basis of stri-dharma (righteous feminine actions). The article also propounds that the typical masculine traits (aggression, individualistic and courageous actions, etc.) in the personality of Draupadi result from the socio-political normativity that puts Draupadi's virtue under examination because she had unconventionally married five men. Draupadi is under emotional and psychological pressure to publicly prove her virtuous self and this finds expression in emotionally-charged situations apparently as masculine traits.

Contemporary discourse on feminism draws its sustenance from enlightenment philosophy. When Descartes announced ‘I think therefore I am,’ many debated the rights of women as equal to that of men on the grounds of rationality. In the nature/culture dichotomy, when culture was considered superior on grounds of rationality, feminists like Simone de Beauvoir (2015), Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), Elizabeth Grosz (1994), and Naomi Wolf (2015) lamented how women were relegated to “nature,” the inferior side of the dichotomy. However, a different line of argumentation within the feminist discourse was trying to situate empowerment in women's feminine virtues. Critics belonging to this group celebrated the caring and nurturing virtues in women. While these critics questioned the value hierarchy that privileges the realm of rationality and masculinity, they also tried to establish an interconnection of women all around the world based on “female energy” (Daly 1978). Rosemary Radford Reuther (2005) draws a parallel between the ways women and nature were worshipped as goddesses in ancient civilizations that were not organized around technology and culture. Contemporary ecofeminism is an offshoot of this philosophy that finds empowerment for women in their feminine virtues.

Indian classical philosophy had similarly celebrated women as empowered goddesses enriched by feminine values. This article will reflect upon the character of Draupadi as an example of this. Draupadi is one of the main characters in the Indian epic, The Mahabharata, and the common consort of five powerful Pandavas.

To understand the character of Draupadi, it is expedient to understand some facets of Hinduism and especially the concept of dharma that shapes her character.

Hinduism: Key points

Hinduism finds its origin in Vedic philosophy which is structured on the tenet of “Brahman, which is propounded as non-dual, infinite and an ultimate reality” (Sharma 1996, xiv). There are four spheres of pursuits in life that aim to create a balance between socio-practical life and spiritual life: Dharma (righteousness), Artha (earning livelihood), Kama (fulfilling individual desires), and Moksha (liberation). Artha and Kama must come under Dharma which is to say that the fulfillment of personal desires and earning a livelihood must be done through righteous ways. The highest goal of life, however, is Moksha (liberation) which can be achieved once personal desires are fulfilled and as a reward for living a righteous life.

There is universal harmony in nature because everything is a part of Brahman. Any action that supports this harmony is dharmic (righteous) and any action that disrupts it is adharmic. It is important to acknowledge the complexity of the term dharma (righteousness) here. In contemporary parlance, the term can be equated to justice. But when the term “justice” has more of a sense of rationality attached to it, “righteousness” is a broader term and is not confined to rationalism. Justice involves judging an action as right or wrong using a particular standard or perspective. Righteousness, on the other hand, is not based upon any particular perspective. An individual can have a personal take on dharma or can have a personal sphere of duties but they must not conflict with the universal harmony.

Moksha can be read against the term “empowerment” in contemporary parlance. Moksha is blissful awareness of the oneness of things or harmony of existence or reaching the state of Brahman. It is also the highest goal of human life and can be realized only when a person is satisfied with personal desires and rises above them to move towards universal love/oneness.

When religion becomes dogma or a set value system, one can choose to voice individual opinions rationally. However, a person may choose to accept the external circumstances while keeping faith in the universal working of things, without bringing the individual self into conflict. Hindus typically will name the uncomfortable circumstances as fruits of the bad karmas of past lives that they must anyhow endure. Accepting external circumstances without belief is superstition while accepting them with a strong belief in the universal working of things is faith.

In the case of conscious resistance, there emerges the need for voicing opposition and debating the dharmic/adharmic nature of a particular action. It is in this context that I bring in the case of Draupadi from the Sanskrit Mahabharata. Her case is complex and invites us to delve deeper into the notion of feminine (and, in contrast, masculine), in the light of Hinduism, and thereby, enables us to understand empowerment in this context.

The Cambridge Dictionary vaguely defines feminine as “having characteristics that are traditionally thought to be typical of or suitable for a woman” (2022). The Oxford English Dictionary defines femininity as “the characteristic quality or assemblage of qualities pertaining to the female sex, womanliness” (2022). There is, thus, a prevailing notion that relates feminine to women. This article, however, views feminine and masculine as virtues beyond biological gender. It must also be noted that Brahman, the highest ideal, is a gender neuter term in Sanskrit.

Defining feminine and masculine, Indian mystic, Rajneesh, popularly known as Osho comes up with insightful comparisons. In many of his lectures, he equates feminine virtues to a flower while masculine traits are like a sword or a solid rock (Osho 2020). He elaborates that one can break one's bones while hitting a rock, but a flower doesn’t cause harm even when it is plucked. A flower is very different in character than a rock, but we cannot say that a rock is better than a flower. A flower has its own distinct qualities. Mahatma Gandhi had led India's struggle for independence using feminine virtues that tapped into the potential of a flower-like nature that stimulates guilt in opponents when they cause unjustified harm.

Draupadi

Draupadi is one of the main characters in the Indian epic Mahabharata. Many research articles read Draupadi as a woman who represented feminine virtues by following stri-dharma or as a rebellious, masculine personality who voiced her individual opinion on the issues of dharma. In a similar vein, public opinion about Draupadi is also divided: some people respect her for her feminine virtues, the way they respect Sita, and even worship her as a devi in temples; on the other side, some respect her for being a representative voice of woman's rights and independence. This article explores such dichotomies and reads Draupadi's conflicting traits as represented in the Sanskrit Mahabharata.

Representation of women in different Hindu scriptures

To understand the representation of Draupadi in the Mahabharata, it is convenient to take a brief overview of the representation of women in general in various Hindu scriptures to contextualize Draupadi and to have a better understanding through comparison.

Vedic Literature prominently features Goddesses alongside Gods. All three important Gods in Hinduism—Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh—have their consorts with them who are symbolic representations of their powers and energies. The feminine is the representation of immaterial energies. Pati, a term used for husband, means protector. The wife is called Patni who is an equal partner in all religious obligations that are incomplete without her presence. Clarisse Bader—a renowned orientalist—mentions that Vedic strictures point out that an unmarried person is unholy (1925, 36). She writes that as wives participated in the religious ceremonies that essentially involved oblations to fire which was considered a medium to take all prayers and homages upwards to larger existence, to Brahma, they received the aureole and brilliance of fire and received the title devi (goddess) wherein the root word div means to shine (9).

A transition from the Vedic to the Brahmanic period (1100 to 500 BCE) saw a separation of a direct link between the spiritual and temporal. In the Brahmanic period, Manu came up as the main representative voice of Brahma (supreme God) and he declared marriage as the only sacrament of initiation for women. From being an equal partner in religious ceremonies in the Vedic period, women became a supporters of male partners now, and her spiritual liberation was contingent upon her undivided service to her husband. This got established as her main dharma and took the name of stri-dharma. There was no choice left for women who desired spiritual liberation through ways that were different from the life of a householder. Moreover, women who accepted stri-dharma as a conscious choice were divided into the hierarchical structure where the highest stature belonged to the most stern follower. An aristocratic class of women thus emerged who took pride in following stri-dharma; Sita and Draupadi are the mythical examples of the category. Being part of the aristocracy was a social phenomenon and great value was placed upon the favorable estimation of society. Women, pure in devotion toward husbands, got as high a status as that of a goddess, while at the same time, those who faltered became the object of hatred and abhorrence.

Two important literary works that represent the philosophy of the Brahminic age are The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. In The Ramayana, King Dasaratha, one of the prominent characters, has three wives: Kaushalya, Sumitra, and Kaikeyi. While polygamy was accepted, polyandry was not. These three wives have a sort of rivalry to win the affection and favor of their common husband. Manthara, a hunchbacked female assistant to the youngest queen Kaikeyi, mentions this rivalry while instigating the latter to ask for the right of her son's coronation as the future king: “Kausalya is no friend of yours. She bears you a grudge because you are the King's favorite and have often slighted her. And now she is sure to wreak vengeance on you. You know the wrath of a rival wife is a raging fire when it finds its chance” (Rajgopalachari 2013, 27). Throughout The Ramayana, there are references to good and bad women. Women like Surupanakha and Kaikeyi are bad because of their sexual depravity through which they manipulate men and manage to have power over them. Good women are essentially pure in their sexual conduct. The social pressure to be pure is so high, that at the end of the epic, Lord Ram rejects his wife Sita because she was abducted by Ravana, and her purity/chastity is under doubt.

Such representation of aristocratic and powerful women of the Brahminic age can be compared to that of those inspired by the Bhakti movement which was essentially a revolt against the rigidness of Brahminical society. Akka Mahadevi is one example. While women in the Brahmanical age took pride in living a cloistered life in gynaecium, Akka used to conduct herself naked. Body and sexuality didn't mean anything to her. Instead of the husband, she was devoted to lord Shiva who she referred to as Channamallikarjuna, and was forgetful of everything else. In one of her poems, she mentions such carefree attitude toward the body:

Seeing bare round breasts

And the beauty of full youth

You came, O brother.

Brother, I am no female,

I am not a prostitute;

Then seeing me again and again,

Who did you think I was?

Men other than Channamallikarjuna, jasmine-tender,

Will not suit us, O brother. (Mahadevi 2017, 24)

One important epic in Tamil that has drawn very little academic attention as compared to its Sanskrit counterparts The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, but is an equally powerful representation of the Brahminical age is The Cilappatikaram: The Tale of an Anklet, written by Ilanko Atikal (2004). The work is important as it throws a clearer light on the consecration of the goddess. The story starts with the happy, newly married couple Kovalan and Kannaki. After the initial phase, romantic passion cools down and Kovalan finds himself attracted to a courtesan Matavi. He starts living with her. His wife Kannaki, however, is a pure woman and stays devoted to Kovalan. In the course of events, Kovalan gets estranged from Matavi and returns to Kannaki. He regrets the suffering he had caused her earlier. The couple moves to a new place to begin their conjugal life afresh. However, Kovalan gets falsely implicated by the charge of theft, and the king, who is in a hurry to re-conciliate with the queen, gives the strict order for his execution without trial. When Kannaki hears about the death of her husband, she demands an instant hearing from the king. The story highlights the power of a pure and devoted wife. She proves the innocence of her husband by mentioning crucial details about the case and reproaches the king who dies on the spot because of the injustice he caused to the pure woman. The queen also dies along with her husband to become sati. Kannaki, now in furious anger, curses the whole kingdom of Maturai where these incidents happen. She rips off her left breast. The breast is a symbol of pure conduct and of motherhood. The tutelary deity of the place descends to console her and tells her that Kovalan has suffered because of his sins in a previous life and assures her that she would soon be united with him in Heaven. Kannaki is still furious. When she moves out of the kingdom, it starts burning from the spot where her breast falls. She goes towards the west, and as she arrives at a hilly area in Ceral country in the South, she ascends to heaven. There was a poet amidst the crowd who watched her ascension. He narrated the tale to the king of Ceral whose wife asked him to establish a temple of Goddess Pattini (wife) at the site where she levitated off the ground. The king goes to the Himalayas in northern India to fetch a suitable stone for carving the idol. On his way home, he dips the stone in the water of the holy Ganga. This sacred mission empowers him so much that before returning to the South, he even conquers the Arya kings of the North and establishes himself as a great emperor. Such is the power that a pure woman bestows among those who worship her.

The Mahabhara ta

The Mahabharata is an immensely popular and revered Indian epic. The oral narrative originated around 1000 BCE. Traditionally, sage Vyasa who is one of the characters in the epic, is attributed as the author of this text. The Mahabharata tells the saga of a family feud among the members of a powerful royal clan who wage deadly war over the kingdom of Hastinapur. It is a complex and multi-layered text as it encompasses diverse perspectives and different shades of life. The focus is, of course, on the warrior class that comprises kings and queens and their value system called raj-dharma; contradictory discourses are raised to challenge the rigidity in gender and caste roles. Draupadi and Karna are prominent characters who become catalysts for the Mahabharata War which was essentially fought on the grounds of dharma or righteousness. While Draupadi's insult and disrobing in the Assembly Hall fuel the antagonism between the Pandavas and Kauravas and is read by many as adharma and the main cause of the war, Karna's joining hands with the Pandavas and thereby re-confirming his Kshatriya status would have avoided the war. Karna, however, refused to leave his benefactor Duryodhana. Caste injustice meted out to him can be read as another powerful incident of adharma that made the war inevitable.

Discussing Draupadi's position and resolving the enigma of her contradictory personality traits is an important task. This provides a crucial site to debate the prescribed gender roles and find answers to the gender problem that is specific to the Indian context. It is important to understand the notion of dharma as propounded in Hinduism and debated in The Mahabharata and to explore Draupadi's understanding and adoption of the same to come up with the understanding of Draupadi as a whole, rather than reading her as feminine or masculine (that many related with being feminist), based upon one's individual preference. This would help unravel the character of Draupadi and analyze her understanding of Dharma.

Review of literature

Many research articles have been written in an endeavor to understand the personality of Draupadi. On one hand, she has strong feminine virtues, or rather, as Sally J. Sutherland Goldman (Sutherland Sally, 1989) observes, she is represented in The Mahabharata as a woman who is rich in feminine virtues and who devotedly serves her five husbands. On the other, her actions also show strong masculine traits in her personality through which she raises the issues of dharma and adharma concerning women's role and position in society. Sutherland highlights the repeated patterns of behavior in the way Draupadi expresses her adopted gender role. Repeatedly she blames her husbands for showing weakness in safeguarding her honor under the pretext of following their raj-dharma. Their dharma is thus questioned by Draupadi and is put against her stri-dharma which connotes her chaste and pure devotion to husbands and which, according to her, deserves the highest honor and respect.

It is this value attached to the notion of chastity, however, that socialists like Rammanohar Lohia criticize. Lohia respected Draupadi and Sita (from the epic Ramayana) for their feminine virtues but objected to the standardization of such virtues as he believed that women can have various kinds of virtues and pitting one set of women against the other based on one standard norm is political in nature. Kumkum Yadav explains, “The socialist in Lohia led him to recognize myth as a part of a “sanctifying strategy” constructed and employed by patriarchal society to influence the behavioral pattern of the marginalized” (2010, 110).

Alf Hiltebeitel’s (1998) scholarly work on the cult of Draupadi takes a different direction and reflects how traditions of the goddess commingle with the understanding of Draupadi in The Mahabharata and bring out rich cult celebrations of her as a goddess.

Fritz Blackwell (1978, 139) reflects on how characters like Draupadi or Kaikeyi (a popular character from the Ramayana, another seminal Indian epic) are thrown into situations where they are not the decision-makers but only reactionaries. To achieve their goals, they had to persuade their respective husbands. One becomes a temptress to Dasaratha, the other manipulates Bhima (140).

Irawati Karve opines that “Draupadi, the heroine of the whole epic story, though the model of a good wife, was also an arrogant, opinionated, selfish, untrustworthy young woman, and an inveterate troublemaker throughout her life” (Brown 2016, “Foreword” to Yuganta). Irawati reads Draupadi’s questioning at the Assembly Hall not only as something that lacks wit but also as the reason for Yudhishthira's humiliation.

There is, therefore, a lot of research that highlights the conflicting traits in the personality of Draupadi, but none that explores the reason behind it. As such, the personality of Draupadi has remained enigmatic. Only a correct understanding of dharma as it is understood in Hindu philosophy and is represented in The Mahabharata and the representation of Draupadi's understanding of it, or manipulation of it, throws light on the complete personality of Draupadi. Besides, modern critical methods like psychoanalysis throw a deeper light on the conflicting behavioral traits of Draupadi.

The character of Draupadi has been visited in many works of fiction in the last few years. While Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2019) imagines Draupadi to have some romantic feelings for Karna in The Palace of Illusions; Trisha Das (2016), in Ms Draupadi Kuru perceives modern sensibilities in her as reflected through her questioning attitude. The Oria writer, Pratibha Ray (1995), in her award-winning work Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi, has presented Draupadi as a mortal woman who tries to balance her passions against her griha-dharma that involves her duties as an ideal Hindu wife and mother. In a similar vein, Nilanjana Roy (2013), in her article "The Literary Chastity of Draupadi" reads Draupadi as a woman who struggles to overcome her special emotions of love for Arjuna, in a bid to distribute them equally among all Pandava brothers. The prevalent common opinion about Draupadi is also varied and carves a continuum where those who take her to be a staunch follower of griha-dharma and worship her as devi, take one extreme side. The opposite is of those who criticize her for being too independent and a selfish woman who is more of a temptress like Kaikeyi of Ramayana.

Despite all the rich and diverse opinions, the reasons for the conflicting traits in the character of Draupadi have not been explored. And thus, Draupadi appears as an enigmatic personality to the readers even now who are divided into various groups of opinions. This article undertakes to dismantle such dichotomies.

Methodology

This article attempts to read Draupadi to come up with new insights. It situates Draupadi in the larger context of Hindu spiritual philosophy and the textual context of The Mahabharata to understand her character better and to have an elaborate debate on the issue of dharma and Draupadi's take on it. Draupadi's actions are read in the light of their psychological value to get a deeper insight into her mind. Western tools of psychoanalysis are used along with the Indian philosophical understanding and the meanings and social values it generates to understand the conflicting traits in Draupadi.

Before moving ahead, I will briefly define psychoanalysis as it is used as an important tool to understand the behavioral traits of Draupadi.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytical tools significantly help us to understand the conflicting traits in Draupadi. As a critical research method, psychoanalysis was developed first by Sigmund Freud who considered the unconscious as an important part of the human mind that contains all those repressed desires, memories, and emotions that the conscious mind fails to recognize because of social and cultural sanctions. The unconscious, even when it is repressed, is powerful and influences day-to-day actions and expresses itself in dreams, daydreaming, common errors like language slips, forgetting things, or emotional outbursts. As such, such errors invite discerning interlocutors to explore the hidden content of the unconscious that sheds clearer light on the behavioral traits or actions of a particular person. Jacques Lacan, another prominent psychoanalyst, observed that the unconscious is structured like a language. Following the path of Ferdinand de Saussure and other structuralists, he claimed that unconscious desires are created by the socio-cultural setup.

Dharma

The understanding of dharma in The Mahabharata is not limited to any fixed scale or rigid definition. It is synonymous with harmony in nature as understood in Hinduism in the Vedic period. Yet, the general public opinion concerning Draupadi and the discourse surrounding the idea of honor which Draupadi herself tries to appeal to is inclined in favor of bounded sexuality within the folds of family. For Draupadi, her loyalty to her husbands is supreme dharma and is above all other dharmas: Draupadi claims that “The king (her husband), son of Dharma, abides by the Law. And the Law is subtle for the wise to find out: But even at his behest I would not give the least offense and abandon my virtue” (The Mahabharata 1975, 142). Even Bhishma, who stays indecisive about the righteous action in the context of the game of dice, praises Draupadi for her stri-dharma: “Those born in high lineages, do not, good woman, stray from the path of the Law, however, beset by disaster, just as you who stand here as our bride” (The Mahabharata 1975, 149). It is also important to note how social attitude about sexuality here is conjoined with status and caste: women born in high lineages are expected to remain firm on the lines of this dharma. And it is this general emphasis on a good woman's virtue that characters like Draupadi or Kunti find hard to ignore. This article will explore how such public opinion and resultant socio-political pressure rather dominate their individual, free selves.

The notion of dharma many times presents a site for debate in practical life. While some set values and attitudes like following elders and Shastras are stressed as easy guidance to resolve discordance and enable harmony in general and common conditions, every new situation demands fresh insight into dharma and calls for new definitions.

Draupadi, in The Mahabharata, appears for the first time as a fully developed personality with clear individual traits in the book called “The Assembly Hall” when she lost the dice game to Duryodhana. Before this, she has only a marginal presence in the narrative. As the text suggests, Draupadi tries to bring fresh insight to dharma while voicing her interpretation of the same. While the question she raises pertains to Yudhishthira's right to put her at stake in the game of dice, whereby she tries to challenge Yudhishthira on dharma, much of the emotional appeal of Draupadi's discourse rests on her avowed virtue of being an obedient and faithful wife who deserves respect. This itself is contradictory because being an obedient wife, she cannot be expected to question her husband. Draupadi is fully aware of the general public opinion that unfavorably views the act of disrespecting honorable women: “It is base that amidst the Kaurava heroes you drag me inside while I am in my month; there is no one here to honor you for it, though surely they do not mind your plan” (The Mahabharata 1975, 142). Draupadi is aware that the public will not honor such an act and she avails herself of this political atmosphere to strengthen her discourse on stri-dharma. The very act of mentioning the general public connotes the powerful position it occupies in the estimation of Draupadi and the influence it has on her personal life.

The vast Hindu philosophy, when it percolates to the praxis of real life, manifests itself in a rich and multi-layered way as it accommodates various paths for self-emancipation that run a continuum from Dhyan-yoga that suggests actively concentrating the mind on a particular direction to win something as big as Moksha for oneself to Bhakti-yoga which is about total devotion, and thus losing the self rather than winning anything. Seen in this light, the preponderance of renunciation literature in Indian spiritual discourse, like the Ramayana, which focuses on the self-sacrifice of Ram for the sake of larger humanity, portrays only one aspect of Hindu philosophy. The Mahabharata, in contrast, presents life in its varied aspects and pits different paths and discourses on dharma against each other to bring out the realist drama of life. Badrinath points out the difference of The Mahabharata to other scriptural writings and writes that “In contrast to other philosophical systems, including Samkhya-Yoga, where moksha is conceived as being beyond all relations, and thus a denial of relationships, The Mahabharata shows moksha to be quite as relational as truth and dharma are. Freedom is an affirmation, and not a denial, of relationships” (Chaturvedi 2007, 569).

And yet, Draupadi’s position, as this article suggests, describes the partial nature of such celebration of relationships, stimulated mainly by the socio-political pressure to confine normative behavior. Subtly, The Mahabharata highlights the tragic consequences of such partiality that results in a horrible and inevitable war.

Badrinath points out, “It is the Samkhya-Yoga philosophy that sees desire, along with mind and the rest of human personality, as creations of nature, prakriti. And since the Self, the purusa is housed in the edifice they build, it comes to acquire the false consciousness of its identity in their terms” (Chaturvedi 2007, 568). Putting prakriti against purusa, a person seeking self-enlightenment will ignore or suppress all that is represented by prakriti and is natural and this-worldly. Contrary to this viewpoint of liberation, the Mahabharata offers the concept of liberation through relationships: “The Mahabharata shows moksha to be quite as relational as truth and dharma are. Freedom is an affirmation and not a denial of relationships…. Relationship with his, or her, self, and at the same time in his or her, relationship with the other…. the finding of one's self is primarily through relationships, personal and social. Paradoxically, self-knowledge and self-discovery require the existence of the other” (Chaturvedi 2007, 569).

Bhishma, who is the most respected elder of the family of Kurus and is looked upon for advice whenever the question of dharma/adharma arises, has a particular viewpoint concerning female sexuality. He is a staunch celibate, and his moral authority stands high because of the very fact that he has risen above worldly desires. Thus, he can give his absolutely objective, unprejudiced, and correct judgments on worldly affairs. Draupadi requests him for intervention when she finds herself being put at stake in the game of dice. She believes the act to be adharmic because Yudhisthira who put her at stake was already won by Duryodhana, and thus was not free at that time. Bhisma replies, “As the Law is subtle, my dear, I fail to resolve your riddle the proper way: A man without property cannot stake another's—but given that wives are the husband's chattels” (The Mahabharata 1975, 143)? Bhisma's general opinion concerning women as expressed in The Mahabharata is summed up by Badrinath: “Women by their very nature were inclined to sexual anarchy, they should be protected for that very reason” (Chaturvedi 2007, 307). Bhishma supports the idea of griha-dharma or stri-dharma for a married woman, and as such his understanding is clear. Because Draupadi is the property of Yudhishira, the latter had all the right to put her at stake.

Outwardly, Draupadi takes the support of and turns back to only this idea of being a devoted wife as a refuge to prove her virtuous self that justifies her status as the property of her husband; on the other hand, she goes against this very notion when she refuses to act as a pawn in the hands of her husbands. There is a stark contradiction in what Draupadi speaks and how she acts which confuses all who couldn't say anything on the matter. The emotional appeal of Draupadi's perspective on dharma/adharma rests upon channelizing the public opinion that favors the idea of a woman's sexual freedom being bounded to her husband and the periphery of the family: “I whom neither wind nor sun has seen before in my house, I am now seen in the middle of the hall in the assembly of the Kurus” (The Mahabharata 1975, 148). Draupadi expects respect and high status for being law-minded in this sense: “From of old, we have heard, they do not bring law-minded women into their hall. … Is the wife of King Dharma whose birth matches his, a slave or free” (148)? In a way, in Lohia’s sense, Draupadi emphasizes the fixed standard that pits one woman against the other: the one who follows patriarchal norm deserves the status of a queen, while the one who doesn't is a slave. Time and again, Draupadi’s status as a queen or a slave girl is debated on the ground of such a standard. Karna takes her to be a slave woman on the pretext that she has married five husbands rather than one and thus feels no remorse for her being sexually assaulted in the Assembly Hall in front of all the elders:

The Gods have laid down that a woman shall have one husband, the scion of Kuru. She submits to many men and assuredly is a whore! Thus, there is, I think, nothing strange about taking her into the hall, or to have her in one piece of clothing, or for that matter naked! (The Mahabharata 1975, 146)

Thus, the whole debate around Draupadi pertains to the understanding and clarification of stri-dharma and the question is whether she is a staunch follower of it or not. One can logically agree with the opinion of Prof. Fritz Blackwell that Draupadi is independent but only in comparison to other women (Blackwell 1978, 141). Otherwise, she remained dependent upon her husbands to save her honor. Her honor is exclusively debated upon the point of whether her sexuality is limited to the holds of sanctified marriage or not.

It must also be kept in mind that stri-dharma or griha-dharma is one way of life while The Mahabharata, as a whole, is the representation of myriad ways of life. Badrinath stresses the broad view of sexuality presented in The Mahabharata and writes, “The tantric texts, the Rig-Veda and the Atharva-Veda, the Upanishad-s, and the Mahabharata speak of sexuality as a human attribute in terms of respect, free from conventional moral judgment, and realistic to a high degree besides” (Chaturvedi 2007, 58). Badrinath further points to the liberal view of sexuality and the acknowledgment of its power and freedom in Hindu philosophy:

The sastric ordering of sexual impulse, allowing it free expression within marriage, was tempered, however, with the realistic thought that men and women being human, subject to time, place, and opportunity, there would always be transgressions. Underlying the tolerant and rational attitudes towards them, there were two principles of a general kind. First: if sexual appetite cannot always be contained within the bounds of marriage, it must remain within the bounds of social conduct…. The dharmic sexual ideal was eminently one of balance.… it aimed to secure at all times social stability and to treat individual transgressions with charity. (Chaturvedi 2007, 300-301)

Despite the liberal attitude towards sexuality, Kunti failed to adopt her child from her pre-marital relationship, Karna, publicly, until she was asked to do it for the sake of Pandavas when she tried to negotiate to include him in their team. It can be averred then that the rigid attitude to sexuality was politically claimed at a later period as a virtue of high-caste women. There appears a struggle between ideologies. Understanding such a larger context of The Mahabharata helps situate the individual position of Draupadi for whom stri-dharma is a conscious choice.

Draupadi’s dilemma

Draupadi who is otherwise calm and almost unnoticeable in The Mahabharata, feels energetic, thrilled, or agitated especially when situations provide her the opportunity to prove her virtuous self. It is noteworthy that the Assembly Hall-like situations where Draupadi faces sexual assault are also the situations when one witnesses the power of Draupadi as a somewhat independent woman who can express her opinions against her powerful husbands, and can also win public opinion in her favor. These are the situations that Draupadi repeatedly finds herself in and she energetically defends herself on those occasions. The way Draupadi wins back all the Pandavas with her dialogues on dharma/adharma after the game of dice speaks of her power. Draupadi finds strength and empowerment through such situations. It is no doubt that the situations where she is assaulted by people who don't belong to the group of five Pandavas and thus lie beyond the family structure, stimulate Draupadi. Draupadi never misses out on such situations and never lets them pass in any peaceful manner. It can be claimed that Draupadi, who is otherwise looked down upon by the likes of Duryodhana and Karna for having married five men in place of one, is in a strong need to defend her virtue through such situations. And she defends herself, not only based on feminine virtues but she also falls back upon her status as a caring, high-born, mother. “If you give me a boon, bull of the Bharatas, I choose this: the illustrious Yudhisthira, an observer of every Law, shall be no slave! Do not let these little boys, who do not know my determined son, say of Prathivindhya when he happens to come in, “Here comes the son of a slave” (The Mahabharata 1978, 153).

The situations that Draupadi finds her life surrounded with or that dominate her life pertain to many such sexual assaults upon her. The first time when readers witness her independent voice is in the Assembly Hall episode when she lost to Duryodhana in the game of dice. Beyond the genuine care for the question of dharma/adharma, it is an important occasion for her to show her virtues. Irawati Karve reads Draupadi through such instances as a woman of Mother Earth. Like Bhima, the third of Pandavas, and mighty mace-fighter, she too has impulsive strains and a simplistic nature but lacks the subtle wit of Yudhisthira. She opines that Draupadi could impress Bhima easily but failed to manipulate Yudhisthira whose take on dharma/adharma is much more developed and mature:

The question Draupadi asked rested on a complicated legal point. Even Bhisma, who had often taken the part of the Pandavas in quarrels with Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana, was unable to answer, perhaps for fear of compromising Draupadi... Draupadi's question was not only foolish; it was terrible. No matter what answer was given her position was desperate. If Bhishma told her that her husband's rights over her did not cease, that even though he became a slave, she was in his power and he had the right to stake her, her slavery would have been confirmed. If Bhishma had argued that because of his slavery her husband had no more rights over her, then her plight would have been truly pitiable. Draupadi was described as “nathavati anathavat” — “with husbands, but like a widow”, and if her relationship with her husband was destroyed, she would have been truly widowed. (Karve 2016, 53)

Thus, the question that Draupadi raised did not do much to save her honor, but it humiliated Yudhisthiar and provided an opportunity for Draupadi to question and berate her husbands.

However, by lightly passing off Draupadi as a simple child who has no understanding of the subtle aspects of dharma, Irawati Karve fails to de-politicize the larger social setup that forces women to behave in such an impulsive manner. Draupadi seems impulsive when it comes to defending her stri-dharma. Her situation is very much different from that of Sita from Ramayana. While Sita was married to one man, Draupadi was given off in marriage to five Pandavas. And she had no say in the matter. She simply accepted her destiny. But the likes of Duryodhana and Karna kept questioning her moral character based on the same fact. There comes the social pressure on Draupadi to defend her honor. More than the language of logic, hers is the language of emotion; but is equally meaningful and has dharma of its own. In her desperation, Draupadi shows her anger blindly toward her husbands. Her anger finds an outlet in all directions. She, thus, curses the Kauravas: “Because of whom I got this wretched condition, thirteen years from now their wives will have their husbands dead, their sons dead, their kinsmen and friends dead! Their bodies smeared with the blood of their relatives, their hair loosened and themselves in their courses, the women shall offer up the water to their dead” (The Mahabharata 1975, 166).

And the pattern repeats itself. Draupadi unconsciously yearns for such opportunities to find the outlet to defend her virtue. Her anger is thus against the social system that does not give due respect to her but it unleashes itself in emotionally volatile situations and is blind in its expression.

In the “Aranyakaparvan,” she is again assaulted by Jayadratha, the Sindhu King. Yudhishisthira opines that a Sindhu king must not be killed. But Draupadi is not happy. She wants his death and nothing less. She is desperate in her anger to such a degree that she rarely minds crossing her husbands. She urges Bhima and Arjuna: “If you want to do me a kindness, kill off that wretched abortion of the Saindhavas, the evil, ill-minded defiler of his race” (The Mahabharata 1975, 721). Again in the “Viratparva,” Draupadi is assaulted by Kichaka. On all such occasions, Draupadi becomes vengeful and finds ample opportunity to even berate her husbands who find themselves wordless in such situations. “How can those powerful, boundlessly august men like castrate suffer that their beloved and faithful wife is kicked by a suta's son? Where has their intransigence gone, where their virility and splendor, if they choose not to defend their wife” (The Mahabharata 1978, 49)? Over and over, she plays down the stature of her assaulter to uplift her virtuous self. Two parties are played against each other. It must be noted that Draupadi does not stand completely independent in her stance. The favorable attitudes of Bhima and the supernatural help of Krishna embolden her further to take her stance. She always looks for the help of Bhima in such situations. Sutherland rightly points out that the inherent uxorious nature of Bhima “serves as a background that allows Draupadi to defend herself” (Sutherland 1989, 66). Draupadi never lets any opportunity go without recalling the memory of the Assembly Hall. She consciously keeps it enlivened in her memory by recalling it at various places and never misses any opportunity to use it as a point to justify her virtuous character. One such occasion is her discussion with Krishna, her superhuman male friend, where she re-narrates the events of Assembly Hall and criticizes her male partners and even Krishna and other kings who were supposed to have protected her:

While the Pandavas, Pancalas, and Vrsnis were still alive, those Kauravas, Madhusudana, desired to enjoy me like a serving wench. Krisna, am I not according to law the daughter-in-law of both Bhisma and Dhrtarastra? I was forced to become a slave. I blame only these strong Pandavas, men held to be the best in battle, who watched their lawful and illustrious wives being tormented. A curse on Bhimasena's strength, a curse on the archer Partha's; both of them stood by while vile men insulted me, Janardana. (Sutherland 1989, 67)

Draupadi’s moods, gestures, and confrontational actions have a strong impact on her husbands: “The loss of the kingdom, wealth, or the most valuable jewels, did not cause the pain that was caused by the infuriated glare of that tormented Krisna” (The Mahabharata 1975, 36).

Bhima, in particular, is deeply affected by Draupadi's instigations to take revenge for the sexual assaults upon her, and, thereby creates a public scene:

And there Bhima—striking his hands together in a rage—swore in a loud voice amid the kings, his lips trembling: "Keep in mind these words of mine, you Kshatriyas who inhabit the earth, what I say has never been said, and none will say it again. If I do not carry out my vow, lords of the earth, then let me not obtain the worlds of all our grandfathers —if I, in battle, do not violently split open the chest and drink the blood of this low-born sinner, this most despicable among the Bharatas! (The Mahabharata 1975, 40-46)

Draupadi, thus, institutes herself as one of the major causes of the war by instigating animosity between the two groups. Yudhisthira, however, remains firm in his injunctions about dharma. Despite the individually differing attitudes of the Pandavas concerning Draupadi, it remains the fact, that Draupadi is a strong point of unity to them. She gives them a common platform to enact their individual opinions. They remain united through her. Karna was also aware of such unifying power of Draupadi and had shared the same with Duryodhana while reflecting that by marrying Draupadi, the Pandavas had not only won the alliance of powerful Panchala kings but also strengthened their union. "They cannot be alienated from one another: men who are in love with the same wife are not split" (The Mahabharata 1975, 381).

It can be logically stated that had Draupadi's attitude been free from any socio-political pressure to defend her virtue, she would have followed the injunction of her husbands and would have served Duryodhana, and probably would have helped in curtailing their warlike tendencies. On the contrary, the emotional pressure to defend her virtue resulted in instigating animosity between the groups. It is the play of contradictory ideologies, that is played by the society over the body of Draupadi in the name of dharma. Draupadi, therefore, ends up as a helpless victim of the same. Her story is tragic in this sense.

Conclusion

As far as feminine virtues relate to the acceptance of universal order and harmony, they bring a feeling of satisfaction, liberation from the restraints caused by individual ego, and empowerment. However, manipulating these values and enforcing them on the fair sex, and exploiting them as political tools in the form of some rigid judgmental scale has a history that dates back to The Mahabharata. This article views the conflicting traits in the character of Draupadi as a failure of the social system that failed to give due respect to Draupadi and judged her on a fixed, pre-dated scale that could not be justifiably applied to her. The fact of her marriage to five men remained a blot on her character even though she was a staunch devotee of stri-dharma. Draupadi kept rubbing off the blemish by vociferously advocating her virtuous self in the prevailing socio-political milieu. Apparent confrontational tendencies in her personality are her repressed feelings of indignant anger that find expression under emotionally charged conditions whenever her virtuous self is questioned. She got what she wanted in life. What she wanted, however, was designed by the social ideology as her actions were motivated by the socio-political pressure to present herself as a respected woman who properly follows her stri-dharma. One is reminded of Michel Foucault (2012), who in History of Sexuality opines that desires are created by power structures. In Lacanian parlance, all desires are the desires of the “other.” Draupadi’s inner self, in this sense, is affected by the outer power structure, and as a result, she fails to attain liberation through her stri-dharma.