Global World of Indian Merchants, society of early Om Mandli

An interesting book on the community the Brahma Kumaris and their core values came out of. It gives insight into their psychology. From: The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama by Claude Markovits
Published by Cambridge University Press, 2000
ISBN 0521622859, 9780521622851

In Hyderabad, where there was much more circulation between the network centre and the actual places of business, wives remained much more controlled by the family, and no stories about illegitimate children are told (although what the actual situation was is of course difficult to know). Frustration by local Bhaibund women is even given central place in the genesis of a particular Hindu sect, called Brahma Kumari, which was created in Hyderabad in the 1930s and has become nowadays a worldwide phenomenon. Lawrence Babb was the first to draw attention to the emergence of the sect in the particular milieu of wives of Sindwork merchants in Hyderabad.

Elaborating ont hat, Prem Chowdhry has emphasized the tensions created amongst women by the concentration of all sexual reprductive activity in the short span of the six months' period during which husbands were in Hyderabad in between their stints abroad. They had to conceive, preferably a sone, during this period, or they would remain barren for a three-year period. The same author stresses that 'the pressures and demands upon a woman's productive functions only increased the suspicions regarding her sexuality, the insecuirites of migrant males only reinforcing the familiar stereotype of a sexually starved woman out to satiate herself at the first opportunity'. She sees this kind of pressure as one of the reasons for the success of a sect which put a high value on female celibacy.

The thesis of a direct correlation between female ascetism and male migration is alluring, but it should not be overlooked that such a situation of females without males was and is extremely common in many localities in the sub-continent. So it remains to be explained why such a sect originated in the specific milieu of the Sindwork merchants, and nowhere else. More contingent factors, such as the personality of the first guru, Dada Lekhraj, and his first female disciple, might have to be taken into account more. What must be noted is that the sect generated fierce hostility in Hyderabad, which led it to transfer its sect to Karachi after a few years, before shifting to India after Partition.

The emergence of the sect is not in itself proof that the women in Hyderabad suffered more oppression from a patriarchal regime than elsewhere. What may have contributed to the early popularity of the sect int he Sindworkie milieu however is the particular insecurities felt by Bhaibund women about the fidelity of their husbands residing abroad for long periods. Knowledge of sexual exploits of Hyderabadi menoutside their home town must have been widespread and led some women to seek comfort in the preachings of a sect which devalued sexuality altogether and put a special premium on the purity of women.

If we example all the the stories we know about them, I wonder if it all starts to create a different picture from the one they want to sell ... and their core values.

• Multi-millionaire Lekhraj Kirpalani (and do not they love multi-millionaires even to this day) ... feeding and clothing all the 300 odd women and their children,
• squeezing toothpaste onto their toothbrushes at night (how many Indians actually had toothbrushes and paste in those days?),
• driving them around in 3 private buses and 2 cars with be-suited drivers (how many groups own private buses back then?),
• sending someone to learn how to cook sweeties for them as they had in Calcutta, owning a herd cows to provide the luxury of fresh milk (hence all the cowherd Krishna and gopi metaphors),
• the jewelry and luxuries of their previous existences like "only wearing a dress once and then giving it to the poor folk" ...

How far are we honestly from seeing them as merely merchants working their way back to the comforts they enjoyed, trading on religion rather than goods?

How far are we honest from seeing their attitude towards others as being "impure", "ignorant" and "shudras" as merely their caste snobbery and inhumanity?

The beggary period is sold as a Hard life of period of 'God inspired ascetism' ...

was it not just a product of their and Lekhraj Kirpalani's own stupidity and indulge? Why did they not just go out and work like the bheli women do in the building site of the BKWSU today? Why did the men not just get a job or Lekhraj Kirpalani go back into business? What is so great in India about setting up a religion to take money off followers?

Oh, I am sorry ... physical labor is not "royal" behavior for a Brahma Kumari. Try this for size ... how far from the facts is it?

300 odd jobless and uneducated privileged women ... drop out of society to live in a luxury commune paid for by a millionaire sugar daddy ... leave husbands they did not want to marry in the first place and do not know because they live abroad 3 years at a time ... go off to live on the cheap in rural India ... believe the End of the World is coming and only they will be saved on their mountain top before coming back again as little princesses in beautiful silks and bejeweled golden palaces living lives in paradise with their reincarnated lover ... to add to which all the wonder physic stuff of mediums having visions, naming them as deities, seeing the future and so on (spiritualism is a woman's religion after all) ... and then when the end of the world does not come (AGAIN) in 1950 ... they were forced to go out and start finding money selling the only "business" they knew. Religion, fairy stories, faux Mama Babas.