BaulOlogy: Womb Envy

BaulOlogy

Womb Envy

The dictionary of the Bauls & Fakirs talk about only (2) two castes, which really are the two genders – the male and the female – the man and the woman – the ‘Purusha’ and the ‘Prakriti’.

If the Baul thinks and also feels very strongly that since I am a ‘Man’ – I am the owner of my ‘Pitribastu’ (my father’s ‘Semen’), I am much superior to you – a ‘Woman’. ‘Pitribastu’ or ‘Semen’ is the main ingredient for making a child – the superior act of ‘Creation’. One ejaculated outflow of semen contains millions of ‘sperms’. A man can spread and sow his seeds at any land and it will lovingly grow into saplings. A woman provides the land – which is generally immovable. A man is mobile as a gatherer and provider of food. So he enjoys the primary role in a partnership. The woman’s role is secondary.

If the Baul thinks after fertilisation, you woman become pregnant, and steal all the credit. Nobody appreciates what the role of the sperm-donor. Then you nurture the foetus in your own body inside your womb spending your personal biological resources. You prepare my child to experience the light and air of the external environment at the time of its birth. You earn more kudos from all around. You feed the milk produced in your own body and help it to grow up to an age and a stage when it can take care of its daily living. You earn more credit from people around and the child gets attached to you much more than it does to me. An orphan who has lost both the parents near about the same time misses the mother much more than the father.

The Baul feels this is most unfair. He feels that he is the main creator of the child as he has donated the ‘MONI’ (the ‘gem’ as the semen is called in the Baul-Fakir parlance most fondly because of its prime value) but socially the woman is considered the creator. This kind of feeling is known in neuro-psychiatry as ‘WOMB ENVY’.

Neo-Freudian psychiatrist Karen Horney (1885-1952) proposed this as an innate male psychological trait. (Reference 1). These emotions could fuel the social subordination of women, and drive men to succeed in other areas of life, such as business & industry, commerce & manufacturing, medicine, applied science (there are umpteen examples of lady scientists being deprived of their credit by their male colleagues – please read about the much-discussed case of Dr Rosalind Franklin in References 2, 3 & 4), law & politics.

Freudian psychology had originated the concept of ‘Penis Envy’ (Reference 5), according to which young girls experience profound distress when they realise that they do not have a genital organ which sticks out from the body and gets erect when sexually aroused. The female’s arousal remains hidden inside the crevice. A menstruating girl laments about the bloody mess happening to her periodically and starts getting distant from the mother – instead feels a competitor to her for the attention, recognition and affection of the father.

In the Baul-Fakir society this problem is beautifully taken care of as the Sadhak jumps at the golden opportunity to drink the first menstrual blood of a girl who has just attained puberty and is fit to mother a child.

A man’s ‘Womb Envy’ is more widespread than a woman’s ‘Penis Envy’ as the man gets fascinated with the female breasts and lactation, with pregnancy and childbearing, and vagina envy. These are clues and signs of trans-sexualism and a femininity complex in men. Therefore, I presume ‘Womb Envy’ is most probably in the background of a Baul’s cross-dressing habit, wearing of necklaces, bangles & ornaments, piercing the ears, growing long hair and arranging it like a bun. Many Baul songwriters have also such ideas expressed in the lyrics of their songs.

Besides, what is more important, they are against the whole idea of procreation. So, for their sexual act they have to be trained by expert & experienced Gurus to develop skills for enjoying sexual pleasure by having intercourse only during a special day of the sadhan-sangini’s menstrual period without the loss of semen by dropping it into the woman’s vaginal crevice. Instead, by special breathing technique the semen has to be mixed with the menstrual blood and moved upward using the ’Susumna Nadi’ route. In the process, the man and the woman transcend their biological role of the man being the seed supplier and the woman the land where the seed is sown; and enjoy the role of being partners in the ‘Deha Sadhana’ with the ‘prem rasa’ ‘Oxytocin’ being released from their brain’s ‘Pituitary Glands’.

Whether the Baul & Fakir philosophers had dreamt of a genderless society – I am still saddled with that very basic question.

Acknowledgement: Although a few of the ideas expressed in this article are based on my own studies & research, for several others, I am indebted to the exhaustive field research findings of Carola Lorea, PhD. Originally from Italy, Dr Lorea was associated with the University of Rome and had been engaged in many years of field research in West Bengal, India and Bangladesh. Right at this moment she is a professor at the University of Singapore. (Reference 6)

[References:

1. ‘Womb Envy’ – Wikipedia.

2. ‘Rosalind Franklin’ – Wikipedia

3. Matthew Cobb, “Sexism in science: did Watson and Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin’s data?” The Guardian, 23rd June 2015.

4. Brenda Maddox, “Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA” New York: Harper Perennial, 2003.

5. ‘Penis Envy’ – Wikipedia.

6. Carola Lorea, “Why did you go swimming in the river full of algae? – Conception and contraception in Baul’s songs and oral teachings”, Folklore and Folkloristics, Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2014, Article 1. pp 9 – 45]

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