At some point of time, every society, every culture, goes through a period in its history when the glories of their Golden Age go into a decline. The society enters a phase that can only be called the Dark Ages. This can be caused due to many reasons. Often, it was conquests which impoverished the land, economically. From this economic failure came many ills. Illiteracy was perhaps one of the most unfortunate fallouts of this impoverishment, for from this lack sprang many attendant evils, such as superstition, blind belief in pernicious customs, and so on.

It needed a range of reformers in the past in order to pull out society from the clutches of these ills. And indeed, looking back over the past couple of centuries, we cannot help but be grateful to stalwarts such as Raja Rammohun Roy, B R Ambedkar, Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji, and indeed so many others for taking the lead, and toiling selflessly to eradicate social evils. Many of them were pilloried and jeered at during their lifetimes for trying to change the status quo, for even daring to point out that the “traditions” that people were following were actually against the natural order of things, and in many cases, quite inhuman. Much that was done in the name of religion was actually the debris of a society gone astray. The way many sections of society were treated was never sanctioned by the ancients, and yet it had become a way of life that needed to be demolished.

It is not that we live in an ideal society even today. No social order is static, and it is indeed fitting that this is so. For a changeless society is a stagnant, rigid one, in danger of putrefying. This is why many customs of the past become irrelevant and mere hollow rituals as time passes on, and people and social structures evolve. To cling on to them is meaningless, time consuming and sometimes even downright cruel. And yet today, we do not have the kind of social reformers of the same towering stature as were seen previously. There is nobody to exhort us, “Shake off these shackles of meaningless habits, and greet the future in a more befitting manner!”

And yet, there is hope. For the heartening thing is that all around us, today, we see otherwise ordinary-seeming men and women quietly setting empty ritual aside and conducting ceremonial occasions in a much more meaningful manner, in sync with the requirements and mindsets of today. And all this, without fuss and bother.

Take, for instance, our death rituals. Many of the customs regarding the last rites for Hindus have lost their relevance a long time ago. And yet, we cling to them, without thinking. Why? Because “that’s the way it’s always been done.”

One of the most cruel rules regarding cremation was that it was a son, or a male relative who should light the pyre. Daughters were not allowed to do so. This hitherto inflexible rule spawned all kinds of social evils. For obviously every parent wanted a son to light his or her funeral pyre, and send him or her on to the next life. Daughters were unwanted, and were killed, often in the womb.

And yet, things are changing. Today, at least in our part of the world, educated girls light the funeral pyres of their parents, and conduct the subsequent ceremonies, without fuss. Without a social reformer exhorting them to do so, they are going against the custom of centuries, and simply do what needs to be done. They have stepped outside the boundaries of the roles that were defined for them long ago, and travelled a path down which no woman had trod, previously.

Indeed, in our part of the world, it was taboo for women to even enter a cremation ground till the other day. This taboo, too, is being quietly broken. Today, it is not in the least bit unusual for women to come to the cremation ground to pay their last respects, in the same way as men have done, for a long time. This, too, has been a bastion that has been broken without the waving of flags and shouting. And that is what is heartening about these changes: the everyday, ordinary way in which these happenings are taking place.

Of course, it goes without saying that these changes are being spawned first in the urban areas. Conservatism is much more difficult to shake off in the villages, where illiteracy is so much more common than in the towns and cities. Still, at least a beginning is being made.

Wedding ceremonies, too, are occasions where many meaningless rituals are trotted out, and followed, with the excuse that “It’s always been done in this way…” As though this in itself is reason enough not to change anything. One of the most surprising rules in the Hindu marriage ceremony in our State concerns the role of the mothers of the bridal couple. While the mother of the bridegroom is not allowed to go with her son to view the wedding ceremony, the mother of the bride is supposed to lurk, unseen, and unseeing, inside the house. It is believed that to see one’s son or daughter getting married is inauspicious, and is, indeed, tantamount to casting an evil eye on them.

Can anything be more ridiculous, or demeaning to women? Especially when it is in fact compulsory for Hindu mothers to be present at the wedding ceremonies of their children in other parts of the country?

But thankfully, this anti-woman scenario, too, is gradually changing. In urban Assam, Hindu mothers are beginning to witness their sons and daughters getting married. After all, this is a big day in their lives, and in the lives of their children, a day for which they have been planning for months on end. Why should the mothers be deprived of seeing their children on this auspicious occasion?

With so many middle class children marrying outside the community, and the State, it is in any case time the rituals were modified for the benefit of those who have grown up in other cultures. A thoughtful mother did just this the other day. Having recently lost her husband, she was the sole surviving parent of her daughter, who flew in with her fiancé from London for just a week in order to get married in her hometown. Obviously, there were all kinds of people giving the mother “advice” on how best to conduct the wedding ceremony, which would have lasted all through the night.

Not wishing to inflict this kind of torture on her daughter and the bridegroom, the mother calmly consulted the priests who would be conducting the ceremony, and explained the situation to them. Together, they devised a “bare bones” ceremony, incorporating the essentials, and discarding the non-essentials. The mother was also quietly determined that it would be she herself, and not some random, indifferent uncle or grand uncle, who would give her daughter away to the bridegroom.

She did all this smilingly, without making a scene. It was a pathbreaking thing that she did, a reformist thing, made all the more remarkable by the fact that she does not fit into the popular perception of an iconoclast at all. A fun loving, party-going person, she is not the type one would think of as a rebel, a radical or a nonconformist. She has, however, proved that one needs nothing more, and nothing less, either, than sensitivity and intelligence to change meaningless rules.

All Things Considered, all this bodes well for the future of our society, does it not?

MITRA PHUKAN