Series Editor: I grew up in an uber-brahmanical family where ritualistic worship was a part of my everyday life; the Vedic texts and the Upanishads were also something I grew up. I always thought that religion was something "out" there; I never actually thought that we were meant to believe in these texts on "revealed knowledge" in an absolute manner. But religion pervades every and all aspects of our lives - institutional, private or public, and be they secular, or not. After reading the Hindu religious texts for myself, I realised how gendered these texts were, and to our sensibilities, the archaic notions that underlie the basic tenets of Hinduism sound ridiculous and perverse. We forget that the "revealed knowledge" that is evident in the Upanishads has been written by men, and their gender predetermined how they translated the notions of the Absolute Being into language. I do not want my daughter to grow up within such a flawed belief system; we have to dismantle the existing religious texts as they are and re-transcribe them in order to arrive at gender-neutral concepts of religion, and Being.
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