Rahul Gandhi’s recent exhortation to women in Pune to smash patriarchy and reject all ancient discriminatory Hindu laws encoded in the Manusmriti, has expectedly drawn blood from supporters of traditional Hindutva. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a long time Rahul critic and a latter day convert to hard core Hinduism, reacted sharply: “Rahul Gandhi is NO (sic) champion of women’s rights. He is simply a Hindu baiter, using the cause of women’s empowerment as a convenient smokescreen…” Yogi Adityanath, the hotheaded defender of Hindus and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, asked Rahul to read the ancient scriptures like Matsya Purana and Shatpatha Brahmin to avoid simplistic criticism of the great book of Hindu Laws by Manu.“A virtuous wife”, mandates Manu, “must serve her husband constantly like a God. Even if he misbehaves, freely indulges his lust and lacks any good quality.”(Manu 5.144)Manu firmly holds women responsible for men’s desire. As highly sexed creatures the females, he holds, should never be independent of male supervision, even in their own house. (4.147-9) . Interestingly, Indian debates about ancient myths leave scholars bewildered frequently. Manu himself does not use the word Hindu. He only points out that in his opinion, the Brahmins should ideally choose to settle in the northern space between two mountains (Himalaya and Vindhyas) and two seas, one in the East and another in the West. So how come Hindus came to hold Dharm Shastra as a code of law for Hindus? It remains among many of our unresolved mysteries. English author E.M. Forster, while referring to such cases, once said that each Indian hole comes with at least two exits. The multiplicity of exit holes here is about Manu himself. There are 14 men named Manu listed in scriptures. Of them the one – believed to have been sired by the Sun god Vaivaswata and his wife Sangya – named Vaiwaswat Manu by his father, is generally believed to have been the compiler of this code of law (perhaps, the first ever of its kind) around first CE. Two more holes then open up before the scholar. It is wrong to call Manusmriti a granth (book). It is a Samhita, a compilation of various thoughts swimming in the air in centuries after the Vedas and treatises on Vedas. No sooner do we sort this, we see another gaping hole: the Harivamsha Purana, dated between 1st century BC and 4th century CE, says that while Vaivaswat’s first wife bore him Vaivaswat Manu and a pair of twins Yam and Yummi, he had also sired another son, also named Manu, by his other shadow wife named Chhaya. Another variable: Originally the Sun god was dark (highly tanned by his own Tejas), while his wife was fair. Their child, the first Manu, was like his father, of a dark colour. This will assume importance due to Varna, related to the consolidation of castes based partly on skin colour.In contrast, the second Manu, called Savarni, had the same fair colouring as his mother Chhaya. But because his father Sun had cast out his shadow wife, he was called Savarni Manu. Eventually, religious texts accorded both wives of the Sun god, Sangya and Chhaya, the status of primary mothers of the entire human race. So their progeny went on to sire a multicoloured society of different Varnas. Confused? The wise Brahmin Vedantiks later ruled ‘What are we but the children of a play between shadows? A Maya’. The Manusmriti is, at best, a clever compilation of various known myths, the wider implications that mingling of races threw up, and the laws that it shaped or tried to. They remained open to tweaking by learned men of later generations like Yagnvalkya, and Parashar, who ushered in changes after winning open debates on matters like types of marriages, gotras, property and criminal laws. Unfortunately, over the following centuries, especially after the face to face with the new religion of Islam, the rise of Brahminical class tightened its hold over philosophical thought by collective assertion of their (deemed) intellectual superiority and the kings, busy battling the challenge gave them a free hand. This is when the Varna theory began to slide into proto caste hierarchies. Varna (colour) began signalling Jati and later, courtesy the Portuguese, the term Jati itself acquired a sovereign sanction. After the Portuguese, both the French and the British found that a society split into caste hierarchies by the Brahminical class was a very convenient system to promote. It generated cheap labour, a learned class that helped all the ruling classes, who protected traders and ultimately generated big revenues while making rebellion by the oppressed impossible. What went under the radar while the Brahminical priestly class used caste to promote a network of vested interest groups in polity, was that it also quietly but firmly segregated all women into servile dependencies on their men. There is no denying the fact that all the world over male dominance over women is both monetary and sexual. And most ancient religions: Hinduism (most sects not all), Islam, Judaism and Christianity are supportive of this segregationist practice that guarantees unlimited access to labour and purity of their race and clans. So when the British Sarkar ran into problems, they used the Brahmins to protect the status quo. “If (questions) should arise about unmentioned laws?” The reply is, “What educated Brahmins sitting together decide by debate and discussion, should be the law”. (Nirukt by Yask)As Baba Saheb Ambedkar saw clearly, cracking this very complex relationship developed over centuries, that barred real mediation by women or other castes, was nearly impossible. It needed to be replaced in toto with a secular democratic code of laws once India won freedom.In the last few decades, feminist and Dalit enquiries into the realities of rape, battery, street violence, sexual harassment, incest, prostitution and pornography in public media platforms, have continued to rise. At each confrontation we see a power network that harbours hostility and contempt for the power deprived. Examples are reactions to assault and battery of women players, domestic workers, Dalit owners of land, bulldozed homes and extrajudicial killings. What alternative do the conservative Hindus offer women so far? Opt for a life of celibacy, or settle for the best that sexual inequality has to offer. Resistance to loss of freedom under the cover of a much narrowed down concept of Dharma is therefore a crucial component of regaining agency for the oppressed. The asymmetry of power, as Baba Sahib explains so clearly, is a historical phenomenon.In the words of Judge Curtis Raleigh: “The law should not be seen to sit by limply, while those who defy it go free and those who seek its protection lose hope.”Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.