Shakti Sikhism

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Shakti Hinduism and Sikhism are being combined to form Shakti Sikhism, a sort of feminist Sikhism, in which the deity that is prayed to is a powerful and independent woman and that practices equality. This is to balance out with many other religions in which men have higher status over women. This Shakti Sikhism would balance out the gender status stereotypes, and would have women be more active in their religion.

In Sikhism, it is debatable whether religious texts portray women well, or if they portray women often enough in general. What is undisputed, however, is that women continue to hold a lower status in the Sikh tradition. Often, women are ignored in the Sikh religion. Doris Jakobsh states that, “While Sikh apologetics repeatedly insist that women and men are inherently equal in the Sikh world view, in reality, historical writings contain virtually nothing about women, apart from minimal asides referring to the occasional exceptional woman who has been deemed worthy enough to have made the pages of history” (Relocating, 7). This shows that there is a discrepancy between the equality that Sikhs seem to believe that women have in their religion and the restrictions placed on women anyway. While learning about Sikhism, I found it curious that there was a serious lack of female influence acknowledged in the conception of the religion. Considering the fact that there were many women present, upon visiting a Sikh Mandir, it seemed that many members of the female population in Sikhism are unaccounted for. M.K. Gill notes that though Mata Sundri [one of Guru Gobind Sing’s wives] led the panth longer than any of the nine Gurus subsequent to Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition, and through one of its more difficult and d...

... middle of paper ...

...ality. But together, Sikhism and Shakti Hinduism form a happy medium in which women have the power they have never had before.

Works Cited

Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003. Print.

Hiltebeitel, Alf, and Kathleen M. Erndl. Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South

Asian Goddesses. New York: New York UP, 2000. Print.

Jakobsh, Doris. Relocating Gender in Sikh History. Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Jakobsh, Doris R. "Sikhism, Interfaith Dialogue, and Women: Transformation and

Identity." Journal of Contemporary Religion 21.2 (2006): 183-99. Print.

Singh, Nikky-Guninder K. The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the

Transcendent. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1993. Print.

Wadley, Susan S. "Women and the Hindu Tradition." Signs: Journal of Women in

Culture and Society 3.1 (1977): 113-125. Print.

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