ABSTRACT
While there is no branch of thought within the Hindu tradition that is specifically marked as ethics, there is no lack of ethical reflections about human conduct. There are rules of conduct prescribed for particular group identities determined by race, class and gender. Women constitute one such identity set. Drawing from the Dharmaśāstra, the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and dramas such as Kālidāsa's Abhijnānaśakuntalā, Mandakranta Bose explores concepts such as dharma and nīti and the way in which Hindu ethical thought has fashioned regulations designed both to sustain and enhance women's inherent virtues and to check their assumed weaknesses. The ethics of womanhood enunciated by the sage Manu is read against the development and revisions of the law, especially marriage law. Bose concludes by questioning the contradictory position women hold in Hindu texts and society at large that worship the nature of women as divine, embodied by female deities, whilst simultaneously curtailing the rights and freedoms of women on the assumption of their moral and physical impurity, necessitating strict control by males. Historically, this dominant trend of ethical thought has asserted women's inferiority, denying them self-determination. Whether such an ‘ethics’ is truly ethical calls for serious critical inquiry.
