Contribution of Swedish Missionaries, Rev. Nordmark and Esther Peterson for Women's Development in the Field of Social Recognition in Tamil Nadu (India)

Abstract

The Indian Society has been in a condition of backwardness for many centuries. Women lived in a backward condition even within such a down trodden society.  Though we hear about women's rights during the Tamil Sangam Age, we cannot be absolutely sure that women enjoyed a high place in society. Sense of slavery was not even felt by the local Indians and so the fact that the society was reeling under heavy depression was not even realized. The condition of the women was pathetic.  The agony of the situation of slavery of women was not self imposed.  It was not thrust upon them just by the family members alone.  It was a result of the ‘age old practice of religious values' which on the one hand hailed women as goddesses - and on the other hand, did not allow their women even to touch or worship or enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temples, exactly where the idols of highly respectable ‘Women Goddesses' were kept and worshipped. It was strange for the CSM Missionaries when they observed that the Indians worshipped women in the stone form but they were not willing to treat them with minimum respect and dignity in the real form.