BKs Usurping Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son Psychologies?

for ex-BKs to discuss matters related to experiences in BKWSU & after leaving.
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ex-l

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BKs Usurping Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son Psychologies?

Post31 May 2017

The Brahma Kumaris supposedly "feminist" credentials have often been questioned, whether from point of view of their "authority" being given by the channelling of a male spirit guide, or from the observation of their not challenging but instead simple usurping of the patriarchal roles within a still caste bound society.

That is to say that the BKs are not "liberating" other women, but merely taking over the patriarchal positions and turning other women, often young or socially challenged women, into their unpaid servants or slaves. Married off 'en masse' to their male god spirit ... one has to question how much those young women understand about what is going on, especially when their leaders' account of their own ever mutating religion has been found false, erroneous and misleading time and time again.

Early in the history of the BK cult, its super-wealth businessman founder safeguarded his wealth and property from threatening law suits by placing it in a trust controlled by the very wives and teenage daughters of the men who were suing him. He used them as a front to deflect criticisms of his self-claimed "god-hood" and intimate indulgences with them.

This has been translated as "female empowerment" by the BK PR spin doctors. Hardly ... the canny businessman was just using them and continued to run the cult from behind them. A system that continues until this day, the "business" of the cult largely being controlled by powerful elder Brothers behind the scence; the simple, even mentally ill elder Sisters acting out as a front for them.

Accepting the Brahma Kumaris are, in essence, merely usurping the position of the male Brahmin caste within Indian societies, the question here is ...

Are Brahma Kumaris also usurping the traditional Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son relationships ... not resolving and developing those stereotypical psychologies but, in fact, not exploiting them for their own benefit?
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ex-l

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Re: BKs Usurping Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son Psycholog

Post31 May 2017

The Curse of the Mummyji

Traditional Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son relationships are often the subject of much study and much black humour ... but humour that cannot mask the darkness of a society in which girls are so undervalued that the scale of female infanticide is causing serious gender imbalances.

The Manu-Smriti says, “by a young girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independent, even in her own house.” Girls inherit their mother's domestic chores and adopt stereotypical gender roles. Low self-esteem and self-worth are common. After marriage, her husband and mother-in-laws control her life. Consequently, many girls enter a state of silence.
    Is that not the same for a young woman joining the BKWSU?
    If the god spirit" becomes her husband, does the centre-in-charge and elder Sisters not just become her demanding mother-in-law and in-laws or "aunties"?
    Rather than be "enlightened", is the structure of an average BK centre just not a replication of a traditional Indian family for both young women and men?
It is said that the concept of boundaries do not exist in traditional Indian families ... when you marry an Indian, you marry the whole family. In this case, the BK family. On marriage, the "girl ... belongs to their family" and "the family", in this case the BK centre, comes first.

Typically, excuse the generalisation here, Indian parents see their children, especially sons, as an emotional investment because they expect to be taken care of in their old age by them (generally the eldest son). It is said, "the umbilical cord is never cut ...".

Is this not the same of surrender males within BKism? The BK Dadis and center-in-charges "invest" in their male worker drones because they provide the money and logistical support of a real husband or surrogate "good boy" son.

Many Indian women look at becoming a mother-in-law as a chance to never work again - because being a mother-in-law is the most powerful position in a household and, traditionally, the only time a woman can express dominance in Indian society is towards another younger women in the family.

Is this not the same of the burly, dominant and normally fat BK Didis and center-in-charges sitting on the guddhi doing nothing (remembering Baba to assert their authority) "training" or "purifying" younger BK women, while they get looked after ... they themselves having been through this hazing in their own BK experience?
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ex-l

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Re: BKs Usurping Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son Psycholog

Post31 May 2017

“Saas—bahu ... Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi”.

In India, it is said, "Many mother-in-laws want their daughter-in-laws to suffer like they did, so they can understand what they went through". Indian mother-in-laws are notoriously stubborn and hard-headed and conservative ones do not care too much what other people think ...

Is that not typical of the BK Didis and Dadis too?

This is, of course, a broad subject that would require some study and many more examples, however, the essence is simple and clear ... that the BK form (which might at first appear "exotic" or attractive to Westerners in particular), is not actually that novel, unique or "god inspired" ... but that rather it is just an unexplored exploitation of tradition or even backward values in which young women especially are so undervalued as to almost be worth zero.

"Unexplored" as it is not even questioned, or allowed to be questioned, by the BK leadership ... as the exploitation benefits them too much. For example, in a society where a happy young couple are not supposed to show their attraction to each other and touching (forget kissing) or even speaking together in front of older relatives was taboo ... is the BK regime of "celibacy" and gender separation really that "spiritual" or not just traditional values?

Indeed, do the BKs not demand dowries and jewellery from the families of young women marrying their god spirit in the same way traditional families do? Do the BKs not also use their god spirit's young "brides" as little more than a skivvies?

And what do Western "feminist" BKs ... or female BKs in the West who have benefitted so much from very non-BK feminisim ... have to say about all this?

Whereas a Westerner might say,
"If it ain't broke don't fix it"

as in, if something works, don't mess around with it ... aren't the BK leaders saying,
"Even if it is broke, don't fix it ... because it is useful to us".

And Dadi Janki replies ...
Don't think, don't question, just remember Baba

Which means ... shut up.

For example, when the BKs use a word like "Mamaji" ask what connotations it carries to Indian especially, Indian males and young Indian females ... perhaps it is quite different from Western "Mother Mary/Mary Poppins" mother archetypes?
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Re: BKs Usurping Indian Mother-Daughter/Mother-Son Psycholog

Post02 Jun 2017

I've been reading a few thoughtful books around this subject, e.g. 'In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross-cultural Psychology' by Alan Roland and 'Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority' by Mary W. Pye and W Pye, and one thing that comes out quickly is not the weakness of Indian women in families but their power. It would appear that whereas the fathers might exercise power in society outside of the home, mothers more likely expressing it as the dominant authority within the home, and especially over the children. Vis-à-vis the female dominated "BK family", each centre run more like as a surrogate family than an incorporated association of individuals bound by a constitution.

The BKs themselves have used this in the past to defend their lack of financial accountability and transparency. "Oh, we are not a religion, we are just a spiritual family ... in a family, everyone gives what they can and no one keeps accounts!" etc. (An untruth is ever there was one as who gives, how much and who does not is most certain noted).

Of course, this is a very broad and general brush stroke to make at this point but one typical of most traditional and especially Asian societies ... males ruling the external realm, females ruling the domestic realm.

'Asian Power' also goes into the psychological bases of Grandeur and Dependency (and Narcissism ... I capitalise to emphasis the psychological use of the terms), laying blame for them in the process of socialisation that begins at home highlighting that families are not necessary that close knit due to the "abyss that separates men from women, husbands from wives, and hence fathers from mothers. They write,
the Indian mother tends to "become the ultimate symbol of authority".

The authors go on to quote several others who stress ...
"in varying degrees the essentially feminine quality of authority in Indian culture, which they also trace back to the way in which the Indian mother seeks to manage the growth of her children"
.
However, with that also goes the blame for creating a culture of grandeur and narcissism.

Clearly it's an area that one would need to study and consider to understand not just how the BKs have replicated it, but also Lekhraj Kirpalani core psyche and what made him as a man. Societies develop of the basis of the family and knew and were before. BKism is not something magical mystical and new ... nor "original nature" as they would claim ... but a reflection and extension of founders' early experiences.

Ditto, so are Western BKs and ... we could explore ... BK "families" (centres) in the West an extension of Western all too often disfunctional family experiences with a layer of Indianness laid on top, generally enforced by an imported India mamma-ji and her cooking and cleaning BK "aunties".

Did not Lekhraj Kirpalani's mother die early? (I forget now ... how old was he when she did?)

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