Empress Wu

Published on 24th August, 2018, in The Economic Times. Religion is, and remains, essentially a creation of men, for men, by men. They have always resisted giving power to women. In Abrahamic religions, God is avowedly male, addressed using male pronouns and when visualized, seen as an old man. His messengers are almost always male, with very few exceptions. So, Jesus is male, Muhammad is male, Moses is male. In Buddhism too, there was no reference to female Buddha for a thousand years after Buddha’s nirvana. In Buddha’s past lives, narrated in Jataka tales, he takes many forms, animal, plant and human, but never female. ..