Pregnancy, Birthing, Breastfeeding and Mothering: Hindu Perspectives from Scriptures and Practices

This article looks at the regulations of pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding in Ayurvedic treatises, and at representations of mothering in Vedic and Puranic texts related to childrearing. Ayurvedic garbha sanskar (educating the mind of the foetus) regulates the pregnancy of women to ensure the safe birthing of superior babies. Breastfeeding is both glorified and strictly regulated in Ayurvedic texts. Several Vedic texts describe a range of rituals to benefit a caste Hindu child’s life from before birth to the beginning of manhood. These rituals are formally conducted by the father, whereas the mother’s role is marginalized. Although these texts scrutinize and discipline maternal bodies, yet there are several interstices where female and/or maternal agency can be performed. Ayurvedic obstetric practices often incorporate the indigenous knowledges of midwives (dais). The scripturally-mandated practice of wet-nursing shifts and complicates biological motherhood roles. The domestic tradition of performing vratas to secure the offspring’s longevity allows mothers to have a more central role in childrearing rituals. I will compare the regulatory texts and the potentially resistant practices from a maternal feminist perspective in order to interrogate the multiple ways in which the Hindu childbearing and childrearing framework is a site of surveillance as well as assertion for mothers.

Stitching and unpicking ambivalence toward womanhood and maternity in works by Ilené Bothma

Ilené Bothma knits with nylon stockings, stitches with human hair, and performs interventional actions with household furniture. Many of her canvases are vintage handkerchiefs and stockings. The body - specifically female and maternal bodies - is everywhere signalled, but seldom present. The artist also produces meticulously detailed, naturalistic paintings of her own and others' knitting, embroidery and crochet. Her delicate patterning with hair and her paintings of fabric soiled by bodily fluids provide a reflective tension within her work that speaks to how narratives of gendered roles and identities are written into representation. What the artist calls her 'deliberately bad knitting' is central here (Bothma 2020b). Bothma also creates a narrative for the work itself, encouraging possibilities for the interpretation of creative labour. As Valerie Mainz and Griselda Pollock (2000:3) put it, 'attention [is] given here to the work process by which an image is itself produced'. What emerges is a foregrounding of women's ambivalence.