The recent controversies about "men" in power making degrading comments about women make a point: patriarchy is surprisingly ecumenical. A Hindutva ideologue can reduce women to sexual stereotypes; a Muslim cleric can prescribe the home as their proper place; a Christian priest can prescribe purity tests; religious institutions across traditions can still reserve the most authoritative spaces for men.

The recent Kanthapuram controversy is particularly telling. The senior Sunni cleric said women should remain quietly confined to their homes and warned of "great destruction" if they entered the public arena. He later expressed regret over the controversy, but rival Muslim organisations largely rallied behind him. Muslim women leaders, however, pushed back, invoking both their faith and constitutional freedom.

On the Hindutva side, RSS-linked ideologue TG Mohandas came under fire after making the grotesque claim that "secular women" enjoy rape; the RSS distanced itself from his comments, while he subsequently attempted to explain them away. More recently, the BAPS controversy at the Eiffel Tower exposed another uncomfortable dimension of religious patriarchy: allegations that female staff were sidelined during a Hindu delegation's visit. BAPS denied asking for gender-based restrictions and apologised for the distress caused, while French authorities began investigating.

These are part of a much larger problem.

We celebrate women as Devi, Bharat Mata, mothers, daughters and symbols of honour. But the moment a woman insists on being a person, the trouble begins. She may be worshipped, protected, idealised and glorified provided she does not become too independent, too vocal, too ambitious or too visible.

The contradiction is everywhere. Women constitute barely 14 per cent of the 18th Lok Sabha and only about 10 per cent of MPs and MLAs taken together. Women's labour-force participation has improved, but unpaid care and homemaking continue to keep large numbers outside paid employment. Women are expected to cook, care, reproduce, sacrifice, and preserve the family, while leadership, authority, and decision-making remain disproportionately male preserves.

Religion is no exception. Hinduism has its goddesses, Islam its powerful women of early Islamic history, Christianity its women saints and religious pioneers. Yet institutional authority remains overwhelmingly male. Even the Catholic Church, while increasingly opening non-ordained ministries and leadership spaces to women, continues to reserve priestly ordination to men.

A woman is not the property of her father, husband, community, caste, religion, political party or nation. She is not a family's honour to be guarded, a community's honour to be displayed, or a religion's honour to be protected from public visibility.

The Constitution did not make Indian women equal citizens as a favour to men. It made them equal citizens because they already were.
The real test of our civilisation, therefore, is not how beautifully it worships women. It is whether it is prepared to listen to them, trust them, employ them, elect them, ordain them where theology permits, and above all let them decide for themselves.

Otherwise, Devi is merely another name for a woman whom men still want to control.