Vaishali Kingdom, in 5th century BC was the world's first known democracy and was invincible before the ambitious king of Magadha; 'Ajatshatru' annexed it The War took a lot of time, effort and sacrifice to conquer Vaishali. When Ajatshatru's efforts were going in vain he approached Gautama Buddha to know what made Vaishali Invincible, Gautama Buddha gave 5 main reasons 1) Discipline of attending meetings 2) Respect of elders 3) Respect for women 4) they don't forcibly marry their daughters and 5) The holy temple where people give sacrifices. Ajatshatru, sent his men inside the kingdom disguised as monks to spread the word that the temple is the cause of the war. People of Vaishali started doubting the temple and lost their faith in it and demolished it. This made Ajatshatru, win the war as a nation with no faith can't fight a war.
It is clear that as per Buddha Faith and Respect for Women and Elders was, what madethe Vaishali empire invincible, And I believe its true that if any civilization has respect for women and elders it will be prosperous and invincible
Whenever respect for women or elders in the society lowers that society is nearing its end no matter how technically advanced or religiously aware the society is. To respect women and elders, people need to have spiritual and moral quotient related to empathy, compassion and love. Which will in-turn lead to equality.
The wave of individualism that we see today is not giving any space to virtues like empathy and compassion. To be true, individualism is nothing new to our society it is as old as patriarchy, infact narcissism, which is the extreme form of individualism lead to male dominance in the society subsequently leading to female exploitation which lead to weakening of family structure and hence fall of overall social structure. Had there been no female exploitation at the first place we would have been living in a different society with different history all together.
Story of Mahabharata highlights how Duriodhana insulted Dropadi and started abusing value system established by the then elders, which lead to war, killing of noble men and end of dwapra yuga.
Its true that male dominance and female exploitation is present in major chunk of Indian society but its equally true that in the name of feminism male exploitation is also present in our society. Feminism would ideally refer to any thought, philosophy or action with core intent as equality of females with males. But in true sense most of its thoughts in present context are nothing but anti-male and anti-family. All feminists it seems are targeting laws of rape, marriage but no one is ready to take the burden of the fact that its not the laws alone which will reform the society but the execution at ground level.
If the situation continues the society will move from current male dominant to male exploited one, It would be like moving from one hell to another or worse where middle class will see male exploitation, lower middle class and poor people see female exploitation. If we can picture this out we will realise that this will eventually lead to fall of social structure.
