What if the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but something altogether different?<\/p>\n
I call it matricultural society: a social and cultural order rooted in nurturing, reciprocity, continuity, protection of life and collective well-being\u2014not domination, hierarchy and conquest.<\/p>\n
Kathmandu Valley may hold one of the most fascinating cultural memories of such a social order.<\/p>\n
A. The Ajima: Grandmother Goddess and Guardian of the Community<\/strong><\/p>\n The word Ajima means grandmother goddess. She is not simply a distant divine mother. She is an ancestral, local and protective presence embedded in the life of the community.<\/p>\n Across Kathmandu Valley, Ajima shrines have historically stood within neighbourhoods and settlements. The Ajimas are associated with protection, fertility, well-being and the continuity of community life. They are part of the social landscape itself.<\/p>\n The Matrikas, too, represent powerful feminine forces. They are not merely passive goddesses waiting to be worshipped. They nurture, protect and, when necessary, fight.<\/p>\n This is an important distinction.<\/p>\n A culture centred on nurturing does not necessarily reject force. It uses force to defend life rather than to dominate it.<\/p>\n That distinction may offer us a very different way of thinking about power.<\/p>\n B. Naradevi: When the Goddess Defeats the Men<\/strong><\/p>\n Consider Naradevi.<\/p>\n The name itself offers a striking clue: Nara means man, while Devi means goddess.<\/p>\n Naradevi can therefore be understood, within the local cultural interpretation, as the goddess who defeated men\u2014perhaps preserving a memory of a conflict between the local matricultural order and an invading male army or patriarchal power.<\/p>\n We should be cautious about presenting this as established historical fact. The stories surrounding these traditions have travelled through oral history, mythology, ritual, patriarchal narratives and later interpretations. But that does not make their symbolism insignificant.<\/p>\n Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n C. Why would a community preserve the memory of a goddess defeating men?<\/strong><\/p>\n Why would a female divine power be remembered not only as a mother and nurturer but also as a defender against an external male force?<\/p>\n Perhaps the story preserves a cultural memory of resistance.<\/p>\n Perhaps it remembers a time when local communities organized their social and spiritual worlds around powerful maternal and feminine authorities, and later faced political systems built increasingly around male conquest, kingship, inheritance and territorial control.<\/p>\n The story of Naradevi may therefore be read as one fragment of a much larger cultural memory.<\/p>\n D. The Flag of Conquest<\/strong><\/p>\n This becomes particularly intriguing when we look at Indra Jatra.<\/p>\n Today, Indra Jatra is one of Kathmandu’s most spectacular festivals. But beneath its layers of ritual, celebration and devotion lies another political symbolism.<\/p>\n The Indra Dhwoja, the ceremonial flag or banner raised during the festival, can be read as a symbol of sovereignty and conquest\u2014the assertion of the king’s authority over the land.<\/p>\n In this reading, the raising of the flag is not merely a religious celebration. It represents the establishment or reaffirmation of political authority over territory.<\/p>\n The symbolism is powerful:<\/p>\n The land is conquered; the flag is raised; sovereignty is declared.<\/p>\n E. This is fundamentally different from a matricultural understanding of land.<\/strong><\/p>\n In a matricultural worldview, land is not simply something to be conquered and possessed. It is something that sustains the community and to which the community is connected through ancestry, ritual, obligation and reciprocity.<\/p>\n The contrast between these two ideas\u2014land as territory to be conquered and land as a living relationship to be cared for\u2014could not be more relevant today.<\/p>\n F. And Yet the Mother Remained<\/strong><\/p>\n But perhaps the most fascinating part of Kathmandu’s history is that the older authority was never completely erased.<\/p>\n Political regimes could change.<\/p>\n Kings could conquer territory.<\/p>\n Patriarchal institutions could become dominant.<\/p>\n Yet the Ajimas remained.<\/p>\n The Matrikas remained.<\/p>\n And the Kumari remained.<\/p>\n One possibility\u2014and I present it as a hypothesis rather than an established historical fact\u2014is that conquering political authorities could not simply eliminate the deep local authority of the feminine divine and the communities organized around it.<\/p>\n G. Perhaps accommodation became necessary.<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps a young girl was elevated as a living goddess\u2014a Kumari, a living embodiment of feminine sacred authority\u2014as a way of establishing or maintaining a relationship with the older local spiritual order.<\/p>\n Whether or not this specific political explanation can ultimately be demonstrated historically, the symbolism is remarkable.<\/p>\n The king represented political sovereignty.<\/p>\n The Kumari represented another kind of authority.<\/p>\n The king ruled the kingdom.<\/p>\n The child goddess embodied sacred legitimacy.<\/p>\n The patriarchal political order survived, but it had to coexist with a feminine sacred authority that it could not simply abolish.<\/p>\n H. From Matriarchy to Matriculture<\/strong><\/p>\n This is why I hesitate to describe the alternative to patriarchy as matriarchy.<\/p>\n Matriarchy simply reverses the hierarchy: women instead of men at the top.<\/p>\n That is not what these traditions necessarily suggest.<\/p>\n The deeper possibility is matriculture.<\/p>\n Matriculture does not mean that women should dominate men.<\/p>\n It means building society around principles traditionally embodied by the mother and grandmother: nurturing, protection, reciprocity, continuity, responsibility and care for life.<\/p>\n The mother does not own the child.<\/p>\n She sustains the child.<\/p>\n The grandmother does not necessarily command the community.<\/p>\n She holds its memory.<\/p>\n The guardian does not conquer the land.<\/p>\n She protects it.<\/p>\n This is a fundamentally different understanding of power.<\/p>\n I. Why Matriculture Matters Now<\/strong><\/p>\n The modern world has taken the logic of conquest to an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n We extract minerals from the earth.<\/p>\n We take forests for profit.<\/p>\n We turn water into commodities.<\/p>\n We acquire land as an investment.<\/p>\n We treat people as labour.<\/p>\n We measure success through accumulation.<\/p>\n And when nations compete for resources, territory and influence, the ultimate expression of power remains war.<\/p>\n The consequences are now impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n Climate change, ecological destruction, war and extreme economic inequality are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of a civilization that has become exceptionally good at extraction and domination but increasingly poor at nurturing and sustaining life.<\/p>\n This is where the idea of matriculture becomes more than a historical curiosity.<\/p>\n Perhaps humanity needs to recover the values that patriarchal and extractive systems have marginalized.<\/p>\n Not because women are inherently peaceful or men are inherently violent. That would simply create another stereotype.<\/p>\n Rather, because every society needs nurturing values to survive.<\/p>\n Care must become political.<\/p>\n Ecology must become central to economics.<\/p>\n Community must matter alongside capital.<\/p>\n Stewardship must matter alongside ownership.<\/p>\n Cooperation must matter alongside competition.<\/p>\n And difference must be accommodated rather than forced into hierarchies.<\/p>\n J. The Ajimas Have Not Disappeared<\/strong><\/p>\n Kathmandu’s ancient feminine powers are still here.<\/p>\n The Ajima\u2014the grandmother goddess\u2014still watches over neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n The Matrikas still occupy their sacred places.<\/p>\n Naradevi still carries the memory of a goddess associated with defeating men.<\/p>\n Indra Dhwoja still rises into the Kathmandu sky, carrying the symbolism of sovereignty and conquest.<\/p>\n And the Kumari\u2014a child\u2014still sits at the centre of one of the Valley’s most powerful sacred traditions.<\/p>\n Perhaps this is not simply a collection of unrelated rituals.<\/p>\n Perhaps Kathmandu is carrying a conversation across centuries:<\/p>\n between conquest and care,<\/p>\n between kingship and community,<\/p>\n between territory and belonging,<\/p>\n between domination and nurturing.<\/p>\n We do not need to romanticize the past or claim that ancient Kathmandu was a perfect matricultural society. We need to listen carefully to the cultural memories that survived.<\/p>\n Because they may help us imagine something the modern world desperately needs.<\/p>\n The future does not have to be patriarchy versus matriarchy.<\/p>\n K. There is another possibility.<\/strong><\/p>\n Matriculture.<\/p>\n A society where progress and prosperity is measured not by how much land we conquer, how much wealth we accumulate, or how many people we can control\u2014but by how much life we can protect, nurture and allow to flourish.<\/p>\n Perhaps the grandmother goddesses of Kathmandu have been waiting for us to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What if the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but something altogether different?
\nI call it matricultural society: a social and cultural order rooted in nurturing, reciprocity, continuity, protection of life and collective well-being\u2014not domination, hierarchy and conquest.
\nKathmandu Valley may hold one of the most fascinating cultural memories of such a social order.
\nA. The Ajima: Grandmother Goddess and Guardian of the Community
\nThe word Ajima means grandmother goddess. She is not simply a distant divine mother. She is an ancestral, local and protective presence embedded in the life of the community.
\nAcross Kathmandu …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":14469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1081,621,492,490,3,2065],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-issue","category-explanationawareness","category-news","category-opinion","category-slider","category-society","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14471,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14468\/revisions\/14471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}