To Market, To Market...

…with Manipuri Matriarchs Who Have Created A Unique Marketplace – Set Up By And For Women Traders. The System Is A Medium Of Opportunity, And An Example Of How Right Thought And Effort Can Lead To Long- Lasting Fame Or ‘kirti’. This Form Of Strength Is Latent In Women (And Men, Too), But Requires Effort To Find It. Once Found, It Can Be Used To Build A Lasting ‘brand’

- Susan Philip

The Bhagavad Gita, a pivotal part of the great epic Mahabharata, can be considered a sort of manual for living. Among the many principles that underpin an ideal life that it talks of are the qualities that make for an ideal woman. In this new series, we look at some women of India – from antiquity, history and the present – who exemplify one or the other of 12 qualities that enhance a woman’s character. They are, of course, not values limited to women; they are feminine qualities that embellish a man’s personality just as much.

We begin with kirti or fame, which can, in the modern context, be extended to mean a ‘brand’ of sorts.

The hills are alive with the sound of women’s voices – particularly the marketplace known as Ima Keithel. The north-eastern Indian state of Manipur is known for its feisty women, no less decisive and clued-on than their brave menfolk. And the Ima Keithel stands testimony to this.

Literally translated, Ima Keithel means Mothers’ Market. It is the largest market in Asia, possibly in the world, staffed and managed exclusively by women.

The women of this tiny state took the initiative to be commercially active long ago. Their menfolk, famed for their warrior-like nature, were drafted under an ancient forced labour system to fight wars and work on farmlands in distant places. So the women, instead of languishing in their homes, took the reins of life into their own hands. They set up a market exclusively for women traders. This wasn’t a development that happened on the back of the women’s emancipation movements that swept the globe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As far as can be ascertained, it happened around 500 years ago.