The speech is likely to be the creation of a manly mind. Suggesting that women are nothing else but great and invincible mothers, allows to demand unconditional love and tireless efforts, so that men can enjoy freedom, safeguarded and cherished by their indestructible everloving "mother". It's just a speech, mere words. A spiritual guide is supposed to be an example to follow, a model. How does Amma concretely implements "her" teachings?
What does "empowering women" mean for Amma? Picking a few villagers and teaching them basic technical jobs? Granting them microcredits to start microbusinesses? It's lifesaving for them and it also inflates her charities list. By the way, are her female disciples allowed to write Amma's speeches? Are they allowed to access high positions in business, marketing, management, accounting, IT, media within the organization? Can we have statistics instead of an isolated unverifiable testimony from time to time? Let's remember that there are six trustees in the M.A. Math, they all have signatory powers. How many of them are men, how many are women?
Anyway the charities and the institutions are the jewels on Amma's crown, while all eyes are on her. So what real life example does she show daily to her devotees? A lot of female disciples assist Amma when she gives darshan. They work for hours, standing up relentlessly next to her, taking care of the visitors one by one like tireless mothers, certainly straining their bodies like she does. Where are the male disciples at darshan time? Busy somewhere else. Hanging loosely around. Watching casually. Leaning on her seat. Joking with her. Waving cellphones for her to answer... Seldomly giving a hand. The darshan stages selfless women and careless men.
Amma's power mainly comes from the fact that she sacrifices herself to be a pure perfect loving tireless beautiful virgin mother. She dedicates her whole existence to meet the most exacting patriarchal demands. In return, her extreme dedication gives her the right to break a few traditions. The more she complies with the rules, the more powerfull she becomes inside the patriarchal shackles. It seems like this strategy is widely adopted by the women who want to escape from social dictatorship in India.
What kind of power does she possess? This statement, made by Amma herself at the begining of a business meeting, is really confusing :
"I don't know anything about business. To tell you about that will be like teaching a squirrel to climb a tree"She is ignorant about business! Isn't she supposed to run an international empire? If she is ignorant about business then some other people must have build it, pretending it's her work. Who are the true leaders, the true managers, the true decision makers? Amma is powerless without them.
She also depends on her disciples for the translations because she speaks neither Hindi nor English. Does she have a bank account or does she depends on the M.A. Math's accountants? Does she know how to use a computer or does she depend on others everytime she needs an information? Does she have her driving licence or does she need to ask for a driver anytime she needs to move? Have we ever seen her reading a book? She travels worldwide, does she know how to book a flight? What is the extent of her dependance? If she was left alone in a land where no one knows her, what would she be able to do on her own?
It is very hard to imagine Amma driving a car, googling on the internet, booking a flight ticket or drawing money with a credit card from an ATM. But we have already seen her cooking, cleaning, washing, sweeping, tidying up, fetching water, working in the fields, feeding animals or making manual labour. In fact she has exactly the same abilities and dependances as any disempowered woman in any developing country. Does she want the women worldwide to become just like her, misnaming this process as "spiritual unfoldment"? Then the acronym ETW can have a fourth meaning : "Enslaving The Women".
Let's conclude this series with a last contradiction from "her" speech :
"Statistics show that men — not women — commit by far most of the crime and killing in this world"Awful. What is "her" solution ?
"Wars and conflicts, all the suffering and lack of peace in the present-day world, will certainly lessen to a great extent if women and men begin to cooperate and support each other"Support each other? Bullshit! "She" knows that women already support the whole family, they already give selflessly all they have :
"There is a hidden longing in all men to be re-enfolded by the unconditional love of a mother"Women have been loving and caring for centuries, yet war and killing are still raging, how can women possibly bring more support and cooperation than they already do? Moreover, Amma hugs thousands of people to show the way. If her motherly compassion doesn't soothe her own devotees, how can she assert that following her tracks will bring any improvement to the world? If her solution fails on a small scale then it is a scam to claim that it will succeed on a large scale.
If men do the killing then men can stop the killing. If Amma wants to do something really original, maybe she can start to target the irresponsible careless men, instead of brainwashing us with the worn out patriarchal concepts of soul-destroying motherhood. Maybe Her Omniscient Holiness can "write" a brand new speech based on unusual topics, like for instance :
THE AWAKENING OF UNIVERSAL FATHERHOOD
She'd better hurry up because many men worldwide have already dropped the old-fashion cliché to embrace this path. Some personalities are even ahead of her. Women don't make war because they don't want to kill their own children. If men could be aware of fatherhood, they would surely refuse to kill their own children as well.