PART II

Interlude - THE GRAND TRUNK ROAD

The Grand Trunk Road, at the Khyber. Black, barren, jagged hills scowl into the chasm that cleaves them. Tribesmen's villages on either side -- each house in itself a fortalice, its high fighting towers surrounded by high, blind walls loop-holed for rifles.

"What is your calling?" you ask the master. "What but the calling of my people?" says he. "We are raiders."

They may not shoot across the road, it being the highway of the King-Emperor. But on either side they shoot as they please, the country being their country. Their whole life is war, clan on clan, house on house, man on man, yet, for utter joy, Muslim on Hindu. Hills are bare, food is scarce, and the delight of life is stalking human prey, excelling its cunning.

Two miles of camels, majestic, tail to nose, nose to tail, bearing salt, cotton and sugar from India to Asia, swinging gloriously past two miles of camels, nose to tail, tail to nose, bearing the wares of Asia into India. Armed escorts of Afridi soldiers. Armed posts. Frequent roadside emplacements for three or four sharpshooters with rifles. Barbed wire entanglements. Tribesmen afoot, hawk-nosed, hawk-eyed, carrying two rifles apiece, taking the lay of the land on the off-chance. Tramp -- tramp-- a marching detachment of the 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers -- open-faced, bright-skinned English lads, smart and keen -- an incredible sight in that setting. Yet because of them and them only may the Hindu today venture the Khyber. Until the Pax Britannica reached so far, few Hindus came through alive, unless mounted and clad as women.

The Grand Trunk Road rolls South and South -- a broad, smooth river of peace whose waves are unthinking humanity. Monkeys of many sorts play along its sides. Peacocks. Deer. Herds of camels shepherded by little naked boys entirely competent. Dust of traffic. White bullocks, almond-eyed, string upon string of sky-blue beads twisted around their necks and horns, pulling wains heaped high with cotton for Japan. Villages -- villages -- villages -- true homes of India, scattered, miles apart, across the open country. Each just a handful of mud-walled huts clustered beside the hole they took the mud from, now half full of stagnant water in which they wash and bathe and quench their thirst. In villages such as these live nine-tenths of all the peoples of India. Hindu or Muhammadan alike -- hard-working cultivators of the soil, simple, illiterate, peaceful, kindly, save when men steal amongst them carrying fire.

Sunset. The ghost of a ghost -- a thin long veil of blue, floating twice a man's height above the earth. Softly it widens, deepens, till all the air is blue and the tall tree-trunks and the stars themselves show blue behind it. Now comes its breath -- a biting tang of smoke -- the smoke of all the hearth-fires in all the villages. And this is the hour, this the incense, this the invocation of Mother India, walking among the tree-trunks in the twilight, veiled in the smoke of the hearth-fires of her children, her hands outstretched in entreaty, blue stars shining in her hair.

CHAPTER VI - THE EARTHLY GOD

A beautiful Rolls-Royce of His Highness's sending was whirling us along the road from the Guest House to the Palace. My escort, one of the chief officials of the Prince's household, a high-caste orthodox Brahman scholar easily at home in his European dress, had already shown readiness to converse and to explain.

"Let us suppose," I now asked him, "that you have an infant daughter. At what age will you marry her?"

"At five--at seven--but I must surely marry her," he replied in his excellent English, "before she completes her ninth year."

"And if you do not, what is the penalty, and upon whom does it fall?"

"It falls upon me; I am outcasted by my caste. None of them will eat with me or give me water to drink or admit me to any ceremony. None will give me his daughter to marry my son, so that I can have no son's son of right birth. I shall have, in fact, no further social existence. No fellow caste-man will even lend his shoulder to carry my body to the burning-ghat. And my penance in the next life will be heavier still than this."

"Then as to the child herself, what would befall her?"

"The child? Ah, yes. According to our law I must turn her out of my house and send her into the forest alone. There I must leave her with empty hands. Thenceforth I may not notice her in any way. Nor may any Hindu give her food or help from the wild beasts, on penalty of sharing the curse."

"And would you really do that thing?"

"No; for the reason that occasion would not arise. I could not conceivably commit the sin whose consequence it is."

It was noticeable that in this picture the speaker saw no suffering figure save his own.

A girl child, in the Hindu scheme, is usually a heavy and unwelcome cash liability. Her birth elicits the formal condolences of family friends. But not always would one find so ingenuous a witness as that prosperous old Hindu landowner who said to me: "I have had twelve children. Ten girls, which, naturally, did not live. Who, indeed, could have borne that burden! The two boys, of course, I preserved."

Yet Sir Michael O'Dwyer records a similar instance of open speech from his own days of service as Settlement Commissioner in Bharatpur:

And it was so. But it is fair to remember that infanticide has been common not with primitive races only but with Greece, with Rome, with nearly all peoples known to history save those who have been affected by Christian or Muhammadan culture. Forbidden in India by Imperial law, the ancient practice, so easily followed in secret, seems still to persist in many parts of the country. Statistical proof in such matters is practically unattainable, as will be realized later in this chapter. But the statement of the Superintendent of the United Provinces Census[3] regarding girl children of older growth is cautious enough to avoid all pitfalls:

This attitude toward the unwanted was illustrated in an incident that I myself chanced upon in a hospital in Bengal. The patient, a girl of five or six years, had fallen down a well and sustained a bad cut across her head. The mother, with the bleeding and unconscious child in her arms, had rushed to the hospital for help. In a day or two tetanus developed. Now the child lay at death's door, in agony terrible to see. The crisis was on, and the mother, crouching beside her, a figure of grief and fear, muttered prayers to the gods while the English doctor worked. Suddenly, there at the bedside, stood a man -- a Bengali babu -- some sort of small official or clerk.

"Miss Sahib," he said, addressing the doctor, "I have come for my wife."

"Your wife!" exclaimed the doctor, sternly. "Look at your wife. Look at your child. What do you mean!"

"I mean," he went on, "that I have come to fetch my wife home, at once, for my proper marital use."

"But your child will die if her mother leaves her now. You cannot separate them -- see!" and the child, who had somehow understood the threat even through her mortal pain, clung to her mother, wailing.

The woman threw herself prostrate upon the floor, clutched his knees, imploring, kissed his feet, and with her two hands, Indian fashion, took the dust from his feet and put it upon her head. "My lord, my lord," she wept, "be merciful!"

"Come away," said he. "I have need of you, I say. You have left me long enough."

"My lord -- the child -- the little child -- my Master!"

He gave the suppliant figure a thrust with his foot. "I have spoken" -- and with never another word or look, turning on the threshold, he walked away into the world of sun.

The woman rose. The child screamed.

"Will you obey?" exclaimed the doctor, incredulous for all her years of seeing.

"I dare not disobey," sobbed the woman -- and, pulling her veil across her stricken face, she ran after her man -- crouching, like a small, weak animal.

The girl, going to her husband by her ninth or twelfth year, or earlier, has little time and less chance to learn from books. But two things she surely will have learned -- her duty toward her husband and her duty toward those gods and devils that concern her.

Her duty toward her husband, as of old laid down in the Padmapurana is thus translated:

Be her husband deformed, aged, infirm, offensive in his manners; let him also be choleric, debauched, immoral, a drunkard, a gambler; let him frequent places of ill-repute, live in open sin with other women, have no affection whatever for his home; let him rave like a lunatic; let him live without honour; let him be blind, deaf, dumb or crippled, in a word, let his defects be what they may, let his wickedness be what it may, a wife should always look upon him as her god, should lavish on him all her attention and care, paying no heed whatsoever to his character and giving him no cause whatsoever for displeasure...

A wife must eat only after her husband has had his fill. If the latter fasts, she shall fast, too; if he touch not food, she also shall not touch it; if he be in affliction, she shall be so, too; if he be cheerful she shall share his joy...She must, on the death of her husband, allow herself to be burnt alive on the same funeral pyre; then everybody will praise her virtue...

If he sing she must be in ecstasy; if he dance she must look at-him with delight; if he speak of learned things she must listen to him with admiration. In his presence, indeed, she ought always to be cheerful, and never show signs of sadness or discontent.

Let her carefully avoid creating domestic squabbles on the subject of her parents, or on account of another woman whom her husband may wish to keep, or on account of any unpleasant remark which may have been addressed to her. To leave the house for reasons such as these would expose her to public ridicule, and would give cause for much evil speaking.

If her husband flies into a passion, threatens her, abuses her grossly, even beats her unjustly, she shall answer him meekly, shall lay hold of his hands, kiss them, and beg his pardon, instead of uttering loud cries and running away from the house...

Let all her words and actions give public proof that she looks upon her husband as her god. Honoured by everybody, she shall thus enjoy the reputation of a faithful and virtuous spouse.

The Abbé Dubois found this ancient law still the mode of nineteenth-century Hinduism, and weighed its aspect with philosophic care. His comment ran:

In the handling of this point by the modern, Rabin-dranath Tagore, appears another useful hint as to the caution we might well observe in accepting, at their face value to us, the expressions of Hindu speakers and writers. Says Tagore, presenting the Hindu theory:

As to the theory of the matter, let that be what it may. As to the actual practice of the times, material will be recalled from the previous pages of this book bearing upon the likeness of the Hindu husband, as such, to "loyalty," "patriotism," or any impersonal abstraction.

Mr. Gandhi tirelessly denounces the dominance of the old teaching. "By sheer force of a vicious custom," he repeats, "even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a superiority over women which they do not deserve and ought not to have."

But a creed through tens of centuries bred into weak, ignorant, and fanatical peoples is not to be uprooted in one or two hundred years; neither can it be shaken by the wrath of a single prophet, however reverenced.

The general body of the ancient law relating to the status and conduct of women yet reigns practically supreme among the great Hindu majority.

In the Puranic code great stress is laid upon the duty of the wife to her mother-in-law. Upon this foundation rests a tremendous factor in every woman's life. A Hindu marriage does not betoken the setting up of a new homestead; the little bride, on the contrary, is simply added to the household of the groom's parents, as that household already exists. There she becomes at once the acknowledged servant of the mother-in-law, at whose beck and call she lives. The father-in-law, the sister-in-law, demand what they like of her, and, bred as she is, it lies not in her to rebel. The very idea that she possibly could rebel or acquire any degree of freedom has neither root nor ground in her mind. She exists to serve. The mother-in-law is often hard, ruling without mercy or affection; and if by chance the child is slow to bear children, or if her children be daughters, then, too frequently, the elder woman's tongue is a flail, her hand heavy in blows, her revengeful spirit set on clouding her victim's life with threats of the new wife who, according to the Hindu code, may supplant and enslave her.

Not infrequently, in pursuing my inquiry in the rural districts, I came upon the record of suicides of women between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. The commonest cause assigned by the Indian police recorder was "colic pains, and a quarrel with the mother-in-law."

As to the direct relation o£ wife to husband, as understood in high-class Hindu families today, it has thus been described by that most eminent of Indian ladies, whose knowledge of her sisters of all ranks and creeds is wide, deep, and kind, Miss Cornelia Sorabji:[9]

[9. Between the Twilights, Cornelia Sorabji, Harper Brothers, London, 1908, pp. 125-32.]

Chief priestess of her husband, whom to serve is her religion and her delight...moving on a plane far below him for all purposes religious, mental and social; gentle and adoring, but incapable of participation in the larger interests of his life...To please his mother, whose chief handmaiden she is, and to bring him a son, these are her two ambitions...The whole idea of marriage in the east revolves simply on the conception of life; a community of interests, companionship, these never enter into the general calculation. She waits upon her husband when he feeds, silent in his presence, with downcast eyes. To look him in the face were bold indeed.

Then says Miss Sorabji, continuing her picture:

This general characterization of the wife in the zenana of educated, well-to-do, and prominent Hindus finds its faithful echo in one of many similar incidents that came to my notice in humbler fields. For the orthodox Hindu woman, whoever she be, will obey the law of her ancestors and her gods with a pride and integrity unaffected by her social condition.

The woman, in this case, was the wife of a small landowner in a district not far from Delhi. The man, unusually enlightened, sent her to hospital for her first confinement. But he sent her too late, and, after a severe ordeal, the child was born dead.

Again, the following year, the same story was repeated. The patient was brought late, and even the necessary Caesarean operation did not save the child. Still a third time the zemindar appeared, bringing the wife; but now, taught by experience, he had moved in time. As the woman came out of the ether, the young English nurse bent over her, all aglow with the news. "Little mother, happy little mother, don't you want to see your baby -- don't you want to see your boy?"

The head on the pillow turned away. Faintly, slowly the words came back out of the pit of hopeless night: "Who wants to see -- a dead baby! I have seen -- too many -- too many -- dead -- dead --" The voice trailed into silence. The heavy eyelids closed.

Then Sister picked up the baby. Baby squealed. On that instant the thing was already done -- so quickly done that none could measure the time of its doing. The lifeless figure on the bed tautened. The great black eyes flashed wide. The thin arms lifted in a gesture of demand. For the first time in all her life, perhaps, this girl was thinking in the imperative. "Give me my son!" She spoke as an empress might speak. "Send at once to my village and inform the father of my son that I desire his presence." Utterly changed. Endued with dignity -- with self-respect -- with importance.

The father came. All the relatives came, heaping like flies into the little family quarters attached, in Indian women's hospitals, to each private room. Ten days they sat there -- over a dozen of them, in a space some fifteen by twenty feet square. And on the tenth, in a triumphant procession, they bore home to their village mother and son.

Rich or poor, high caste or low caste, the mother of a son will idolize the child. She has little knowledge to give him, save knowledge of strange taboos and fears and charms and ceremonies to propitiate a universe of powers unseen. She would never discipline him, even though she knew the meaning of the word. She would never teach him to restrain passion or impulse or appetite. She has not the vaguest conception how to feed him or develop him. Her idea of a sufficient meal is to tie a string around his little brown body and stuff him till the string bursts. And so through all his childhood he grows as grew his father before him, back into the mists of time.

Yet, when the boy himself assumes married life, he will honor his mother above his wife, and show her often a real affection and deference. Then it is that the woman comes into her own, ruling indoors with an iron hand, stoutly maintaining the ancient tradition, and, forgetful of her former misery, visiting upon the slender shoulders of her little daughters-in-law all the burdens and the wrath that fell upon her own young back. But one higher step is perhaps reserved for her. With each grandson laid in her arms she is again exalted. The family line is secure. Her husband's soul is protected. Proud is she among women. Blessed be the gods!

CHAPTER VII - WAGES OF SIN

The reverse of the picture shows the Hindu widow--the accursed. That so hideous a fate as widowhood should befall a woman can be but for one cause--the enormity of her sins in a former incarnation. From the moment of her husband's decease till the last hour of her own life, she must expiate those sins in shame and suffering and self-immolation, chained in every thought to the service of his soul. Be she a child of three, who knows nothing of the marriage that bound her, or be she a wife in fact, having lived with her husband, her case is the same. By his death she is revealed as a creature of innate guilt and evil portent, herself convinced, when she is old enough to think at all, of the justice of her fate. Miss Sorabji thus treats the subject:[l]

[1. Between the Twilights, pp. 144-6.]

The orthodox Hindu widow suffers her lot with the fierce enjoyment of martyrdom...but nothing can minimize the evils of that lot...That she accepts the fact makes it no less of a hardship. For some sin committed in a previous birth, the gods have deprived her of a husband. What is left to her now but to work out his "salvation" and by her prayers and penances to win him a better place in his next genesis?...For the mother-in-law, what also is left but the obligation to curse?...But for this luckless one, her son might still be in the land of the living. ...There is no determined animosity in the attitude. The person cursing is as much an instrument of Fate as the person cursed...[But] it is all very well to assert no personal animosity toward her whom you hold it a privilege to curse and to burden with every unpleasant duty imaginable. Your practise is apt to mislead.

The widow becomes the menial of every other person in the house of her late husband. All the hardest and ugliest tasks are hers, no comforts, no ease. She may take but one meal a day and that of the meanest. She must perform strict fasts. Her hair must be shaven off. She must take care to absent herself from any scene of ceremony or rejoicing, from a marriage, from a religious celebration, from the sight of an expectant mother or of any person whom the curse of her glance might harm. Those who speak to her may speak in terms of contempt and reproach; and she herself is the priestess of her own misery, for its due continuance is her one remaining merit.

The old French traveler, Bernier, states that the pains of widowhood were imposed "as an easy mode of keeping wives in subjection, of securing their attention in times of sickness, and of deterring them from administering poison to their husbands."[2]

[2. Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656-1668, François Bernier, Oxford University Press, 1916, pp. 310-11.]

But once, however, did I hear this idea from a Hindu's lips. "We husbands so often make our wives unhappy," said this frank witness, "that we might well fear they would poison us. Therefore did our wise ancestors make the penalty of widowhood so frightful--in order that the woman may not be tempted."

In the female wards of prisons in many parts of India I have seen women under sentence for the murder of their husbands. These are perhaps rare mentalities, perhaps hysteria cases. More characteristic are the still-recurring instances of practical suttee, where the newly-widowed wife deliberately pours oil over her garments, sets them afire and burns to death, in a connived-at secrecy. She has seen the fate of other widows. She is about to become a drudge, a slave, starved, tyrannized over, abused--and this is the sacred way out--"following the divine law." Committing a pious and meritorious act, in spite of all foreign-made interdicts, she escapes a present hell and may hope for happier birth in her next incarnation.

Although demanded in the scripture already quoted, the practice of burning the widow upon the husband's funeral pyre is today unlawful. But it must be noted that this change represents an exceptional episode; it represents not a natural advance of public opinion, but one of the rare incursions of the British strong hand into the field of native religions. Suttee was forbidden by British Governors[3] some twenty-nine years before the actual taking over by the Crown of direct government. That advanced Indian, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, supported the act. But other influential Bengali gentlemen, vigorously opposing, did not hesitate to push their fight for the preservation of the practice even to the court of last resort--the Privy Council in London.

[3. Regulation XVII of 1829.]

Is it conceivable that, given opportunity, the submerged root of the matter might come again to life and light? In Mr. Gandhi's weekly[4] of November 11, 1926, a Hindu writer declares the impossibility of a widow's remarriage today, without the deathbed permission of the deceased husband. No devout husband will give such permission, the correspondent affirms, and adds: "He will rather fain agree to his wife's becoming sati [suttee] if she can."

[4. Young India.]

An inmate of her husband's home at the time of his death, the widow, although she has no legal claim for protection, may be retained there on the terms above described, or she may be turned adrift. Then she must live by charity--or by prostitution, into which she not seldom falls. And her dingy, ragged figure, her bristly, shaven head, even though its stubble be white over the haggard face of unhappy age, is often to be seen in temple crowds or in the streets of pilgrimage cities, where sometimes niggard piety doles her a handful of rice.

As to remarriage, that, in orthodox Hinduism, is impossible. Marriage is not a personal affair, but an eternal sacrament. And it must never be forgotten that the great majority of the Hindus are orthodox to the bone. Whether the widow be an infant and a stranger to the man whose death, she is told, was caused by her sins, or whether she be twenty and of his bed and board, orthodoxy forbids her remarriage. Of recent years, however, the gradual if unrecognized influence of western teaching has aroused a certain response. In different sections of India, several associations have sprung up, having the remarriage of virgin widows as one of their chief purported objects. The movement, however, is almost wholly restricted to the most advanced element of Hindu society, and its influence is, as yet, too fractional appreciably to affect statistics.

The observations on this point made by the Abbé Dubois a century since still, in general, hold good. He saw that the marriage of a small child to a man of sixty and the forbidding of her remarriage after his death must often throw the child, as a widow, into a dissolute life. Yet widow remarriage was unknown. Even were it permitted, says the Abbé, "the strange preference which Brahmins have for children of very tender years would make such a permission almost nominal in the case of their widows."[5]

[5. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 212.]

And one cannot forget, in estimating the effect of the young widow on the social structure of which she is a part, that, in her infancy, she lived in the same atmosphere of sexual stimulus that surrounded the boy child, her brother. If a girl child so reared in thought and so sharpened in desire be barred from lawful satisfaction of desire, is it strange if the desire prove stronger with her than the social law? Her family, the family of the dead husband, will, for their credit's sake, restrain her if they can. And often, perhaps most often, she needs no restraint save her own spirit of sacrifice. But the opposite example is frequently commented upon by Indian speakers. Lala Lajpat Rai, Swarajist politician, laments:[6]

[6. Presidential Speech delivered before the Hindu Mahasabha Conference, in Bombay, December, 1925.]

The condition of child-widows is indescribable. God may bless those who are opposed to their remarriage, but their superstition introduces so many abuses and brings about so much moral and physical misery as to cripple society as a whole and handicap it in the struggle for life.

Mr. Gandhi acquiescently cites another Indian writer on child marriage and enforced child widowhood, thus: "It is bringing into existence thousands of girl-widows every year who in their turn are a source of corruption and dangerous infection to society."[7]

[7. Young India, Aug. 26, 1926, p. 302.]

Talk there is, resolutions passed, in caste and association conventions, as to changing these things of oppression and of scornings. But a virgin widow's remarriage is still a headline event, even to the reform newspapers, while the remarriage of a Hindu widowed wife is still held to be inconceivable.

And here, curiously enough, the very influence that on the one hand most strongly operates to rescue the woman, on the other more widely enslaves her. While British practice and western education tend, at the top of the ladder, to breed discontent with ancient darkness, British public works, British sanitation and agricultural development, steadily raising the economic condition of the lower classes, as steadily breed aspirants to greater social prestige. Thus the census of 1921 finds restriction in widow remarriage definitely increasing in those low ranks of the social scale that, by their own code, have no such inhibition. Hindu caste rank is entirely independent of worldly wealth; but the first move of the man of little place, suddenly awakening to a new prosperity, security, and peace, is to mimic the manners of those to whom he has looked up. He becomes a social climber, not less in India than in the United States, and assumes the shackles of the elect.

Mr. Mukerjea of Baroda, an Indian official observer, thus writes of attempts to break down the custom of obligatory widowhood:[8]

[8. Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Chapter VII, paragraph 134.]

All such efforts will be powerless as long as authoritative Hindu opinion continues to regard the prohibition of widow remarriage as a badge of respectability. Amongst the lower Hindu castes, the socially affluent sections are discountenancing the practice of widow remarriage as actively as any Brahman.

It was a distinguished Bengali, the Pundit Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, who, among Indians, started the movement for remarriage of virgin widows and supported Government in the enactment of a law legalizing such remarriages. But over him and the fruit of his work another eminent Indian thus laments:[9]

[9. A Nation in the Making. Sir Surendranath Banerjea, Oxford University Press, 1925, pp. 8-9]

I well remember the stir and agitation which the movement produced and how orthodox Hindus were up in arms against it...The champion of the Hindu widows died a disappointed man, like so many of those who were in advance of their age, leaving his message unfulfilled...The progress which the movement has made since his death in 1891 has been slow. A new generation has sprung up, but he has found no successor. The mantle of Elijah has not fallen upon Elisha. The lot of the Hindu widow today remains very much the same that it was fifty years ago. There are few to wipe her tears and to remove the enforced widowhood that is her lot. The group of sentimental sympathisers have perhaps increased--shouting at public meetings on the Vidyasagar anniversary day, but leaving unredeemed the message of the great champion of the Hindu widow.

Mr. Gandhi, always true to his light, himself has said:[10]

[8. Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Chapter VII, paragraph 134.]

To force widowhood upon little girls is a brutal crime for which we Hindus are daily paying dearly...There is no warrant in any shastra[11] for such widowhood. Voluntary widowhood consciously adopted by a woman who has felt the affection of a partner adds grace and dignity to life, sanctifies the home and uplifts religion itself. Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion. And does not the Hindu widowhood stink in one's nostrils when one thinks of old and diseased men over fifty taking or rather purchasing girl wives, sometimes one on top of another?

[11. Hindu book of sacred institutes.]

But this, again, is a personal opinion, rather than a public force. "We want no more of Gandhi's doctrines," one conspicuous Indian politician told me 5 "Gandhi is a deluded man."

That distinguished Indian, Sir Ganga Ram, C.I.E., C.V.O., with some help from Government has built and endowed a fine home and school for Hindu widows in the city of Lahore. This establishment, in 1926, had over forty inmates. In Bombay Presidency are five Government-aided institutes for widows and deserted wives, run by philanthropic Indian gentlemen. Other such institutions may exist; but, if they do, their existence has escaped the official recorders. I myself saw, in the pilgrim city of Nawadwip, in Bengal, a refuge for widows maintained by local subscription and pilgrims' gifts. It was fourteen years old and had eight inmates--the extent, it appeared, of its intention and capacity.

The number of widows in India is, according to the latest published official computation, 26,834,838.[12]

[12. Statistical Abstract for British India, 1914-15 to 1923-24, Gov eminent of India Publication, 1925, p. 20.]

CHAPTER VIII - MOTHER INDIA

Row upon row of girl children--little tots all, four, five, six, even seven years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the brazen goddess. Before each one, laid straight and tidy, certain treasures--a flower, a bead or two, a piece of fruit--precious things brought from their homes as sacrificial offerings. For this is a sort of day-school of piety. These babies are learning texts--"mantrims" to use in worship--learning the rites that belong to the various ceremonies incumbent upon Hindu women. And that is all they are learning; that is all they need to know. Now in unison they pray.

"What are they praying for?" one asks the teacher, a grave-faced Hindu lady.

"What should a woman-child pray for? A husband, if she is not married; or, if she is, then for a better husband at her next re-birth."

Women pray first as to husbands; then, to bear sons. Men must have sons to serve their souls.

Already we have seen some evidence of the general attitude of the Hindu toward this, the greatest of all his concerns, in its prenatal aspect. But another cardinal point that, in any practical survey of Indian competency, can be neither contested nor suppressed, is the manner in which the Hindu of all classes permits his much-coveted son to be ushered into the light of day.

We have spoken of women's hospitals in various parts of India. These are doing excellent work, mostly gynecological. But they are few, relatively to the work to be done, nor could the vast majority of Indian women, in their present state of development, be induced to use a hospital, were it at their very door.

What the typical Indian woman wants in her hour of trial is the thing to which she is historically used--the midwife--the dhai. And the dhai is a creature that must indeed be seen to be credited.

According to the Hindu code, a woman in childbirth and in convalescence therefrom is ceremonially unclean, contaminating all that she touches. Therefore only those become dhais who are themselves of the unclean, "untouchable" class, the class whose filthy habits will be adduced by the orthodox Hindu as his good and sufficient reason for barring them from contact with himself. Again according to the Hindu code, a woman in childbirth, like the new-born child itself, is peculiarly susceptible to the "evil eye." Therefore no woman whose child has died, no one who has had an abortion, may, in many parts of India, serve as dhai, because of the malice or jealousy that may secretly inspire her. Neither may any widow so serve, being herself a thing of evil omen. Not all of these disqualifications obtain everywhere. But each holds in large sections.

Further, no sort of training is held necessary for the Work. As a calling, it descends in families. At the death of a dhai, her daughter or daughter-in-law may adopt it, beginning at once to practice even though she has never seen a confinement in all her life.[1] But other women, outside the line of descent, may also take on the work and, if they are properly beyond the lines of the taboos, will find ready employment without any sort of preparation and for the mere asking.

[1. Cf. Edris Griffin, Health Visitor, Delhi, in National Health, Oct, 1925, p. 125.]

Therefore, in total, you have the half-blind, the aged, the crippled, the palsied and the diseased, drawn from the dirtiest poor, as sole ministrants to the women of India in the most delicate, the most dangerous and the most important hour of their existence.

The expectant mother makes no preparations for the baby's coming--such as the getting ready of little garments. This would be taking dangerously for granted the favor of the gods. But she may and does toss into a shed or into a small dark chamber whatever soiled and disreputable rags, incapable of further use, fall from the hands of the household during the year.

And it is into this evil-smelling rubbish-hole that the young wife creeps when her hour is come upon her. "Unclean" she is, in her pain--unclean whatever she touches, and fit thereafter only to be destroyed. In the name of thrift, therefore, give her about her only the unclean and the worthless, whether human or inanimate. If there be a broken-legged, ragged string-cot, let her have that to lie upon; it can be saved in that same black chamber for the next to need it. Otherwise, make her a little support of cow-dung or of stones, on the bare earthen floor. And let no one waste effort in sweeping or dusting or washing the place till this occasion be over.[2]

[2. National Health, 1925, p. 70. See also Maggie Ghose in Victoria Memorial Scholarship Fund Report, Calcutta, 1918, p. 153.]

When the pains begin, send for the dhai. If the dhai, when the call reaches her, chances to be wearing decent clothes, she will stop, whatever the haste, to change into the rags she keeps for the purpose, infected and re-infected from the succession of diseased cases that have come into her practice. And so, at her dirtiest, a bearer of multiple contagions, she shuts herself in with her victim.

If there be an air-hole in the room, she stops it up with straw and refuse; fresh air is bad in confinements--it gives fever. If there be rags sufficient to make curtains, she cobbles them together, strings them across a corner and puts the patient within, against the wall, still farther to keep away the air. Then, to make darkness darker, she lights the tiniest glim--a bit of cord in a bit of oil, or a little kerosene lamp without a chimney, smoking villainously. Next, she makes a small charcoal fire in a pan beneath the bed or close by the patient's side, whence it joins its poisonous breath to the serried stenches.

The first dhai that I saw in action tossed upon this coal-pot, as I entered the room, a handful of some special vile-smelling stuff to ward off the evil eye--my evil eye. The smoke of it rose thick--also a tongue of flame. By that light one saw her Witch-of-Endor face through its vermin-infested elf-locks, her hanging rags, her dirty claws, as she peered with festered and almost sightless eyes out over the stink-cloud she had raised. But it was not she who ran to quench the flame that caught in the bed and went writhing up the body of her unconscious patient. She was too blind--too dull of sense to see or to feel it.

If the delivery is at all delayed, the dhai is expected to explore for the reason of the delay. She thrusts her long-unwashed hand, loaded with dirty rings and bracelets and encrusted with untold living contaminations, into the patient's body, pulling and twisting at what she finds there.[3] If the delivery is long delayed and difficult, a second or a third dhai may be called in, if the husband of the patient will sanction the expense, and the child may be dragged forth in detached sections--a leg or an arm torn off at a time.[4]

[3. V.M.S.F. Report, "Improvement of the Conditions of Child-Birth in India," pp. 70 et seq.]

[4. Dr. Marion A. Wylie., M.A., M.B., Ch. B., Ibid., p. 85, and Ibid., Appendix V, p. 69.]

Again to quote from a medical woman:[5]

[5. Ibid., p. 71.]

One often sees in cases of contracted pelvis due to osteo-malacia, if there seems no chance of the head passing down [that the dhai attempts to draw on the limbs, and, if possible, breaks them off. She prefers to extract the child by main force, and the patient in such cases is badly torn, often into her bladder, with the resulting large vesico-vaginal fistulae so common in Indian women, and which cause them so much misery.

Such labor may last three, four, five, even six days. During all this period the woman is given no nourishment whatever--such is the code--and the dhai resorts to all her traditions. She kneads the patient with her fists; stands her against the wall and butts her with her head; props her upright on the bare ground, seizes her hands and shoves against her thighs with gruesome bare feet,[6] until, so the doctors state, the patient's flesh is often torn to ribbons by the dhai's long, ragged toe-nails. Or, she lays the woman flat and walks up and down her body, like one treading grapes. Also, she makes balls of strange substances, such as hollyhock roots, or dirty string, or rags full of quince-seeds; or earth, or earth mixed with cloves, butter and marigold flowers; or nuts, or spices--any irritant--and thrusts them into the uterus, to hasten the event. In some parts of the country, goats' hair, scorpions' stings, monkey-skulls, and snake-skins are considered valuable applications.[7]

[6. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 99, Dr. K. O. Vaughan.]

[7. Ibid., pp. 151-2, Mrs. Chowdhri, sub-assistant surgeon.]

These insertions and the wounds they occasion commonly result in partial or complete permanent closing of the passage.

If the afterbirth be over five minutes in appearing, again the filthy, ringed and bracelet-loaded hand and wrist are thrust in, and the placenta is ripped loose and dragged away.[8]

[8. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86, Dr. M. A. Wylie.]

No clean clothes are provided for use in the confinement, and no hot water. Fresh cow-dung or goats' droppings, or hot ashes, however, often serve as heating agents when the patient's body begins to turn cold.[9]

[9. Ibid., p. 152, Miss Vidyabai M. Ram.]

In Benares, sacred among cities, citadel of orthodox Hinduism, the sweepers, all of whom are "Untouchables," are divided into seven grades. From the first come the dhais; from the last and lowest come the "cord-cutters." To cut the umbilical cord is considered a task so degrading that in the Holy City even a sweep will not undertake it, unless she be at the bottom of her kind. Therefore the unspeakable dhai brings with her a still more unspeakable servant to wreak her quality upon the mother and the child in birth.

Sometimes it is a split bamboo that they use; sometimes a bit of an old tin can, or a rusty nail, or a potsherd or a fragment of broken glass. Sometimes, having no tool of their own and having found nothing sharp-edged lying about, they go out to the neighbors to borrow. I shall not soon forget the cry: "Hi, there, inside! Bring me back that knife! I hadn't finished paring my vegetables for dinner."

The end of the cut cord, at best, is left undressed, to take care of itself. In more careful and less happy cases, it is treated with a handful of earth, or with charcoal, or with several other substances, including cow-dung. Needless to add, a heavy per cent, of such children as survive the strain of birth, die of lock-jaw[10] or of erysipelas.

[10. "Ordinarily half the children born in Bengal die before reaching the age of eight years, and only one-quarter of the population reaches the age of forty years...As to the causes influencing infant mortality, 50 per cent, of the deaths are due to debility at birth and 11.4 per cent, to tetanus." 54th Annual Report of the Director of Public Health of Bengal, pp. 8-10.]

As the child is taken from the mother, it is commonly laid upon the bare floor, uncovered and unattended, until the dhai is ready to take it up. If it be a girl child, many simple rules have been handed down through the ages for discontinuing the unwelcome life then and there.

In the matter of feeding, practice varies. In the Central Provinces, the first feedings are likely to be of crude sugar mixed with the child's own urine.[11] In Delhi, it may get sugar and spices, or wine, or honey, Or, it may be fed for the first three days on something called gutli, a combination of spices in which have been stewed old rust-encrusted lucky coins and charms written out on scraps of paper. These things, differing somewhat in different regions, castes and communities, differ more in detail than in the quality of intelligence displayed.

[11. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86, Dr. M. A. Wylie.]

As to the mother, she, as has already been said, is usually kept without any food or drink for from four to seven days from the outset of her confinement; or, if she be fed, she is given only a few dry nuts and dates. The purpose here seems sometimes to be one of thrift--to save the family utensils from pollution. But in any case it enjoys the prestige of an ancient tenet to which the economical spirit of the household lends a spontaneous support.[12]

[12. Edris Griffin, in National Health, Oct., 1925, p. 124.]

In some regions or communities the baby is not put to the breast till after the third day[13]--a custom productive of dire results. But in others the mother is expected to feed not only the newly born, but her elder children as well, if she have them. A child three years old will not seldom be sent in to be fed at the mother's breast during the throes of a difficult labor. "It cried--it was hungry. It wouldn't have other food," the women outside will explain.

[13. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86.]

As a result, first, of their feeble and diseased ancestry; second, of their poor diet; and, third, of their own infant marriage and premature sexual use and infection, a heavy percentage of the women of India are either too small-boned or too internally misshapen and diseased to give normal birth to a child, but require surgical aid. It may safely be said that all these cases die by slow torture, unless they receive the care of a British or American woman doctor, or of an Indian woman, British-trained.[14] Such care, even though it be at hand, is often denied the sufferer, either by the husband or by the elder women of the family, in their devotion to the ancient cults.

[14. For the male medical student in India, instruction in gynecology and midwifery is extremely difficult to get, for the reason that Indian women can rarely be persuaded to come to hospitals open to medical men. With the exception of certain extremely limited opportunities, therefore, the Indian student must get his gynecology from books. Even though he learns it abroad, he has little or no opportunity to practice it. Sometimes, it is true, the western-diplomaed Indian doctor will conduct a labor case by sitting on the far side of a heavy curtain calling out advice based on the statements shouted across by the dhai who is handling the patient. But this scarcely constitutes "practice" as the word is generally meant.]

Or, even in cases where a delivery is normal, the results, from an Indian point of view, are often more tragic than death. An able woman surgeon, Dr. K. O. Vaughan, of the Zenana Hospital at Srinagar, thus expresses it:[15]

[15. VMS.F. Report, pp. 98-9.]

Many women who are childless and permanently disabled are so from the maltreatment received during parturition; many men are without male issue because the child has been killed by ignorance when born, or their wives so mangled by the midwives they are incapable of further childbearing...

I [illustrate] my remarks with a few cases typical of the sort of thing every medical woman practising in this country encounters.

A summons comes, and we are told a woman is in labour. On arrival at the house we are taken into a small, dark and dirty room, often with no window. If there is one it is stopped up. Puerperal fever is supposed to be caused by fresh air. The remaining air is vitiated by the presence of a charcoal fire burning in a pan, and on a charpoy [cot] or on the floor is the woman. With her are one or two dirty old women, their clothes filthy, their hands begrimed with dirt, their heads alive with vermin. They explain that they are midwives, that the patient has been in labour three days, and they cannot get the child out. They are rubbing their hands on the floor previous to making another effort. On inspection we find the vulva swollen and torn. They tell us, yes, it is a bad case and they have had to use both feet and hands in their effort to deliver her...Chloroform is given and the child extracted with forceps. We are sure to find hollyhock roots which have been pushed inside the mother, sometimes string and a dirty rag containing quince-seeds in the uterus itself...

Do not think it is the poor only who suffer like this. I can show you the homes of many Indian men with University degrees whose wives are confined on filthy rags and attended by these Bazaar dhais because it is the custom, and the course for the B.A. degree does not include a little common sense.

Doctor Vaughan then proceeds to quote further illustrations from her own practice, of which the following is a specimen:[16]

[16. V.M.S.F. Report, pp. 99-100.]

A wealthy Hindu, a graduate of an Indian University and a lecturer himself, a man who is highly educated, calls us to his house, as his wife has been delivered of a child and has fever...We find that [the dhai] had no disinfectants as they would have cost her about Rs. 3 [one dollar, American], and the fee she will get on the case is only Rs. I and a few dirty clothes. The patient is lying on a heap of cast-off and dirty clothes, an old waistcoat, an English railway rug, a piece of water-proof packing from a parcel, half a stained and dirty shirt of her husband's. There are no sheets or clean rags of any kind. As her husband tells me: "We shall give her clean things on the fifth day, but not now; that is ouï custom."

That woman, in spite of all we could do, died of septicaemia contracted either from the dirty clothing which is saved from one confinement in the family to another [unwashed], or from the dhai, who did her best in the absence of either hot water, soap, nail-brush or disinfectants.

Evidence is in hand of educated, traveled and wellborn Indians, themselves holders of European university degrees, who permit their wives to undergo this same inheritance of darkness. The case may be cited of an Indian medical man, holding an English University's Ph.D. and M.D. degrees, considered to be exceptionally able and brilliant and now actually in charge of a government center for the training of dhais in modern midwifery. His own young wife being recently confined, he yielded to the pressure of the elder women of his family and called in an old-school dhai, dirty and ignorant as the rest, to attend her. The wife died of puerperal fever; the child died in the birth. "When we have the spectacle of even educated Indians with English degrees allowing their wives and children to be killed off like flies by ignorant midwives," says Doctor Vaughan again, "we can faintly imagine the sufferings of their humbler sisters."

But the question of station or of worldly goods has small part in the matter. To this the admirable sisterhood of English and American women doctors unites to testify.

Dr. Marion A\Wylie's words are:[17]

[17. Ibid., p. 86.]

These conditions are by no means confined to the poorest or most ignorant classes. I have attended the families of Rajahs, where many of these practices were carried out, and met with strenuous opposition when I introduced ventilation and aseptic measures.

Sweeper-girl or Brahman, outcaste or queen, there ia essentially little to choose between their lots, in that fierce moment for which alone they were born. An. Indian Christian lady of distinguished position and attainment, whose character has opened to her many doors that remain to others fast closed, gives the following story of her visit of mercy to a child-princess.

The little thing, wife of a ruling prince and just past her tenth year, was already in labor when her visitor entered the room. The dhais were busy over her, but the case was obviously serious, and priestly assistance had been called. Outside the door sat its exponent--an old man, reading aloud from the scriptures and from time to time chanting words of direction deciphered from his book.

"Hark, within, there!" he suddenly shouted. "Now it is time to make a fire upon this woman's body. Make and light a fire upon her body, quick!"

Instantly the dhais set about to obey.

"And what will the fire do to our little princess?" quietly asked the visitor, too practiced to express alarm.

"Oh," replied the women, listlessly, "if it be her fate to live, she will live, and there will, of course, be a great scar branded upon her. Or, if it be her fate to die, then she will die"--and on they went with their fire-building.

Out to the ministrant squatting at the door flew the quick-witted visitor. "Holy One," she asked, "are you not afraid of the divine jealousies? You are about to make the Fire-sacrifice--but this is a queen, not a common mortal. Will not Mother Ganges see and be jealous that no honor is paid to her?"

The old man looked up, perplexed. "It is true," he said, "it is true the gods are ever jealous and easily provoked to anger--but the Book here surely says--" And his troubled eyes turned to the ancient writ outspread upon his knees.

"Have you Ganges water here in the house?" interrupted the other.

"Surely. Dare the house live without it!" answered the old one.

"Then here is what I am given to say: Let water of Holy Ganges be put upon bright fire and made thrice hot. Let it then be poured into a marvel-sack that the gods, by my hand, shall provide. And let that sack be laid upon the Maharani's body. So in a united offering--fire and water together--shall the gods be propitiated and their wrath escaped,"

"This is wisdom. So be it!" cried the old man. Then quick ran the visitor to fetch her Bond Street hot-water bag.

Superstition, among the Indian peoples, knows few boundary lines of condition or class. Women in general are prone to believe that disease is an evidence of the approach of a god. Medicine and surgery, driving that god away, offend him, and it is ill business to offend the Great Ones; better, therefore, charms and propitiations, with an eye to the long run.

And besides the gods, there are the demons and evil spirits, already as many as the sands of the sea, to whose number more must not be added.

Among the worst of demons are the spirits of women who died in childbirth before the child was born. These walk with their feet turned backward, haunting lonely roads and the family hearth, and are malicious beyond the rest.

Therefore, when a woman is seen to be about to breathe her last, her child yet undelivered--she may have lain for days in labor for a birth against which her starveling bones are locked--the dhai, as in duty bound, sets to work upon precautions for the protection of the family.

First she brings pepper and rubs it into the dying eyes, that the soul may be blinded and unable to find its way out. Then she takes two long iron nails, and, stretching out her victim's unresisting arms--for the poor creature knows and accepts her fate--drives a spike straight through each palm fast into the floor. This is done to pinion the soul to the ground, to delay its passing or that it may not rise and wander, vexing the living. And so the woman dies, piteously calling to the gods for pardon for those black sins of a former life for which she now is suffering.

This statement, horrible as it is, rests upon the testimony of many and unimpeachable medical witnesses in widely separated parts of India. All the main statements in this chapter rest upon such testimony and upon my own observation.

It would be unjust to assume, however, that the dhai, for all her monstrous deeds, is a blameworthy creature. Every move that she makes is a part of the ancient and accepted ritual of her calling. Did she omit or change any part of it, nothing would be gained; simply the elder women of the households she serves would revile her for incapacity and call in another more faithful to the creed.

Her services include attendance at the time of confinement and for ten days, more or less, thereafter, the approximate interval during which no member of the family will approach the patient because of her un-cleanness. During this time the dhai does all that is done for the sick woman and the infant. At its end she is expected to clean the defiled room and coat with cow-dung its floor and walls.

She receives her pay in accordance with the sex of the child that was born. These sums vary. A rich man may give her for the entire period of service as much as Rs. 15 (about $5.00) if the child be a son. From the well-to-do the more usual fee is about R. I ($.33) for a son and eight annas ($.16) for a daughter. The poor pay the dhai for her fortnight's work the equivalent of four or five cents for a son and two to three cents for a daughter. Herself the poorest of the poor, she has no means of her own wherewith to buy as much as a cake of soap or a bit of clean cotton. None are anywhere provided for her. And so, the slaughter goes on.[18]

[18. VMS.F. Report, p. 89.]

Various funds subscribed by British charity sustain maternal and child-welfare works in many parts of India, whose devoted British doctors and nurses attempt to teach the dhais. But the task is extremely difficult. Invariably the dhais protest that they have nothing to learn, in which their clients agree with them. One medical woman said in showing me her dhai class, an appalling array of decrepit old crones:

"We pay these women, out of a fund from England, for coming to class. We also pay some of them not to practice, a small sum, but just enough to live on. They are too old, too stupid and too generally miserable to be capable of learning. Yet, when we beg them not to take cases because of the harm they do, they say: 'How else can we live? This is our only means to earn food.' Which is true."

A characteristic incident, freshly happened when it came to my knowledge, concerned a Public Health instructor stationed, by one of the funds above mentioned, in the north. To visualize the scene, one must think of the instructor as what she is--a conspicuously comely and spirited young lady of the type that under all circumstances looks chic and well-groomed. She had been training a class of dhais in Lahore, and had invited her "graduates" when handling a difficult case to call her in for advice.

At three o'clock one cold winter's morning of 1926, a graduate summoned her. The summons led to the house of an outcaste, a little mud hut with an interior perhaps eight by twelve feet square. In the room were ten people, three generations of the family, all save the patient fast asleep. Also, a sheep, two goats, some chickens and a cow, because the owner did not trust his neighbors. No light but a glim in an earthen pot. No heat but that from the bodies of man and beast. No aperture but the door, which was closed.

In a small alcove at the back of the room four cot beds, planted one upon another, all occupied by members of the family. In the cot third from the ground lay a woman in advanced labor.

"Dhai went outside," observed Grandmother, stir-ting sleepily, and turned her face to the wall.

Not a moment to be lost. No time to hunt up the àhai. By good luck, the cow lay snug against the cot-pile. So our trig little English lady climbs up on the back of the placid and unobjecting cow, and from that vantage point successfully brings into the world a pair of tiny Hindus--a girl and a boy.

Just as the thing is over, back comes the dhai, in a rage. She had been out in the yard, quarreling with the husband about the size of the coin that he should lay in her palm, on which to cut the cord--without which coin already in her possession no canny dhai will operate.

And this is merely an ordinary experience.

"Our Indian conduct of midwifery undoubtedly should be otherwise than it is," said a group of Indian gentlemen discussing the whole problem as it exists in their own superior circle, "but is it possible, do you think, that enough English ladies will be found to come out and do the work inclusively?"

A fractional percentage of the young wives are now found ready to accept modern medical help. But it is from the elder women of the household that resistance both determined and effective comes.

Says Dr. Agnes C. Scott, M.B., B.S., of the Punjab, one of the most distinguished of the many British medical women today giving their lives to India:[19]

[19. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 91. Cf. Sir Patrick Hehir, The Medical Profession in India, Henry Frowde & Hodder and Stoughton, Ion-don, 1923, pp. 125-31.]

An educated man may desire a better-trained woman to attend on his wife, but he is helpless against the stone wall of ignorance and prejudice built and kept up by the older women of the zenana who are the real rulers of the house.

Dr. K. O. Vaughan says upon this point:[20]

[20. Ibid., p. 101.]

The women are their own greatest enemies, and if any one can devise a system of education and enlightenment for grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother which will persuade them not to employ the ignorant, dirty Bazaar dhai, they will deserve well of the Indian nation. In my opinion that is an impossible task.

And another woman surgeon adds:[21]

[21. Ibid,, p. 71.]

Usually a mother-in-law or some ancient dame superintends the confinement, who is herself used to the old traditions and insists on their observance...It has been the immemorial custom that the management of a confinement is the province of the leading woman of the house, and the men are powerless to interfere.

Thus arises a curious picture--the picture of the man who has since time immemorial enslaved his wife, and whose most vital need in all life, present and to come, is the getting of a son; and of this man, by means none other than the will of his willing slave, balked in his heart's desire! He has thought it good that she be kept ignorant; that she forever suppress her natural spirit and inclinations, walking ceremonially, in stiff harness, before him, her "earthly god." She has so walked, obedient from infancy to death, through untold centuries of merciless discipline, while he, from infancy to death, through untold centuries, has given himself no discipline at all. And now their harvests ripen in kind: hers a death-grip on the rock of the old law, making her dead-weight negative to any change, however merciful; his, a weakness of will and purpose, a fatigue of nerve and spirit, that deliver him in his own house, beaten, into the hands of his slave.

Of Indian babies born alive about 2,000,000 die each year. "Available statistics show," says the latest Census of India, "that over forty per cent, of the deaths of infants occur in the first week after birth, and over sixty per cent, in the first month."[22]

[22. Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 133.]

The number of still births is heavy. Syphilis and gonorrhea are among its main causes, to which must be added the sheer inability of the child to bear the strain of coming into the world.

Vital statistics are weak in India, for they must largely depend upon illiterate villagers as collectors.

If a baby dies, the mother's wail trails down the darkness of a night or two. But if the village be near a river, the little body may just be tossed into the stream, without waste of a rag for a shroud. Kitea and the turtles finish its brief history. And it is more than probable that no one in the village will think it worth while to report either the birth or the death. Statistics as to babies must therefore be taken as at best approximate.

It is probable, however, in view of existing conditions, that the actual figures of infant mortality, were it possible to know them, would surprise the western mind rather by their smallness than by their height. "I used to think," said one of the American medical women, "that a baby was a delicate creature. But experience here is forcing, me to believe it the toughest fabric ever made, since it ever survives."

CHAPTER IX - BEHIND THE VEIL

The chapters preceding have chiefly dealt with the Hindu, who forms, roughly, three-quarters of the population of India. The remaining quarter, the Mu-hammadans, differ considerably as between the northern element, whose blood contains a substantial strain of the old conquering Persian and Afghan stock, and the southern contingent, who are, for the larger part, descendants of Hindu converts retaining in greater or less degree many of the qualities of Hindu character.

In some respects, Muhammadan women enjoy great advantages over their Hindu sisters. Conspicuous among such advantages is their freedom from infant marriage and from enforced widowhood, with the train of miseries evoked by each. Their consequent better inheritance, supported by a diet greatly superior to that of the Hindu, brings them to the threshold of a maturity sturdier than, that of the Hindu type. Upon crossing that threshold the advantage of Muhammadan women of the better class is, however, forfeit. For they pass into practical life-imprisonment within the four walls of the home.

Purdah, as this system of women's seclusion is called, having been introduced by the Muslim conquerors and by them observed, soon came to be regarded by higher caste Hindus as a hall-mark of social prestige. These, therefore, adopted it as a matter of mode. And today, as a consequence of the growing prosperity of the country, this mediaeval custom, like the interdiction of remarriage of virgin widows among the Hindus, seems to be actually on the increase. For every woman at the top of the scale whom western influence sets free, several humbler but prospering sisters, socially ambitious, deliberately assume the bonds.

That view of women which makes them the proper loot of war was probably the origin of the custom of purdah. When a man has his women shut up within his own four walls, he can guard the door. Taking Indian evidence on the question, it appears that in some degree the same necessity exists today. In a part of India where purdah but little obtains, I observed the united request of several Hindu ladies of high position that the Amusement Club for English and Indian ladies to which they belong reduce the minimum age required for membership to twelve or, better, to eleven years. This, they frankly said, was because they were afraid to leave their daughters of that age at home, even for one afternoon, without a mother's eye and accessible to the men of the family.

Far down the social scale the same anxiety is found. The Hindu peasant villager's wife will not leave her girl child at home alone for the space of an hour, being practically sure that, if she does so, the child will be ruined. I dare not affirm that this condition everywhere obtains. But I can affirm that it was brought to my attention by Indians and by Occidentals, as regulating daily life in widely separated sections of the country.

No typical Muhammadan will trust another man in his zenana, simply because he knows that such liberty would be regarded as opportunity. If there be a handful of Hindus of another persuasion, it is almost or quite invariably because they are reflecting some part of the western attitude toward women; and this they do without abatement of their distrust of their fellow-men. Intercourse between men and women which is both free and innocent is a thing well-nigh incredible to the Indian mind.

In many parts of India the precincts of the zenana, among better-class Hindus, are therefore closed and the women cloistered within. And the cloistered Muhammadan women, if they emerge from their seclusion, do so under concealing veils, or in concealing vehicles. The Rolls-Royce of a Hindu reigning prince's wife may sometimes possess dark window-glasses, through which the lady looks out at ease, herself unseen. But the wife of a prosperous Muhammadan cook, if she go out on an errand, will cover herself from the crown of the head downward in a thick cotton shroud, through whose scant three inches of mesh-covered eye-space she peers half-blinded.

I happened to be present at a "purdah party"--a party for veiled ladies, attended by ladies only--in a private house in Delhi when tragedy hovered nigh. The Indian ladies had all arrived, stepping heavily swathed from their close-curtained motor cars. Their hostess, wife of a high English official, herself had met them on her threshold; for, out of deference to the custom of the purdah, all the men servants had been banished from the house, leaving Lady ------ alone to conduct her guests to the dressing room. There they had laid aside their swathings. And now, in all the grace of their native costumes, they were sitting about the room, gently conversing with the English ladies invited to meet them. The senior Indian lady easily dominated her party. She was far advanced in years, they said, and she wore long, light blue velvet trousers, tight from the knee down, golden slippers, a smart little jacket of silk brocade and a beautifully embroidered Kashmir shawl draped over her head.

We went in to tea. And again Lady ------, single-handed, except for the help of the English ladies, moved back and forth, from pantry to tea-table, serving her Indian guests.

Suddenly, from the veranda without, arose a sound of incursion--a rushing--men's voices, women's voices, loud, louder, coming close. The hostess with a face of dismay dashed for the door. Within the room panic prevailed. Their great white mantles being out of reach, the Indian ladies ran into the corners, turning their backs, while the English, understanding their plight, stood before them to screen them as best might be.

Meantime, out on the veranda, more fracas had arisen--then a sudden silence and a whir of retreating wheels. Lady ------ returned, panting, all apologies and relief.

"I am too sorry! But it is all over now. Do forgive it! Nothing shall frighten you again," she said to the trembling Indian ladies; and, to the rest of us: "It was the young Roosevelts come to call. They didn't know!"

It was in the talk immediately following that one of the youngest of the Indian ladies exclaimed:

"You find it difficult to like our purdah. But we have known nothing else. We lead a quiet, peaceful, protected life within our own homes. And, with men as they are, we should be miserable, terrified, outside."

But one of the ladies of middle age expressed another mind: "I have been with my husband to England," she said, speaking quietly to escape the others' ears. "While we were there he let me leave off purdah, for women are respected in England. So I went about freely, in streets and shops and galleries and gardens and to the houses of friends, quite comfortable always. No one frightened or disturbed me and I had much interesting talk with gentlemen as well as ladies. Oh, it was wonderful--a paradise! But here--here there is nothing. I must stay within the zenana, keeping strict purdah, as becomes our rank, seeing no one but the women, and my husband. We see nothing. We know nothing. We have nothing to say to each other. We quarrel. It is dull. But they," nodding surreptitiously toward the oldest woman, "will have it so. It is only because of our hostess that such as she would come here today. More they would never consent to. And they know how to make life horrible for us in each household, if we offer to relax an atom of the purdah law."

Then, looking from face to face, one saw the illustration of the talk--the pretty, blank features of the novices; the unutterable listlessness and fatigue of those of the speaker's age; the sharp-eyed, iron-lipped authority of the old.

The report of the Calcutta University Commission says:[1]

[1. VoL II, Part I, pp. 4-5.]

All orthodox Bengali women of the higher classes, whether Hindu or Muslim, pass at an early age behind the purdah, and spend the rest of their lives in the complete seclusion of their homes, and under the control of the eldest woman of the household. This seclusion is more strict among the Musal-mans than among the Hindus...A few westernised women have emancipated themselves,...[but] they are regarded by most of their countrywomen as denationalised.

Bombay, however, practices but little purdah, largely, no doubt, because of the advanced status and liberalizing influence of the Parsi ladies; and in the Province of Madras it is as a rule peculiar only to the Muhammadans and the wealthy Hindus. From two Hindu gentlemen, both trained in England to a scientific profession, I heard that they themselves had insisted that their wives quit purdah, and that they were bringing up their little daughters in a European school. But their wives, they added, unhappy in what seemed to them too great exposure, would be only too glad to resume their former sheltered state. And, viewing things as they are, one can scarcely escape the conclusion that much is to be said on that side. One frequently hears, in India and out of it, of the beauty of the sayings of the Hindu masters on the exalted position of women. One finds often quoted such passages as the precept of Manu:

Where a woman is not honoured Vain is sacrificial rite.

But, as Mr. Gandhi tersely sums it up: "What is the teaching worth, if their practice denies it?"[2]

[2. Statement to the author, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad, March 17, 1926.]

One consequence of purdah seclusion is its incubation of tuberculosis. Dr. Arthur Lankester[3] has shown that among the purdah-keeplng classes the mortality of women from tuberculosis is terribly high. It is also shown that, among persons living in the same locality and of the same habits and means, the men of the purdah-keeping classes display a higher incidence of death from tuberculosis than do those whose women are less shut in.

[3. Tuberculosis in India, Arthur Lankester, M.D., Butterworth & Co., London, 1920, p. 140.]

The Health Officer for Calcutta declares in his report for 1917:

In spite of the improvement in the general death-rate of the city, the death-rate amongst females is still more than 40 per cent, higher than amongst males...Until it is realised that the strict observance of the purdah system in a large city, except in the case of the very wealthy who can afford spacious homes standing in their own grounds, necessarily involves the premature death of a large number of women, this standing reproach to the city will never be removed.

Dr. Andrew Balfour, Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in pointing out how perfectly the habits of the Indian peoples favor the spread of the disease, speaks of "the system by which big families live together; the purdah custom relegating women to the dark and dingy parts of the house; the early marriages, sapping the vitality of thousands of the young; the pernicious habit of indiscriminate spitting."[4] These, added to dirt, bad sanitation, confinement, lack of air and exercise, make a perfect breeding-place for the White Death. Between nine hundred thousand and one million persons, it is estimated, die annually of tuberculosis in India.[5]

[4. Health Problems of the Empire, Dr. Andrew Balf our and Dr. H. H. Scott, Collins, London, 1924, p. 286.]

[5. Ibid., p. 285.]

It has been further estimated that forty million Indian women, Muhammadan and Hindu, are today in purdah.[6] In the opinion, however, of those experienced officers whom I could consult, this estimate, if it is intended to represent the number of women kept so strictly cloistered that they never leave their apartments nor see any male save husband and son, is probably three times too high. Those who never see the outer world, from their marriage day till the day of their death, number by careful estimate of minimum and maximum between 11,250,000 and 17,290,000 persons.

[6. India and Missions, The Bishop of Dornakal.]

As to the mental effect of the purdah system upon those who live under it, one may leave its characterization to Indian authorities.

Says Dr. N. N. Parakh, the Indian physician:[7]

[7. Legislative Assembly Debates, Vol. Ill, Part I, p. 881.]

Ignorance and the purdah system have brought the women of India to the level of animals. They are unable to look after themselves, nor have they any will of their own. They are slaves to their masculine owners.[8]

[8. Cf., however, ante, pp. 77, 80, 109, 116, etc.]

Said that outstanding Swarajist leader, Lala Lajpat Rai, in his Presidential address to the Hindu Maha-sabha Conference held in Bombay in December, 1925:

The great feature of present-day Hindu life is passivity. "Let it be so" sums up all their psychology, individual and social. They have got into the habit of taking things lying down. They have imbibed this tendency and this psychology and this habit from their mothers. It seems as if it was in their blood...Our women labour under many handicaps. It is not only ignorance and superstition that corrode their intelligence, but even physically they are a poor race...Women get very little open air and almost no exercise. How on earth is the race, then, to improve and become efficient? A large number of our women develop consumption and die at an early age. Such of them as are mothers, infect their children also. Segregation of cases affected by tuberculosis is almost impossible...There is nothing so hateful as a quarrelsome, unnecessarily assertive, impudent, ill-mannered woman, but even if that were the only road which the Hindu woman must traverse in order to be an efficient, courageous, independent and physically fit mother, I would prefer it to the existing state of things.

At this point, the practical experience of a schoolmistress, the English principal of a Calcutta girls' col-lege, may be cited. Dated eight years later than the Report of the Calcutta Health Officer already quoted, it concerns the daughters of the most progressive and liberal of Bengal's families.[9]

[9. Sister Mary Victoria, Principal of the Diocesan College for Girls, Fifth Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal, paragraphs 521-4.]

They dislike exercise, and take it only under compulsion. They will not go into the fresh air if they can avoid doing so. The average student is very weak. She needs good food, exercise, and often remedial gymnastics. The chest is contracted, and the spine often curved. She has no desire for games...We want the authority...to compel the student to take those remedies which will help her to grow into a woman.

But the introduction of physical training as a help to the bankrupt physiques of Hindu girls is thus far only a dream of the occidental intruder. Old orthodoxy will not have it so.

The Hindu father is prone to complain that he does not want his daughter turned into a nautch girl. She has to be married into one of a limited number of families; and there is always a chance of one of the old ladies exclaiming, "This girl has been taught to kick her legs about in public. Surely such a shameless one is not to be brought into our house!"[10]

[10. The Inspectress for Eastern Bengal, Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. II, Part I, p. 23.]

"It is, indeed, only among the orthodox," says the authority quoting this testimony, "that this kind of objection is taken. But the orthodox are the majority."[11]

[11. Ibid., p. 24.]

Under the caption, "Thou Shalt Do No Murder," the Oxford Mission of Calcutta printed, in its weekly journal of February 20, 1926, an editorial beginning as follows:

A few years ago we published an article with the above heading in which was vividly described by a woman writer the appalling destruction of life and health which was going on in Bengal behind the purdah and in zenanas amongst the women herded there. We thought that the revelations then made, based on the health officer's reports, would bring to us a stream of indignant letters demanding instant reform. The effect amongst men folk was entirely nil. Apparently not a spark of interest was roused. An article condemning the silly credulity of the use of charms and talismans at once evokes criticism, and the absurdities of superstition are vigorously defended even by men who are graduates. But not a voice was raised in horror at the fact that for every male who dies of tuberculosis in Calcutta five females die.

Yet among young western-educated men a certain abstract uneasiness begins to appear concerning things as they are. After they have driven the Occident out of India, many of them say, they must surely take up this matter of women. Not often, however, does one find impatience such as that of Abani Mohan Das Gupta, of Calcutta, expressed in the journal just quoted.

I shudder to think about the condition of our mothers and tisters in the "harem."...From early morn till late at night they are working out the same routine throughout the Whole of their lives without a murmur, as if they are patience incarnate. There are many instances where a woman has entered the house of her husband at the time of the marriage and did not leave it until death had carried her away. They are always in harness as if they have no will or woe but only to suffer--suffer without any protest...I appeal to young Indians to unfurl their flag for the freedom of women. Allow them their right...Am I crying in the wilderness?

Bengal is the seat of bitterest political unrest--the producer of India's main crop of anarchists, bomb-throwers and assassins. Bengal is also among the most sexually exaggerated regions of India; and medical and police authorities in any country observe the link between that quality and "queer" criminal minds--the exhaustion of normal avenues of excitement creating a thirst and a search in the abnormal for gratification. But Bengal is also the stronghold of strict purdah, and one cannot but speculate as to how many explosions of eccentric crime in which the young politicals of Bengal have indulged were given the detonating touch by the unspeakable flatness of their purdah-deadened home lives, made the more irksome by their own half-digested dose of foreign doctrines.

CHAPTER X - WOMAN THE SPINSTER

Less than 2 per cent, of the women of British India are literate in the sense of being able to write a letter of a few simple phrases, and read its answer, in any one language or dialect. To be exact, such literates numbered, in 1921, eighteen to the thousand.[1] But in the year 1911 they numbered only ten to the thousand. And, in order to estimate the significance of that increase, two points should be considered: first, that a century ago literate women, save for a few rare stars, were practically unknown in India; and, second, that the great body of the peoples, always heavily opposed to female education, still so opposes it, and on religio-social grounds.

[1. India in 1914-25, L. F. Rushbrook Williams, C.B.E., p. 276.]

Writing in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Abbé Dubois said:[2]

[2. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp. 336-7.]

The social condition of the wives of the Brahmins differs very little from that of the women of other castes...They are considered incapable of developing any of those higher mental qualities which would make them more worthy of consideration and also more capable of playing a usefuf part in life...As a natural consequence of these views, female education is altogether neglected. A young girl's mind remains totally uncultivated, though many of them have good abilities...It would be thought a disgrace to a respectable woman to learn to read; and even if she had learnt she would be ashamed to own it.

This was written of the Hindu. But Islam in India has also disapproved of the education of women, which, therefore, has been held by the vast majority of both creeds to be unnecessary, unorthodox, and dangerous.

In the year 1917, the Governor-General of India in Council appointed a commission to inquire and recommend as to the status of the University of Calcutta and of tributary educational conditions in Bengal. This commission comprised eminent British educators from the faculties of the Universities of Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester, and London, allied with eminent Indian professionals. Bengal, the field of inquiry, has long stood distinguished among all other provinces of British India for its thirst for learning. The testimonies accumulated by the Commission during its three years' work may consequently be taken as not unkindly reflecting the wider Indian horizon.

With regard to the education of women, it is therefore of interest to find Mr. Brajalal Chakravarti, Secretary of the Hindu Academy at Daulatpur, affirming:[3]

[3. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 414.]

It is strictly enjoined in the religious books of the Hindus that females should not be allowed to come under any influence outside that of the family. For this reason, no system of school and college education can be made to suit their require-ments...Women get sufficient moral and practical training in the household and that is far more important than the type of education schools can give.

Another of the Commission's witnesses, Mr. Hari-das Goswamy, Head Master of the High School at Asansol, amplified the thought, saying:[4]

[4. Ibid., p. 426.]

It is not wise to implant in [girls] by means of education tastes which they would not have an opportunity to gratify in their after life, and thus sow the seeds of future discontent and discord.

And Mr. Rabindra Mohan Dutta,[5] member of the faculty of the University itself, even while deploring that "darkness of ignorance and superstition" which, he asserts, puts the women of India "in continual conflict and disagreement with their educated husbands, brothers or sons," would yet follow the orthodox multitude, genuinely fearful of importing into the Indian home, from the distaff side,

the spirit of revolutionary and rationalistic iconoclasm condemning all our ancient institutions that are the outcome of a long past and are part of our flesh and blood as it were.

[5. Ibid., p. 422.]

When, however, the topic of women's education comes up for discussion in Indian political bodies, speakers arise on the side of change. In the Delhi Legislative Assembly, Dr. Hari Singh Gour [6] denounces the sequestration and suppression of women. And Munshi Iswar Saran, [7] member for the cities of the United Provinces, points out, in a spirit of ridicule, that it is

[6. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 363.]

[7. Ibid., 1922, Vol. II, Part II, p. 1631.]

...the sin of this Kali Yuga [Age of Destruction] that youngsters receive education and then decline to be ordered about by their elders...Such is our foolhardiness that we have started giving education to our girls...If this is going on, I ask whether you believe that you will be able to dictate to your daughters?

I recall the heat with which a wealthy young Hindu of my acquaintance, but just returned from an English university, asserted that he would never, never take an Indian bride, because he would not tie himself to "a wife of the tenth century." And among western-educated Indians in the higher walks of life, the desire for similarly educated wives sometimes rises even to a willingness to accept such brides with dowries smaller than would otherwise be exacted.

But this factor, though recognizable, is as yet small. Bombay, perhaps, gives its women more latitude than does any other province. Yet its Education Report asserts:[8]

[8. Quoted in Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Eighth Quinquennial Review, pp. 129-30.]

Educated men desire educated wives for their sons and presumably educate their daughters with the same object in view, but they generally withdraw them from school on any manifestation of a desire to...push education to any length which might interfere with or delay marriage.

The Report of the Central Provinces affirms:[*]

[*. Ibid.]

Even those parents who are not averse to their daughters' being literate consider that the primary course is sufficient, and that after its completion girls are too old to be away from their homes.

And Assam adds:[*]

[*. Ibid.]

[Parents] send their girls to school in order to enable themselves to marry them better and occasionally on easier terms. But as soon as a suitable bridegroom is available the girl is at once placed in the seclusion of the purdah.

Certainly the great weight of sentiment remains intact in its loyalty to ancient conditions. To disturb them were to risk the mould of manhood. The metaphor of Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Mental and Moral Science in Calcutta University, implies the dreaded risk: "Man," writes this Hindu philosopher, "is a home-brew in the vat of woman the brewster, or, as the Indian would put it, a home-spun in the loom of woman the spinster."[9]

[9. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 62.]

On such general grounds, says the Calcutta University Commission,[10] is the feeling against women's education "very commonly supported by the men, even by those who have passed through the whole course of western education." If the child be sent to school at all, it is more often to put her in a safe place out of the family's way, rather than to give her instruction for which is felt so faint a need and so great a distrust.

[10. Ibid.,VoLII, Parti, p. 5.]

To use the words of Mr. B. Mukherjee, M.A., F.R.E.S.:[11]

[11. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 440.]

The strict social system which makes the marriage of a girl religiously compulsory at the age of twelve or so also puts an end to all hope of continuing the education of the ordinary Hindu girl beyond the [marriageable] age.

It is estimated that over 73 per cent, of the total number of girls at school are withdrawn before they achieve literacy, and in the year 1922, in the great Bengal Presidency, out of every hundred girls under instruction but one was studying above the primary stage.[12]

[12. Progress of Education in Bengal, J. W. Holme, M.A,, Sixth Quinquennial Review.]

Such small advance as has been achieved, in the desperately up-hill attempt to bestow literacy upon the women of India, represents, first and foremost, a steady and patient effort of persuasion on the part of the British Government; second, the toil of British and American missionaries; and, third, the ability of the most progressive Indians to conceive and effect the transmission of thought into deed. But it is estimated that, without a radical change in performance on the part of the Indians themselves, ninety-five more years of such combined effort will be required to wrest from hostility and inertia the privilege of primary education for as much as 12 per cent, of the female population."

The Seva Sadan Society, pioneer Indian women's organization to provide poor women and girls with training in primary teaching and useful work, was started in 1908, in Poona, near Bombay. By the latest report at hand, it has about a thousand pupils. This society's success shows what the happier women of India could do for the rest, were they so minded. But its work is confined wholly to Bombay Presidency; and unfortunately, it has no counterpart, says the official report, in any other part of India.[13]

[13. Cf. Village Schools in India, Mason Olcott, Associated Press, Calcutta, 1926, p. 90.]

As will be shown in another chapter, the administration of education as a province of Government has of late years rested in Indian hands.

In 1921-2, British India possessed 23,778 girls' schools, inclusive of all grades, from primary schools to arts and professional colleges. These schools contained in the primary stage 1,297,643 pupils, only 24,555 in the Middle Schools and a still smaller number--5,818--in the High Schools.[14]

[14. The figures in this paragraph are drawn from Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. II.]

"Although," says the report, "the number of girls who proceed beyond the primary stage is still lamentably small--30,000 in all India out of a possible school-going population of fifteen millions--still it shows an increase of thirty per cent, over the attendance in 1917."[15]

[15. Progress of Education in India, Vol. I, p. 135.]

In Bombay Presidency, in 1924-5 only 2.14 per cent, of the female population was under instruction of any kind,[16] while in all India, in 1919, .9 per cent, of the Hindu female population, and 1.1 per cent, of the Muhammadan females, were in school.[17]

[16. Bombay, 1924-25, Government Central Press, Bombay, 1926, pp XV-XVI.]

[17. Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. I, p.] 126.]

"It would be perfectly easy to multiply schools in which little girls would amuse themselves in preparatory classes, and from which they would drift away gradually during the lower primary stage. The statistical result would be impressive, but the educational effect would be nil and public money would be indefensibly wasted."[18]

[18. Ibid., pp. 138-9.]

But, in the fight for conserving female illiteracy, as in those for maintaining the ancient midwifery and for continuing the cloistering of women, the great constant factor on the side of Things-As-They-Were will be found in the elder women themselves. Out of sheer loyalty to their gods of heaven and their gods of earth they would die to keep their daughters like themselves.

As that blunt old Sikh farmer-soldier, Captain Hira Singh Brar, once said, speaking from his seat in the Legislative Assembly on a measure of reform:[19]

[19. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2830.]

So many Lalas and Pandits get up on the platforms and say, "Now the time has come for this .reform and that." But what happens? When they go home and when we meet them next morning they say, "What can we do? We are helpless. When we went back home, our ladies would not allow us to do what we wanted to do. They say they do not care what we talk, but they would not allow us to act accordingly."

Abreast of these priestesses of ancient custom in pre-serving the illiteracy of women, stands another mighty influence--that of economic self-interest; a man must marry his daughter or incur an earthly and eternal penalty that few will face. He can rarely marry her without paying a dowry so large that it strains his resources; to which must be added the costs of the wedding--costs so excessive that, as a rule, they plunge him deep into debt. This heavy tax he commonly incurs before his daughter reaches her teens. Why, then, should he spend still more money on her, to educate her; or why, if he be poor and can use her labor, should he go without her help and send her to school, since she is so early to pass forever into another man's service? The idea has been expressed by Rai Harinath Ghosh, Bahadur,[20] fellow of Calcutta University:

[20. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 425.]

People naturally prefer to educate their boys, well knowing that in future they will make them happy and comfortable in their old age, and glorify their family, whilst the girls, after marriage, will be at the mercy of others.

To the average Indian father, of whatever estate, this range of reasoning appears conclusive. And so the momentous opportunities of the motherhood of India continue to be intrusted to the wisdom and judgment of illiterate babies.

Given such a public sentiment toward even rudimentary schooling for girl children, the facts as to more advanced learning may be easily surmised. Mr. Mohini Mohan Bhattacharjee, of the Calcutta Univer sity faculty, expressed it in these words:[21]

[21. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 411.]

The higher education of Indian women...may almost be said to be beyond the scope of practical reform. No Hindu or Muhammadan woman of an orthodox type has ever joined a college or even read up to the higher classes in a school. The girls who receive university education are either Brahmo[22] or Christian...The time is far distant when the University will be called upon to make arrangements for the higher education of any large or even a decent number of girls in Bengal.

[22. The Brahmo or Brahmo Samaj is a sect numbering 6,388 persons, as shown in the Census of India of 1921, p. 119.]

By the latest available report, the women students in arts and professional colleges, in all British India, numbered only 961. But a more representative tone than that of Mr. Bhattacharjee's rather deprecatory words is heard in the frank statement of Rai Satit Chandra Sen, Bahadur:[23]

[23. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p 449.]

Amongst advanced communities in the West, where women are almost on a footing of equality with men and where every woman cannot expect to enter upon married life, high education may be a necessity to them. But...the western system...is not only unsuitable, but also demoralising to the women of India...and breaks down the ideals and instincts of Indian womanhood.

There remains, then, the question of education after marriage. Under present conditions of Indian thought, this may be dismissed with a word--"impracticable."[24] Directly she enters her husband's home, the little wife, whatever her rank, is at once heavily burdened with services to her husband, to her mother-in-law and to the household gods. Child-bearing quickly overwhelms her and she has neither strength nor leave for other activities. Further, she must be taught by women, if taught at all, since women, only, may have access to her. And so you come to the snake that has swallowed his tail.

[24. The Seva Sadan Society in Bombay has among its pupils a certain percentage of married women of the laboring class who come for two or three hours' instruction daily.]

For, as we have just seen, the ban that forbids literacy to the women of India thereby discourages the training of women teachers who might break the ban. Those who have such training barely and feebly suffice for the schools that already exist. Zenana teaching has thus far languished, an anaemic exotic--a failure, in an undesiring soil.

Returning to the conviction of the uselessness of spending good money on a daughter's education, this should not be supposed a class matter. Nobles and rich men share the sentiment with their lesser compatriots.

The point is illustrated in Queen Mary's College in Lahore. This institution was founded years ago by two English ladies who saw that the fractional percentage of Indian girls then receiving education came chiefly if not wholly from the low castes, whilst the daughters of princes, the wives and mothers of princes to come, the future regents, perhaps, for minor sons, were left in untouched darkness. The undertaking that the two ladies began enlisted the approval of Government. The reigning princes, spurred on by the visit of Queen Mary to India, subscribed a certain sum. This sum Government tripled. Suitable buildings were erected and equipped, and there the liberality of the princes practically ceased.

For, as will be found in every direction in which the trait can be expressed, the raising of a building as a monument to his name, be it school, hospital, or what not, interests the wealthy Indian; but for its maintenance in service he can rarely if ever be induced to give one penny. In this case it was necessary, in order to combat initial indifference, to present schooling practically free. Today, the charges have been advanced to stand approximately thus: day scholars, junior, $1.50 per month; senior, $3.00 per month; boarding scholars, $10 to $20 per month, inclusive of all tuition, board, laundry, and ordinary medical treatment.

These terms contemplate payment only for the time actually spent at college. And still some of the fathers are both slow and disputatious over the settlement of accounts. "You send a bill of two rupees [$.66] for stationery, all used up in your school by my two daughters in only two months. I consider this bill excessive. They should not be allowed to use so much costly material; it is not right. It should not be paid," protests one personage; and the representative of another conducts a three weeks' correspondence of inquiry, remonstrance, and reproach over a charge for two yards of ribbon to tie up a little girl's bonnie black locks.

Partly because of the original policy of nominal charges adopted by Government to secure an entering wedge, partly because of their traditional dissociation of women and letters, the rich men of India as a whole remain today still convinced at heart that, if indeed their daughters are to be schooled at all, then Government should give them schooling free of charge.

Queen Mary's College, a charming place, with classrooms, dormitories, common rooms and gardens suitably and attractively designed, is staffed by British ladies of university training. The curriculum is planned to suit the needs of the students. Instruction is given in the several languages of the pupils--Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, etc., and, against the girls' pleas, native dress is firmly required--lest the elders at home take fright of a contagion of western ideas. Throughout the school's varied activities, the continuous effort is to teach cleanliness of habit; and marks are given not only on scholarship but on helpfulness, tidiness, truthfulness, and the sporting spirit.

Outdoor games in the gardens are encouraged to the utmost possible degree, and a prettier sight would be hard to find than a score or so of these really lovely little gazelle-eyed maidens playing about in their floating gauzes of blue and rose and every rainbow hue.

"They have not ginger enough for good tennis," one of the teachers admits, "but then, they have just emerged from the hands of grandmothers who think it improper for little girls even to walk fast. Do you see that lively small thing in pink and gold? When she first came, two terms ago, she truly maintained that her 'legs wouldn't run.' Now she is one of the best at games.

"But what a pity it is," the teacher continues, "to think of the life of dead passivity to which, in a year or two at best, they will all have relapsed!"

"Will they carry into that after-life much of what they have learned here?" I ask.

"Think of the huge pervading influence that will encompass them! The old palace zenana, crowded with women bowed under traditions as fixed as death itself! Where would these delicate children find strength to hold their own alone, through year upon year of that ancient, changeless, smothering domination? Our best hope is that they may, somehow, transmit a little of tonic thought to their children; that they may send their daughters to us; and that so, each generation adding its bit, the end may justify our work."

Queen Mary's is the only school in all India instituted especially for ladies of rank. Not unnaturally, therefore, some of the new Indian officials, themselves without rank other than that which office gives, covet the social prestige of enrolling their daughters in Queen Mary's. The question of enrollment rests as yet with an English Commissioner, and the Commissioner lets the young climbers in. With the result that the princes, displeased, are sending fewer of their children than of yore.

"Shall our daughters be subjected to the presence of daughters of babus--of upstart Bengali politicians!" they exclaim, leaving no doubt as to the reply.

And some of the resident faculty, mindful of the original purpose of the school, anxiously question:

"Is it wise to drive away the young princesses? Their future influence is potentially so much further-reaching than that of other women, however intelligent. Should we not strain all points to get and to hold them?"

But to this question, when asked direct, the Commissioner himself replied:

"In British India we are trying to build a democracy. As for the Native States, undoubtedly it would be well to educate the future Maharanis; 1 say to their fathers, the Princes: 'If you want to keep for your daughters a school for their own rank, it can easily be done--but not on Government funds. You must pay for the school yourselves.' But this, invisible as the cost would be to men of their fortunes, they are not apt to do."

Another center of interest in Lahore is the Victoria School, occupying the palace of a grandson of the famous Ranjit Singh, in the heart of the old city, just off the bazaar. The head of this institution is an extremely able Indian lady, Miss K. M. Bose, of the third generation of an Indian Christian family. Miss Bose's firm and powerful character, her liberal and genial spirit, her strong influence and fine mind, indicate the possibilities of Indian womanhood set free.

In Victoria School are five hundred girl pupils. "Some are rich, some poor," says Miss Bose, "but all are of good caste, and all are daughters of the leading men of the city. If we took lower caste children here, it would increase expense to an impossible degree. The others would neither sit nor eat with them. Separate classes would have to be maintained, an almost double teaching staff employed, and so on through innumerable embarrassments.

"'The tuition fees?' Merely nominal; we Indians will not pay for the education of our daughters. In days but just gone by, the richest refused to pay even for lesson books. Books, teaching, and all, had at first to be given free, or we should have got no pupils. This school is maintained by Government grant and by private subscriptions from England."

Many rooms on many floors honeycomb the old barren rabbit-warren of a palace, each chamber filled with children, from mites of four or five in Montessori classes up to big, hearty Muhammadan girls of fifteen or sixteen, not yet given in marriage. Like Queen Mary's, this is a strict purdah school. The eye of man may not gaze upon it. When it is necessary to introduce some learned pundit to teach his pundit's specialty, he is separated from the class he teaches by a long, deep, thick, and wholly competent curtain. And he is chosen, not only for learning, but also for tottering age.

"I am responsible for these schools," says the Commissioner, smiling ruefully, "and yet, being a man, I may never inspect them!"

Work, in Victoria School, is done in six languages -- Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Sanskrit, with optional English.

"We give no books to the children until they can really read," says Miss Bose. "Otherwise they merely memorize, learning nothing."[25] And the whole aim and hope of the scheme is to implant in the girls' minds something so definitely applicable to their future life in the zenana that some part of it may endure alive through the years of dark and narrow things so soon to come.

[25. The Muslim Indian boy may be letter-perfect in long sections of the Arabic Koran without understanding one word that he speaks; similarly the young Hindu, so both English and Indian teachers testify, easily learns by rote whole chapters of text whose words are mere meaningless sounds to his mind.]

Reading, writing, arithmetic enough to keep simple household accounts; a little history; sewing--which art, by the way, is almost unknown to most of the women of India; a little drawing and music; habits of cleanliness and sanitary observance--both subjects of incredible difficulty; first aid, to save themselves and their future babies as far as mayties of the domestic code--these are the main studies in this practical institution. Added to them is simple cooking, especially cooking for infants and invalids, using always the native type of stove and utensils; and the handling and serving of food, with particular emphasis on keeping it clean and off the floor.

"Their cooking, in later life, they would never by nature do with their own hands, but would leave entirely to filthy servants, whence come much sickness and death," says the instructress. "Our effort here is to give them a conviction of the use and beauty of cleanliness and order in all things."

Miss L. Sorabji, the Indian lady-principal of the Eden High School for girls at Dacca, thus discreetly suggests the nature of the teacher's struggle:[26]

[26. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 453.]

Undesirable home influences are a great hindrance to progress. Unpunctuality, sloth, untidiness, carelessness regarding the laws of health and sanitation, untruthfulness, irresponsibility, absence of any code of honour, lack of home discipline, are some of the difficulties we have to contend with in our schools. Character-building is what is most needed.

And -- the patient upbuilding of a public opinion that, eventually, may create and sustain a genuine and practical Indian movement toward self-help.

At present one beholds a curious spectacle: the daughters of rich landlords; of haughty Brahman plutocrats; of militant nationalist politicians, ferocious denouncers of the white man and all his works, fed and lodged by the dimes and .sixpences of dear old ladies in Illinois and Derbyshire, and taught the a-b-c of responsible living by despised Christians and outcaste apostates.

PART I

PART III