WOMEN OF INDIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3306, 26 August 1911, Page 7

WOMEN OF INDIA.

{Bv George A. Dorsey, in Chicago “Tribune.”)

No man ever said so much, in so few words and at the same time gave expression to so many misconceptions mui misrepresentations as Compton. He describes India as a land where people sit on the floor ; throw away food not eaten, also dishes; eat barefooted and stripped, and consider beef eatiug worse than cannibalism, and ham sandwich sends a man uo perdition; where an egg is never used, where there are a hundred sweetmeat shops to every public-house ; everyone smokes —but the same pipe; everyone washes, but never uses soap, boys are husbands ' before they have cut their baby teeth; brides are babies in the cradle; where there are no unmarried girls under fourteen, and plenty of widows half that age; where there is no courtship, and a husband may not notice his wife in public or a wife pronounce his name; more men shave heads than chins; widows go bald, while wall-eyed brutes are considered particularly beautiful; where there are no Sundays, no poorhouses, rates, or poor laws, no public opinion, no political privileges, no representation; beggars are holy, and dancing girls highly esteemed : priests countenance the social evil, and to kill human beings is less a crime than to kill a cow. REAL POSITION OF WOMEN.

It is certainly true that, judged by Western standards, the position of woman is lowly, and the marriage ceremony an amazing institution. Widows do re-marry; only a few castes prohibit it All Mohammedans encourage the re-marriage of widows. Husbands notice their wives in public, work side by side with them. Marriages are early, but the first marriage is only tlie betlirotlial. Girls rarely enter the marriage state under fourteen, nor boys under twenty.

To say that there are 140,000,000 women whose sphere is the backyard, who are not accorded a back seat because in the presence of men they are not permitted to sit, that there is no chivalry in India, and a dastard want of confidence in the chastity of womankind is as untrue as Compton’s assertion that the Mohammedan’s highest reward in the future state is an indulgence of unbounded sensuality It is true that the sacred book of the Hindus admonishes woman that there is no God on earth except her husband, and be he deformed, aged, infirm, diseased, offensive in manners, choleric, debauched, immoral, a drunkard, gambler, lunatic, blind, deaf, dumb, or a cripple she should lavish on him all her attention. It is equally true that child marriages enforce widowhood, and female infanticide are hideous horrors; it is also true that girls are still sold or presented to temples as thank offerings for recovery from illness But it is not true that Nautch girls only emerge from the fetters of ignorance, reserve and abject submission But all agree that the Indian woman is affectionate and faithful, chaste, obedient, patient, forgiving, industrious, long suffering and cheerful. The Hindu home is not melancholy nor are Hindu women miserable Sir J. D. Rees, who knew Indian life intimately, declares that oppression of women is less common , and less brutal in India tl an in the West, and that 75 per cent of the population permits widow marriage. WEST FAILS TO APPRECIATE. Indians are no more wanting in courage than in truthfulness They are as temperate as they are tolerant. They dislike and distrust Western methods, and their aversion to what they consider the strange and polluted habits of the European is in no small measure responsible for the Westerner’s failure to appreciate that the West is only a matter of age and degree. The Indian still clings to certain customs abhorred by the Western world. When we understand Avhat the mental attitude behind any such custom is we must admit the Indian is not a degenerate brute or a debased savage, but he believes that custom is right, proper and essential to the welfare of his' fam*iiy-

It has been said more than once mat tire Indian family goes broke at weddings, a Chinese family at a- funerai. In each country these two cerenr vi.r-.-c are tremendous affairs, hurricanes t-f extravagance, often entailing yuqrs of debt and difficulty. A Hindu cons:,Mrs marriage as the most important and engrossing event in his life, for everyone is obliged to- discharge tin* gieaf debt to his ancestors, that of begetting a son. The Sanskrit for son is putra, which literally means one who sores from put or hell, the hell to which senless parents go.

POINT OF VIEW EVERYTHING. The point of view is everything. It is easy to prove, even from tee Institutes of i\ianu, that woman occupies a noble position m India. VYe are to supplement this book of laws wnh popular sayings, to say nothing <-i the Persian poetry, which followed Mohammedanism into India, it tvould be easy to prove that,.the Indian woman’s lot is strictly in accordance with the state of culture-in which she lives'. ‘ I doubt if anyone eier saw in India a sight once familiar in much of itm - ope —a woman yoked to a plough be the side of an ox •‘Where women are honored there the gods are p!<--ts.-rl; where they are olsar.l ned religious / acts become of no avail” In what, u-r / family the husband is contented-with - his wife and the wife null her husband, in that home will good iortur.e yire'y abide." The laws of Maim present nary pictures of complete domestic bapp-ncss. True, the characteristic cnudior; oi the wife is declared to oe pa.-wionate ’Cverence, but it is xiuallv certap. tl.v.i that of her husband is a mca-mreless protection Those ~vho b-ive leunne acquainted with Indian famiiv life speak of tenderness as the ruling note of the man’s relations. The memory or bus own mother is his . pal .1 i-m lection, and he brings to bis wiie s.-mou.-r.g of motherhood. She cooks for Inn., sue serves him, she sits before lum ‘S to eats, keeping away the flies, but neither as servant nor as equal but as a disciple, prostrating lierseif belcre bun, touching his feet with her head ..e-oro receiving his blessing.

. CONSIDERS EQU AIHTY V U LC- / R lylVulgar equality, as tire Hindu wo Bean would consider it, is for her ieplaoed by. tihe unspiax ible Idessbeess of offering worship. . f'he man roceiies such devotion as evide me, not of his ■worthiness of love, but oi her jrower to love Indians | Teced-e their wives, but it is only maintain ng the tradi■T'Wtion of the < path-brj.icer in the jun ) In the national epic, Site pleads to be allowed to go first through flu- ftrest, that- she may sweep the tboin.s mm her husband’s path with the or.o *'i 1 er V 6 “Thou shalt not stake a woman, even with a flower, ’ is 'Hie proverbial expression' of the courtesy of husbands to wives As man and wife advance in life he becomes to address hei,. U, thou mother of our son, and nm-ents her to newcomers as "my club, s mo-

ther,” thus expressing his worship of motherhood. Im earlier vears he learns to trust her advice- in old =tge so becomes her eldest child and sue more and mo e the head of the home. But always' she remains as she was at the beginnings, Lakshmi, her husband’s goddess of fortune. In those first days he ate from no hand but his mother’s or hers, and one of her devotions was the fast not broken until he had eaten and thentalk was over, though her evening meal might be delayed until long pastmidnignt Now, with the responsibilities of the household upon her, she feeds a. whole multitude before she takes her own turn, and still the mutual part of soul and soul has not been broken by a strife of ‘rights.’ These two have all these years been each other’s refuge against the world.”