Chapter 12

THE WOMEN OF INDIA.

The condition of its women is the truest test of a people’s civilization. Her status is her country’s barometer.

The one hundred million women of India admirably reflect the whole social and religious condition of that land. There are more nations in India than are found in all Europe; they also present a greater diversity of type. Between the aboriginal tribes which treat the weaker sex only as a beast of burden, and the Parsee community which holds its women in the highest consideration and furnishes them with a liberal education and large opportunity, there are many intermediate tribes and nations which regard their women with varying degrees of consideration and of contempt.

Of all Scriptures the Zend Avesta of the Parsees is the only one which furnishes woman, from the beginning, with absolute equality with man; and that position she has never lost among the Parsees. But the Parsees in India are a mere handful.

The Hindu woman constitutes four-fifths of the total number of her sex in India; and her condition is fairly uniform everywhere and conforms, in varying degrees, to a type whose characteristics are easily recognized. She has come down from earliest history. We recognize her everywhere in the pages of their ancient literature, in their laws and legends; and we behold her in all the manifold walks of modern life. For nearly a quarter of a century the writer has lived as her neighbour, gazed daily upon her life, wondered at and admired her many noble traits which have been preserved under the most adverse circumstances, and grieved over her weakness and her many disabilities.

In ancient times, the position of woman in India was one of power coupled with honour. Today the power remains, but the honour has been largely eliminated.

1. In ancient Vedic times woman enjoyed many distinctions and revealed great aptitude. She joined her husband in the offering of domestic sacrifices and sat as queen in the home. Some of the sacred hymns of the Rigveda were made by her and have come down these thirty centuries as a beautiful testimony to her intellectual brightness and aspiration, and as an evidence of the honour in which she was held.

Five centuries later this beautiful description was given of her in the Mahabarata:

“A wife is half the man, his truest friend; A loving wife is a perpetual spring Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful wife Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss; A sweet speaking wife is a companion In solitude, a father in advice, A mother in all seasons of distress, A rest in passing through life’s wilderness.”

The rights and opportunities of woman are strikingly illustrated by many of the legends of their ancient epics. For instance, we read of the _Svayamvara_ of the lovely princess Draupadi. It was the occasion when she had attained womanhood and was entitled to the right to choose her own husband. How graphically are the royal suitors described as they press their claims to her heart and hand in knightly tournament. It is one of those scenes which reveal woman in the possession of some of her most queenly rights and attractions.

The ancient ideals of womanly character have come down the centuries writ large in their songs and annals; and these ideals are today held as dearly, and are loved and sung with as much ardour, as at any time in the history of India.

Every boy and girl of that land, today, knows the lovely Sita, wife of the noble and heroic Rama,—how, while in the power of the terrible Ravana, and at risk of life, she withstood every temptation and lived in unspotted purity and in supreme devotion and faithfulness to her royal lord.

Who does not know of the faithful Saguntala, whose legend is woven into one of the most beautiful and touching love stories the world has ever known. This drama was the first translation from Sanskrit into the English tongue and elicited the astonishment and lively admiration of such a man as Goethe.

India has always boasted of the constancy and devotion of the beautiful Savitri to her beloved Sattyavân. After the death of her husband, she followed his soul into the spirit-world with fearless devotion and pleaded with the King of Death with so much passion and persistence for his return to life that he was finally restored to her in youthful vigour.

These are some of the stock illustrations of the model wife used everywhere and at all times in India. And they have had an extensive and wonderful influence in the molding of wifely ideals.

It is, as we see, a glorification of devotion, faithfulness, constancy—traits that have always beautified the character of the Hindu woman. It is true that, apart from her husband and from the kitchen, woman has had few ideals urged upon her in that great country. Her ambitions have not crossed the doorsteps of her house and home. She is measured entirely by her relation to her husband or children. She is her lord’s companion and servant. Love to him is the wand which alone can transform her life into gold. Her usefulness and her glory are the reflections of his pleasure and of his satisfaction in her. She has no separate existence. Apart from man, she is an absolute nonentity. And yet, within the sphere which has been granted to her, she has shone with a wonderful radiance and with a charm which reminds us often of some of Shakespeare’s beautiful womanly creations.

The physical attractions of woman have always, of course, captivated the sterner sex in India, as in other lands. Her beauty is lavishly described and painted in warm colours through all Hindu literature. And she _is_ physically beautiful; she will compare favourably with the fair ones of any land in womanly grace, in beauty of figure, and in bewitching charm of manner.

But the standard of womanly grace and beauty is not precisely the same there as it is with us in the West. A Hindu and an American have different ideals of personal beauty. Though the Aryan type of countenance may not largely differ East and West, there are touches of expression and shades of beauty which correspond respectively to the different ideals in both lands. May they not have created the ideals themselves?

The most common results of a Hindu woman’s toilet are the smooth hair, the blackened eyebrow, the reddened finger-nails, the pendent nose jewels, the bulky ear-rings, the heavy bangles for ankles and arms. Without these, life, to the Hindu belle, is not worth living. On wedding occasions, among the common folk, red ochre is also daubed over the throat in ghastly suggestion to the Westerner; but in glorious attractiveness to the native of the land!

West and East associate a fair complexion with highest beauty. A fond Hindu mother once came to the writer moaning that she could not find a husband for her daughter because she was “too black!” The young man of India puts a premium upon every shade of added lightness of complexion. His taste is reflected in the universal feminine custom of using saffron dye to lighten the complexion upon all festive occasions.

The clothing of the woman of India is exceedingly attractive. Her pretty garb sets off admirably the beauty of her person; and, both in inexpensiveness and grace, and in its contribution to health, is far better than the complicated extravagance, the heavy encumbrance and the insanitary tight-lacing of the West. The women of South India dress with a view to comfort in the tropics; but they have also, in a most remarkable degree, conserved appropriateness, beauty, and simplicity in their robes. The possibilities of the one cloth, which is the full dress of the South Indian woman, as a modest garment and as a charming full-dress equipment would be a revelation to the much dressed votary of the West. In the arranging of this cloth there is considerable scope for ingenuity and for æsthetic taste; although, in this matter, the rules of each caste furnish an iron etiquette which must be followed by the women. Indeed, the tyranny of Worth in the West is nothing as compared with caste tyranny as the Fashioner of the East. This is accounted for by the fact that a woman’s dress must be arranged in such a way as to publish abroad her caste affiliations.

Woman has a vast influence upon the life of the people of India. In no other country has she relatively exercised more power. All this, notwithstanding the fact that, for more than twenty centuries, she has had no recognized position in religion or in society. Her spiritual destiny has been entirely in the hands of man. By the highest authorities her salvation has been made entirely dependent upon her connection with him. She has absolutely no right of worship of her own. From the cradle to the grave she is in man’s keeping. Until she is married, supreme obedience to her father is her only safety; while her husband lives, heaven’s blessings can come to her only through his favour and prayer; and, after his death, her sons become her lords and the sole guardians and protectors of her spiritual interests. All this is everywhere recognized by Hindu society, and by none more than by the woman herself.

And yet, it is equally true, and a fact of remarkable significance, that, in India today, the religious influence of woman is paramount. She is the stronghold of Hinduism at the beginning of this twentieth century. Man, under the growing influence of western thought, civilization, and faith, has largely lost his moorings and is growing increasingly insincere and a trifler with religious beliefs and institutions. The woman, on the other hand, is a conservative of the conservatives. In her superstition she is deeply sincere; her faith has no questionings, and her piety shapes her every activity. Were it not for the women of India, Hinduism, with all its vaunted philosophy, its wonderful ritual and its mighty caste tyranny, would, within a decade, fall into “innocuous desuetude.”

It is a significant fact that in the religion of no other people on earth does the worship of the female find so prominent a place. In many parts of the land _Sakti_ worship, or the worship of goddesses, is widely prevalent and almost paramount in influence. It is really the worship of power under a female form; and the power which these goddesses exercise is mostly malevolent in its character. The terrible wife of Siva, in all her dread manifestations, is the most popular deity, because the most feared in the land.

It is natural to inquire whether this characteristic of the Hindu pantheon is not a reflection of the Hindu mind as to the influence of woman, and as to the belief of man in the evil character of that influence. As is the place and power of woman among the men so is the character and place of the goddesses in the pantheon of that people.

The famous religious reformer Chunder Sen, though he adopted and used the Lord’s Prayer, changed the form of address from the masculine to the feminine and said, “Our Mother who art in heaven!” The adoration of the female in Hindu worship was never more marked than at present. What has Christianity to meet this bent of the Hindu mind? Or should it be discouraged as an element in worship? The Romanists meet it by exalting and giving preëminence to the Virgin Mother. The Protestants have nothing corresponding to this.

Socially, the Hindu woman is a reactionary of the most pronounced type; she opposes social reform at all points—nowhere more than when it is directed to ameliorate her own condition. Religiously, as we have seen, she is the slave of man by law and teaching; yet she rules her household, even in these matters, with an iron hand.

From her throne in the home she so wields her sceptre that it is felt also throughout the whole social fabric. Her beloved lord has perhaps passed through a university course, is a pronounced social reformer and discourses in eloquent English, before large audiences of his admiring countrymen, concerning the mighty social evils which are the curse of the country; he, with his ardent fellow-reformers, frames rules which shall soon usher in the millennium of social reform and progress! And then he—this man of culture, of eloquence, of noble purposes and of altruistic ambitions—goes to his home and meekly submits to the grandmotherly tyranny which has shaped his life much more than he knows, and which vitiates and renders nugatory all his social and other schemes! As man has narrowed the scope of woman’s life in that land, so she has given it intensity of power.

And what is more significant, she has become supremely contented with the narrow sphere which man has grudgingly given her. And, for this very reason, she combats every endeavour, on the part of her friends, to release her from her bondage and to increase her opportunities and blessings in life. The old triple slander perpetrated upon India, to the effect that “it is a country in which the women never laugh, the birds never sing and the flowers have no fragrance,” is a falsehood in all its details. Hindu women have as merry a laugh as their sisters in any other land. They have learned to make the best of their lot and to rejoice in it.

Since the time of the Mohammedan conquest, and probably long before, the higher class of women have mostly led a life of seclusion. This is preëminently true of the northern parts of the country where Mohammedan influence was strongest and the Hindu had carefully to protect his wife and daughters from the coarse Mussulman. In South India this seclusion is very rare and observed only among the most aristocratic. The common woman of India finds ample freedom of intercourse in her town and village, and figures conspicuously at the great religious festivals of her land.

Generally speaking, woman is the redeeming feature of India. She is the ideal home-keeper and housekeeper. Usually, she is devoted to her husband, a passionate lover of her children, the conserver of society, the true devotee in religion. Her lord and husband has been taught, from time immemorial, to keep her in obscurity and to surround her with the screen of ignorance and narrow sympathies; but she has magnified the work assigned to her; her excellence has shown far beyond his; and, in her bondage, she has built her throne from which she has wielded her sceptre of love and goodness over him.

She has never aspired to realms not granted to her by her lawgivers. The modern aspiration of the “new woman” of the West does not appeal to her. She asks only to be let alone in her narrow but, to her, all-sufficient sphere.

2. But, after all we have said, or can say, of the power of woman in India, it still remains that, in no other land, has she suffered such marked disability and deeper injustice. If her goodness has shone out of her darkness, it has only served to reveal the more the sadness of her position. She bears in her condition the signs of her bondage and humiliation. The evils of the land have been attributed to her; and man too often ascribes his own degradation and sin to the curse breathed upon him by woman.

The proverbs of a country are the truest test of its sentiments. What have these to say of the woman of India today?

“What poison is that which appears like nectar? Woman.”

“What is the chief gate to hell? Woman.”

“What is cruel? The heart of a viper. What is more cruel? The heart of a woman. What is the most cruel of all? The heart of a soulless, penniless widow.”

“He is a fool who considers his wife as his friend.”

“Educating a woman is like putting a knife in the hands of a monkey.”

These are a few of the many proverbs which characterize woman in one vernacular only. Every other Indian tongue equally abounds in proverbial expressions which brand a woman as one of the greatest evils of the land. Sanskrit writers have exhausted vituperative language in describing woman. They represent her as “wily, hypocritical, lying, deceptive, artful, fickle, freakish, vindictive, vicious, lazy, vain, dissolute, hard-hearted, sinful, petty-minded, jealous, addicted to simulation and dissimulation. She is worse than the worst of animals, more poisonous than the poison of vipers.”

These proverbs do not necessarily reveal the depravity of the Hindu woman; but they do testify unmistakably to the estimation in which she is held by man.

The ignorance of woman there is dense and is probably a fact which closely connects her with the proverbial expressions concerning her. Her illiteracy is not an incident in Indian life. It has been, through the centuries, a settled policy of the land. At the present time only one woman in two hundred can read and write in that land of progress. The remarkable thing is, not that so many are illiterate, but that even a few have been taught at all, in view of the attitude of the Hindu mind towards her. In ancient times there was little to learn, in India, apart from religion; but it has been the strict injunction of their Shastras and religious instructors that no man shall, under penalty of hell, teach to his wife or daughter the Vedas which are the purest and best part of Hindu Scriptures. Any form of useful knowledge was considered dangerous in her possession.

It is not that woman is wanting in capacity. She is as bright and as teachable as her brother. All that she has needed, educationally, has been opportunity; and this, society has denied her, and this has done injustice not only to her but, still more, to itself.

Infant marriage has been, for many centuries, a crying evil in that land. This has brought to woman a train of evils which have made deplorable her condition above all the women of the earth. This custom originated, probably, from a sense of kindness to the girl herself. It was the expression of a desire on the part of the parents to insure their daughter, at an early date, against failure to attain that which all Hindus regard as the _summum bonum_ of a woman’s life—marriage. But, in their short-sighted policy, they failed to realize the myriad evils which would follow this pernicious custom. The girl’s will or desire must not be regarded as an element in this life compact! And, what is worse still, these infant compacts are necessarily followed by early consummation, whereby girls enter, in many cases, upon the duties of motherhood at twelve years of age. Few, indeed, are permitted to reach full physical development before they assume the function of child-bearing. This is not only a serious evil to the woman herself, it also gives poor chance for the begetting of a healthy progeny and for the early training of the same. And it is not strange that the woman who thus early enters the sphere of motherhood should become a worn out old woman at thirty-five or forty years.

Much effort has been put forth in India, by Westerners especially, to make infant marriages impossible, or at least unpopular. But, little success has thus far attended this effort.

A small meed of alleviation was gained with much effort in 1891. It came through the passing of the “Age of Consent Bill” whereby the age of a girl’s consent to cohabitation was raised from ten to twelve. To a Westerner, the blessing acquired by this bill seems in itself a mockery and only reveals the appalling cruelty of that people to its girls.

It has been found impossible to touch, much less remove, the gross evil of infant marriage itself, the custom which opens wide the door to other ghastly evils.

The greatest of these is that of virgin-widowhood. If men will perversely marry their infant daughters to small boys, it is sure that a considerable proportion of the boys will die before their marriage is consummated. Thus, annually, thousands of these poor girls, who are in absolute ignorance of the situation, are converted into virgin widows whose condition, upon the death of their husbands, is instantly changed from one of innocent childhood pleasure into a sad, despised and hated widowhood. For, the parents of the boy sincerely believe that it is her evil star which has killed the boy whose destiny was blended with her own. And henceforth she is regarded, not only by the parents concerned, but by society in general, as an accursed person, hated for what has happened to her husband, and also a creature to be shunned. Her presence must not be allowed on any festive occasion, lest its evil influence bring sorrow and death to others. Thus a child of four or five years may suddenly have her prospects blasted, her life embittered and her company shunned by the whole world, with none to befriend, to cheer or to comfort her. There are two millions of such sad and injured ones in India today. Their cry goes up to God and to man in inarticulate appeal for relief and redress against a social custom and a religious rule which consigns them, in their time of greatest innocency, to a life which is worse than death itself and which robs them of the protection, love and sympathy which the whole economy of heaven and earth should guarantee to them.

Coupled with this terrible fact is the other, that woman _must_ marry in India _anyhow_. No disgrace and misfortune can befall a woman, according to Hindu ideas, equal to that of spending her whole life in maidenhood. This, of course, is connected with the idea that she has no social status or religious destiny apart from man. Hence it is that a host of loving parents, who are unable to find a suitable match for their daughters, rather than leave them unmarried, stupidly join them in wedlock to _professional_ bridegrooms. There is, in Bengal, today, a division of the Brahman caste whose men are professional purveyors to this silly but prevalent superstition. They are prepared to marry any number of girls at remunerative rates. And thus they acquire a fair income. Each of these men have scores of such wives and entertains the proud satisfaction, doubtless, that he is bestowing a favour upon a benighted community by coupling his name in wedlock with unfortunate girls who otherwise would be without a name or hope among men! A state of society which renders such a condition of things possible is not only a disgrace to any community, it is a monstrous evil against the womanhood of that community. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of the women of India, under these circumstances, should commit suicide? Is it strange that a wife, in such a land, should find it best to obey and submit to the indignities of the worst kind from her husband? And is it remarkable that the Hindu widow, rather than endure the neglect, the temptations and the obloquy of her widowhood, should have preferred to practice Suttee and to end her miseries upon the funeral pyre of her husband? When we remember that their system consigns one-fifth of all the women of India—more than 20,000,000 souls—to this despised and ostracized widow class, we realize the depth of evil which flows from the system.

There is still another cruel injustice inflicted upon the womanhood of India. Many thousands (there are 12,000 in South India alone) of her daughters are dedicated in infancy to a life of shame in connection with temple worship in that land. These women, the so-called “servants of the gods,” have been mostly dedicated by fond mothers to this wretched life as a thank offering to the gods for blessings received. This seems very strange when it is known that all such girls thereby become public characters. The “Dancing Girl” of India is thus shut up to her evil life by those who love her most; and her religious profession becomes to her the highway to perdition and a bitter curse to society. Recent effort has been made, in Bombay, to save such girls by making it a legal offence to “marry” them to the gods and thus devoting them to a life of shame. But this law only refers to the dedication of girls of tender age in Bombay. It is exceedingly sad that, practically, the whole population is utterly indifferent to this greatest insult committed against the womanhood of India and to the coupling of their own religion and their gods with the ruin of the soul and body of many thousands of the daughters of the land.

It is not remarkable, under these circumstances, that among all the people of India the birth of a daughter is the most unwelcome of domestic events. The evils which surely await her, and the greater possibilities of sorrow and suffering which surround her, the great burden of expense and of trouble which her training, and especially her marriage, will entail upon the family—all combine to make her birth a much dreaded event.

The large expense, in the shape of the marriage dowry and the wedding expenses which have to be incurred among nearly all classes in connection with the disposal of their daughters, only make this situation the more emphatic.

The practice of infanticide, so extensively found in India, was the direct result of this difficulty. For instance, among the noble race of Rajputs in North India it was found, some years ago, that, in a community of 30,000, there was not a single girl! Every daughter that was born was killed. The higher the rank of the family the more constant and systematic was the crime. “Thus, while an unmarried daughter in India is looked upon as hopelessly disgraced, a son-in-law cannot always be found unless the father of the girl is prepared to pay highly, and the marriage of a daughter may mean the ruin of a family. Rather than incur this danger, the Rajput preferred that his daughter should perish. And though the government has enacted stringent laws against this custom, it is not entirely eradicated yet.”(10)

Thus the Hindus have wittingly and unwittingly placed many of the most serious disabilities of life upon their women. And the greatest evil of it is that the woman has become so hardened to her lot that, like the prisoner of Chillon, she has become enamoured of her chains and is most loathe to part with her bondage.

3. But the dawn of a new day has risen upon India. It is the day of woman’s emancipation. A new spirit, during the past century, has entered that land, and the welcome era of brighter blessing, greater appreciation and larger opportunity for woman has actually begun. One has only to study the laws which, during the nineteenth century, were enacted in India with a view to removing the terrible evils and crimes which were committed under the sanction of Hinduism; and he will find that not a few are directed towards the amelioration of the condition of woman. Such inhuman customs as _suttee_, the murder of children, the dedication of girls to lives of shame—these have been removed in whole or in part; and, by the “Age of Consent Bill” and other similar half measures, the beginning has been made in introducing a day of better things for the women.

Many of the efforts of Hindu Social Reformers are directed towards the removal of some of the disabilities under which woman lives. It is true that the woman of India cannot expect, for a long time, much help from her own people. Even the Social Reformers among them are so few in number, are so half-hearted in their measures, and are so unwilling to deny themselves in behalf of the cause which they advocate, that little can be expected from them. And yet, it must be said that in a few matters of importance Hindu sentiment is slowly moving in the right direction. As a Social Reformer, the Hindu is a poor success; but he is not a fool; he can see that the situation, so far as woman is concerned, is becoming increasingly untenable and flagrantly inconsistent with the growing light of today. The hope is that he will yield, with increasing readiness, to the pressure brought to bear upon him by Western sentiment.

The presence of many women of the West in that land has been a standing rebuke to the Hindu social situation. These women have done not a little to stir within their Eastern sisters a desire for something better. They open their eyes to the contrasted conditions of the women of the East and of the West. When they shall have aroused the women of India to the desperateness of their condition and to the urgent need of reform and relief, the battle will be more than half fought and victory will be in view. For, when the Eastern woman herself will vigorously demand her emancipation, man will yield it to her. The Dufferin Hospitals are a noble tribute to the active interest of the good lady whose name they bear; and the sympathetic endeavour of Lady Curzon for the elevation of India’s women are but suggestive of considerable work which the fair sex of the West have rendered and are rendering in behalf of their Indian sisters.

Protestant Christian missions have been pioneers in this great movement towards the emancipation of the women of India. American and English women, connected with these missions, have given themselves to the redemption of their sisters. More than one thousand of these good women are devoting their lives to the salvation of India through the elevation of the women of the land. Thousands of schools are conducted by them in which a host of young girls are receiving that training which Hinduism has proscribed for many centuries. And through these schools, and by means of at least two thousand Bible Women, trained by them, they have access into hundreds of thousands of Hindu homes where they reveal to the women and girls a broader horizon of life and give a new conception of the privileges and opportunities which are opening today before them. They are creating among the women a spirit of unrest which is the dawning of a new ambition for greater things in life and service. The very presence of these foreign ladies suggests to their Indian sister a new sphere broader than the home, and a new opportunity pregnant with rich blessings to the land.

Under the influence of these missionary efforts and of the less thorough training given in government schools, Hindus themselves are beginning to bestir themselves and to establish schools for their daughters; and thus we trust that coming years will not only witness a change of thought among Hindus concerning women, but also a new line of indigenous activity for their elevation.

There is further ground for encouragement; for the Hindu man of culture is growing increasingly sensitive to the wide gulf which lies between him and his absolutely untrained wife. He sees that, while the Western woman is suited in every way to become the companion of, and a helpmeet to, her husband, his own little wife is fit to be neither. Even when not separated from him by a disparity of many years in age, he finds that she has absolutely no interest outside the walls of her home and has not the first qualification to discuss with him or to help him by advice in any matter pertaining to his work or profession. So he, under the new light of modern times, is increasingly ambitious to have a wife of the new training and of the larger horizon, and is willing to pay a premium for her in marriage. And this, itself, is beginning to create a market for educated women even in that stronghold of conservatism, the Brahman caste.

Thus the effort of Christian missions in the development of womanhood is acting like leaven upon the whole social mass.