The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1924, Page 60

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60

Woman’s Wrongs.

There are 140,000,000 women in India, and, to
use a common saying, “their sphere is the back
yard.” They have no place in society, and when
they are in the presence of men, they are never
permitted to be seated. According to Manu, the
great Hindu lawgiver, woman is the marital prop-
erty of her husband and belongs into the same
class with cows, horses, and other animals. Neither
has she any place in religious ceremonies, since all
that she is asked to worship and obey is her hus-
band, whom Manu describes. as the virtuous
woman’s god. In the celebrated Hindu writings,
called the Shastras, there is much said about
women, but not once is the character of a woman
painted as intelligent, modest, and refined. Hindus
and Mohammedans are alike in this, that they have
no appreciation of female dignity, and the female
deity of the Hindus is not the embodiment of vir-
tues, but of base passions. The inferiority and
infirmity of woman is a part of the Mohammedan’s
creed. He has no respect for her, and the heaven
he aspires to is filled with young and beautiful
maidens, whom he expects to be his companions,
and not the woman who was his faithful partner
during life. Even to the white-bearded Moham-

-medan heaven is a place where sensuality rules
supreme. As for Hindus, in their eyes women are
mere chattels; at best, no more than playthings.

In India, millions of women are kept secluded
in the harem and zenana; but there are castes that
allow their women more or less freedom, since,
because of their abject poverty, the women must
help in making a living. But whether kept in seclu-
sion or given freedom, everywhere in India one is
impressed with the fact of “woman’s wrongs.”

When one considers the shameful treatment ac-
corded the Hindu wife and mother, it is remarkable
that she should in so many cases be s0 affectionate,
faithful, industrious, patient, and cheerful. And
yet, we need but listen to the sad stories of the
zenana missionaries to know that behind the pardah
walls and curtains she is very often vain, frivolous,
idle, gluttonous, jealous, and malicious.

A woman may not walk beside her husband,

but only follow behind him: She is not allowed to
eat with him; to her belong only the crumbs that
fall from her husband’s table, that is, what he
‘leaves for her.
‘other people are about nor call him by his name.
When she refers to him, it is as her “lord” or her

She dare not speak to him while

The Lutheran Pioneer.

“master.” Woman in India is a slave from the
cradle to the grave; in her infancy and childhood
she is the chattel of her parents, in her youth she
is dominated over by her husband, and in her old
age she is governed by her children. From the
highest to the lowest this rule of life is adhered to,
so that it is women last and women least in all
grades of society in India.

Of the awful horrors which the Hindus are
guilty of in the treatment of their women there
are three that far outrank all others in their
hideous cruelty — infanticide, child-marriage, and
enforced widowhood. Truly, it is the slaughter of
the innocents. Infanticide is practised only upon
daughters, of course, and has great vogue especially
among the so-called Rajpoots. Though there was
a law passed in 1890 which forbids infanticide, yet
it is still secretly practised in a number of districts.
All the endeavors of the government to prevent it
are in vain.

The Hindu religion makes the marriage of
daughters compulsory, and parents are punished if
they postpone it. It is of frequent occurrence that
girls are married before they are a year old, and
few. are single after they have reached the age of
eight years. Except in a few districts all girls
must be married before they are twelve years old.
The Rajpoots, when it comes to marriage, require
that their daughters marry a husband who occupies
a higher position in the social scale than they do,
and this condition often makes it a very hard
matter for them to dispose of their daughters.
Rather than run the risk of not finding a husband
for their daughters, and rather than go to the great
expense of marrying them off to their social
superiors, Rajpoot parents strangle the little girl
at birth or give her an opium pill and thus escape
possible disgrace or, at least, great expense.

Missionaries all agree in saying that the greatest
wrong practised on the women of India is child-
marriage. Bridegrooms who. still have their baby
teeth and brides of cradle age are no rarity. Wives
have been sent to their husband’s homes at the age
of eight. But not only are these child-wives
married to child-husbands, but what is so particu-
larly shameful, there are instances where the child-
wives are married to men who are forty, fifty, and
sixty years of age.

It is pitiable, indeed, to see a little child-wife
torn away from her parents’ home, which contained
all that she knew of happiness, little as it may _
have been, and placed in the home of her husband,