WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
Association have rendered splendid service to Indian women and children. There is a very high rate of mortality among mothers and infants, due to careless treatment by native medical practitioners and midwives. Puerperal fever is common, and often proves fatal. The deaths in child-bed are numerous.
"In Berar one-sixth, and in Bibar mainly one-fifth of the total number of females under ten are married."[1] The union is not very often consummated physically at this early age, but it is frequently consummated too soon for the well-being of the mother and her child. This marriage of immature girls is a drain on the vigour of the race, and is the cause of much suffering and illness. Procreative vigour declines somewhat quickly through misuse in adolescence. The menopause occurs earlier in Indian women than among the women of the West.
Hindu opinion concerning the disabilities under which women suffer in India is plainly expressed by a native writer Babu Nand Lai Ghose (Nandatela Ghosa) of Lahore.[2] This reformer has absorbed Western influence. While he professes the utmost admiration for the many virtues of Hindu women, he deplores their limited lives, their conjugal inequality, and their defective education.
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