Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE DISABILITIES OF INDIAN WOMEN
A distinguished Indian poetess, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who is in England while I write these lines, is known amongst us as an ardent pioneer of a women's movement in her own country. This cultured lady has written two volumes of poems, in the English language, entitled "The Golden Threshold" and "The Bird of Time." She is an eloquent public speaker, temperate, earnest, and thoughtful.
Mrs. Naidu says that "Indian womanhood is feeling, as it were, the ripple of the world movement, and it awakes noble echoes from the past." This writer thinks that Hindu women have lost a glorious past inheritance: "Ours is an absolutely unbroken tradition, overlaid and obscured, but still so real that it has prevented the raising of anything like the sex-barrier I find in England. We are not pioneers, but reawakeners."
Mrs. Naidu's ideal of freedom for women is not the winning of political powers through the franchise, but "a social and intellectual existence, equal to, while different from, that of men." She states that educated men in India, both Hindus and Mohammedans, are giving attentive heed to the claims of women.
In the "Laws of Manu," the "Maxims of Hâla," and in other Indian writings, sacred and secular, we discover here and there a foreshadowing of the modern ideal of romantic love. Accretions in belief and doctrine, and probably the introduction of polygamy, the immolation of widows, and the precedence given to sons before daughters, obscured much of this ancient Aryan idealism, and weakened the position of women. More submission was inculcated to women; there arose practices that give evidence of a growth of the patriarchal system in family life, with a lessening of women's liberty and opportunity for freedom of social companionship with men.
Miss Margaret Noble and Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, whose opinions I have quoted, uphold, with fervour and admiration, the caste system, and practically the whole of Hindu customs relating to marriage and women. There are institutions to which they scarcely allude. They are naturally anxious to prove a case, and I must admit that, to a great extent, they succeed in their object.
Yet if we turn to the Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati for enlightenment as to the condition of women in India, we shall learn that there are flagrant imperfections in the marriage laws. This Indian lady has drawn up an indictment in a little volume, called "The High Caste Hindu Woman." Her criticism deserves our attention as representing at any rate the earnest opinions of an educated native woman, who desires the highest well-being for her sisters.
One of the wrongs of women in India, whether living in monogamous marriage or in the zenana, lies in the disability of the mother who bears only daughters. We have been assured that India is a country where women are held in the highest esteem. How is it, then, that the female infant is unwelcomed by the fathers? Surely, in a society that reveres womanhood and maternity, the potential mother should be almost sacred.
According to the Pundita Sarasvati such respect for the girl-baby is never expressed. On the contrary, there are many mothers who look upon the birth of a girl as a great calamity. Such a misfortune is a source of the keenest chagrin in the father, who is apparently moved to resentment against the mother.
The Hindu wife who has brought a son into existence is regarded with the husband's favour, while she who produces a daughter appears to earn his reprobation. So powerful is the longing for male children that Hindu women employ many spells in the hope of conceiving sons. The son-giving gods are invoked with an anxious fervour. Is it not possible that this anxiety in the mind of a pregnant woman may have an injurious influence on her offspring? I know that this is a subject of controversy. But it seems to me that such solicitude cannot fail to affect the health of the mother, and that her state may react upon the unborn child.
The unwanted daughter in India is an object for pity. She is even in some families upbraided by her parents for being a girl. A wife, asked if she has children, will reply, "I have nothing"; and "nothing" means a girl. The Pundita, whom I am quoting, describes the lives of many girls as terribly unhappy through the stigma of their sex. She says that brothers frequently despise their sisters.
The Hindu Scriptures, like the Christian Bible, contain statements that often appear highly contradictory. We have read passages from the sacred books of India extolling women and the mother. But the "Laws of Manu" contain this sentence: "Of dishonour woman is the cause; of enmity woman is the cause; of mundane existence woman is the cause; hence woman is to be avoided."
Again, in a Hindu proverb, we read:—
"Woman is a great whirlpool of suspicion; a dwelling place of vices; full of deceits; a hindrance in the way of heaven; the gate of hell."
This likening of woman to the "gate of hell" recalls some of the denunciations of the Christian Fathers of a much later date.
Being born a girl is almost a misdemeanour. The penalty overshadows and darkens the whole life until, perchance, redemption comes with the birth of a son. We begin to understand why infanticide was formerly so common in India, and why it still survives in some parts of the country. One writer says that Hindu women often threw their female children into the river, to preserve them from the hard fate awaiting them in life.
Barrenness is a grievous trial to a Hindu woman, imposing very serious social disabilities, including divorce. Numberless are the invocations, the spells, the incantations, and the mystical devices resorted to by women of the East as a cure for sterility. So great is the dread of infecundity that, throughout the Orient, women, whether married or single, adopt the most extravagant methods to ensure child-bearing.
Mr. E. S. Hartland, in his excellent and thorough investigation of "Primitive Paternity," has gathered together a number of the practices of Indian women. In Bombay a sterile woman will cut off a piece of the end of a robe of a fruitful woman as an amulet; or she will "steal a new-born infant's shirt, steep one end of it in water, drink the water, and destroy the shirt. The child to whom the clothing belonged would then die and be born again from the womb of the woman performing the ceremony."
Embracing the image of the god representing fertility, a very old and common custom, is still practised by women in India. All over the country there are figures, and even unshaped stones, alleged to impart fruitfulness to women.
The yearning for male children induces Hindu women to perform several ceremonies. In the third month of pregnancy, according to the Grikya-Sûtvas, the husband who desires a son should administer to his wife curds from a cow, which has a calf of the same colour as herself, containing two beans and a barleycorn for each handful of curds. The man says to the woman: "What dost thou drink?" To this she answers: "Generation of a male child." When the potion, the questions, and the responses have been repeated three times, the husband inserts in the wife's right nostril the juice of a fresh herb."[1]
Walking round the sacred fire is another rite said to induce conception. It is practised by the Brahmans of Dharwâr, while a priest recites a hymn.
The destruction of girls by the hands of their mothers is not sanctioned by religion; but public opinion and the law are not severe in regard to the practice. Many children of the female sex disappear; "they have been taken by wild animals." In 1870, three hundred girls from the town of Umritzar were carried away by wolves.[2]
"Let thy mother be to thee like unto a God." Notwithstanding, sorrow is the lot of the woman who is sterile, or who brings forth only girls. For her there is no adoration.
Child-marriage is another evil indicted by the Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati. This is one of the practices difficult to reconcile with the Hindu regard for the welfare of women. Dr. Coomaraswamy refers very briefly to the custom, and regrets that it still exists. I think I am right in saying that Miss Noble scarcely touches on the ethics of child-marriage in "The Web of Indian Life."
No choice in love is permitted to a Hindu maiden. Apologists for the marriage of arrangement explain that courtship begins after union, and that wooing usually ends with wedlock in the Western nations. This may be true in part; but the risk of incompatability, or of sheer maladaptation, is very great when no selection whatever has been exercised by the contracting partners in conjugality.
In the case of a girl of nine years, taken as a wife, and kept by the bridegroom's mother until the nubile age, there is a chance of opportunities for learning something of a husband's character before the physical consummation. That is the only kind of courtship before wedlock.
In Bengal conjugal union with quite young children is still practised. Manu directs that girls of eight may be married, and that is the earliest age permissible. It is the usual custom to defer actual marriage until the bride has reached the period of puberty, which is usually supposed to occur at an earlier age in the East than in the West. There are, however, recorded cases of the marriage of girls under ten.
In 1890, fifty-five lady doctors petitioned the Viceroy and the Governor-General of India for an Act deferring the marriage of girls until the age of fourteen. Thirteen terrible instances of physical injury inflicted upon children, through premature union, were set down in the petition. In one case a child of seven died three days after the marriage ceremony.
In ancient times in India, it was decreed that husbands who cohabited with wives under ten years of age, with or without their consent, should be guilty of rape, and sentenced to life-long banishment, or imprisonment for ten years.[3] The age of consummation was raised, some years ago, to twelve.
Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D., in an "Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on the Subject of Child-marriage," said that Indian girls are not physically adapted for maternity even when they have reached puberty. "A Hindoo girl of fifteen is about the equal of an English girl of eleven, instead of the reverse."
Premature marriage of girl-children is not restricted to India. It was practised in England in the time of Elizabeth; for an Act of her reign permitted legal wedlock with a child of ten. The marriageable age among the Esquimaux and other primitive peoples is frequently as early as in India.
The Pundita Sarasvati states that young wives are sometimes flogged by their husbands. This is, however, by no means a distinctly Eastern practice. Wife-beating is fairly common in almost every part of the world, and is practised with greater frequency in England than many persons imagine.
Medical science in India is in a backward state, although the treatment of disease is receiving more study, and modern methods are being introduced. The Pundita says that, through incapable treatment, a very large number of women die in India, and she attributes the high female mortality to this cause.
An instance of the conservative spirit of Hinduism has arisen lately (1913). The suffering woman of high caste runs the risk of grave religious and social censure if she undergoes an operation for the cure of a serious malady. Thus, the Maharanee of Indore had to come to England for an operation for appendicitis, and it is said that she incurred blame for breaking away from the tradition forbidding such relief.
This interdiction will probably disappear in the future. It affords an example of the apparently contradictory and inconsistent attitude of the Indian mind respecting the protection of women. A husband may not eat with his wife, nor see her taking a
meal. She is encompassed by pious ceremony and ritual; and respect and even honour are accorded to her. But she must not be profaned by the touch of a man-surgeon, though her life is in peril. These anomalies in the treatment of Hindu women appear highly singular to Western people, who tend to outgrow their traditions more easily than the Orientals. Modern science, with its hostility to belief in fables, superstitions, and magic, is not in harmony with the credulous, imaginative Hindu outlook and veneration for old customs.
The position of widows is as unfortunate as that of childless women, or the mothers of girls. There are millions of widows in India, many of them young, and well constituted for re-marriage and the functions of motherhood. Hinduism forbids the second union, though the law is being modified. A girl widowed at eighteen must remain celibate for the rest of her life. Judged from a racial hygienic standpoint alone, this restriction is injurious. The enforcement of widowhood for the whole of the puerperal life of a wife, whose husband has died while she was barely a woman, is, in both an individual and social sense, open to numerous objections.
Miss Noble might contend that the widow is perfectly resigned to her celibacy; that she is more than content in her loneliness. She is "a sacred mystery." Does this reflection console the mateless woman, left as a "child-widow" through the death of her betrothed?[4]
No doubt many widows in India are reconciled to their fate by the sainthood that the decease of a husband confers upon them. Maybe, numerous bereaved women experience pride in the honour shown to them by the traveller, who prostrates himself before them, and allows the dust of her feet to settle upon him as a benison. Our sympathy is not with these, but with the woman to whom love, a husband, and a family stand for all that is most desirable and precious in life.
Mrs. Krishnarao Bholanath Divatia, who contributes a section on "The Hindu Woman" to the volume "India," says that the condition of widows has been much misstated by foreign writers. She alludes to the happiness of Indian family life, and states that the widows are much honoured, especially if they are the mothers of sons. The re-marriage of widows is now permitted by law in the Empire of India. It is not, however, popular, though it will no doubt become so. The same writer declares that polygamy is less fashionable than it was some years ago, and that educated men are opposed to the practice.
Her Highness the Maharani of Baroda pleads earnestly for the introduction of those British institutions to India that will be likely to benefit women. She gives a review of various employments which might be followed by her Hindu sisters. Her book "The Position of Women in Indian Life," has somewhat more of the spirit of the West than the East. Mr. S. M. Mitra, the well-known writer on Indian life, is very emphatic, in his introduction to the volume, concerning the need for reform.
"India must learn Western ways and keep pace with the West, or she must go to the wall. India must assimilate Western ways. Blind imitation will not do. The Indian must try to harmonize Eastern practice with Western civilisation."
An industrialised, commercialised India is apparently the ideal of the Western reformers. It is not the ideal of cultivated Hindu minds. We may admit that the East will profit by the example of the West in certain directions. But it is a lamentable fact that the implanting of Western virtues in Indian soil is accompanied by a crop of vices. "It is terrible to see how demoralizing our contact is to all sorts and conditions of men," says the author of "The Soul of a People."
On the other hand, the lady doctors of the Dufferin 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."[5] 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.[6] 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.
"Young India talks of political slavery, of foreign despotism, and of the British yoke, but these, if they really exist, are nothing in comparison with the despotism incarnate which rules the family life of the people, and until they reform that family life they will not be worthy to call for and to receive political freedom."
Nand Lai Ghose takes a Bengali woman as a type representing the indifferent social status of the Indian wife.
This writer gives a picture of the whole career of a Hindu woman from her birth in the zenana to old age. He asserts that children are brought into the world without adequate medical assistance. The midwives are chiefly of the low caste, and they are old women who know scarcely anything of maternity treatment. They occupy, however, an important position in India, and are called "second mothers." Many infants die through defective attention and a lack of knowledge of children's ailments.
The mother is convalescent for thirty-one days after the birth of her child. She then undergoes a ceremony, and is allowed to leave her couch. The suckling of infants is prolonged.
The Babu Ghose writes that Hindu girls are brought up strictly and practically secluded. Their diversions are few. They are fond of dolls, and they day at doll weddings. The Indian girl is capable of very warm friendships with girl companions. She goes to school, but the period of education is too short, as she usually marries before she is eighteen. At sixteen years of age, she is often already a mother. The girls of respectable families are not allowed to sing or dance, but sometimes they imitate the dancing of the nautch girls. Dancing is usually an art practised only by the professional dancers, who are not highly esteemed in society.
The system of marriage by parental arrangement is condemned by the Babu. He contrasts the custom with the freedom of selection permitted to Western women. Early marriage in India is attributable to the extreme dread of losing caste. It is most important that every well-born girl should be betrothed or married while still a child. This institution is of comparatively modern origin, and is contrary to the teaching of the "Sushrata," a famous medical work, which states that girls should not marry before sixteen, and that the husband should have reached the age of twenty-five. The protracted marriage ceremonies and rites are criticised by this writer. There is too much publicity and interference on the part of relatives. The bride and bridegroom know little or nothing of one another; yet they are united for life in the closest of human intimacies. The marriage of very young girls to adult men is strongly denounced by the Babu Nand Lal Ghose.
In an impartial spirit I have cited the views of both native defenders and critics of the status of women in India. No doubt the truth lies between the two points of view. But when educated and observant Englishwomen, reared in the traditions of Christian monogamy, assure us that Hindu women are happier wives than their sisters in England, and that family life is idyllic, we are bound to qualify the testimony of ardent Hindu critics. The strongest denunciations of social customs are often proclaimed by native reformers, and not by foreigners.
- ↑ Quoted by Hartland from the "Sacred Books."
- ↑ E. S. Hartland, in "Primitive Paternity," writes:—"In the Panjâb, Hindu women who lose a female child during infancy, or while it still sucks milk, take it into the jungle and put it in a sitting position under a tree. Sugar is put into its mouth and a corded roll of cotton between its fingers. Then the mother says in Panjâbi—
'Eat the sugar; spin the cotton;
Don't come back, but send a brother.'If on the following day it be found that the dogs or jackals have dragged the body towards the mother's house, she considers it a bad omen, saying: 'Ah! she is coming back—that means another girl.' But if it be dragged away from the home, she is glad, saying: 'The brother will come.'"
- ↑ "A Practical View of the Age of Consent,"
Pamphlet, Calcutta, 1891. - ↑ According to Dubois ("Hindu Manners") "the bare mention of a second marriage for a Hindu woman would be considered the greatest insult. She would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."
- ↑ "Imperial Gazetteer of India," 1908.
- ↑ "A Guide for Indian Females from Infancy to Old Age."