WOMEN OF INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 224, 20 September 1924, Page 22

WOMEN OF INDIA.

The second session of the United Provinces' Social Conference, which has become an adjunct of the Provincial Liberal Conference, was held in Allahabad recently. A feature of the gathering was the presence of a number of Hindu women, who took a lively interest in the proceedings. The conference was also presided over by a talented Bengali in the person of Mrs. Jwala Prasad, a niece of Dr. Babindranath Tagore. This is the first time since the social conferences were held in this country that a woman has guided the deliberations of a conference. That this precedent has been set'in a province where people are least willing to depart from custom is full of significance. In her presidential address dealing with the problems affecting women, Mr.. Jwala Prasad said: "Our progress as women is much hampered by a twofold purdah (veil), physical and mental; the physical purdah is that which confines the bodies of our girls and women within the four corners of the zenana (the women's apartment in a house), and the mental purdah is the purdah of ignorance, which keeps their minds in the dark. Indeed, the second purdah, that of ignorance, is infinitely more harmful than the first; and the two are certainly connected in a way, for after a certain age a girl is removed from school and kept in purdah, which thus retards the progress among women of a liberal education, and helps to perpetuate their superstition and ignorance. . . The exigencies of the times demand a liberal education for our girls. There has been an awakening among women as among the men of India. They are no longer content to live their old humdrum lives behind their purdah, but arc eager to come out into the outer -world, and to share with their husbands, brothers, and sons in the larger life of the nation. With women shut out from education and public life, half the nation is dead." The first resolution of the conference declared that the aim of the social reform movement was "social reconstruc- j tion based on principles of justice, free-1 dom, and equality, and of social purity, | by doing away with all artificial distinctions based on birth or sex." A sure and easy method of testing ' tinned foods is to press the bottom of the tin with the thumb. If it makes | a noise like a machine oilcan when it | is pressed, the tin is not airtight, and the contents are therefore unfit to cat. When cooking mushrooms, for safety's sake place a sixpence in the vessel "in which they are cooked, and if the silver .shows, the . lemst eliscoloration the i mushrooms are unfit for use. j