RADIO TALKS KEEP INDIANS INFORMED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 2

RADIO TALKS KEEP INDIANS INFORMED

Many villages in India have radios put there by the Government to enable the villagers to hear news and informative talks. "It is a good and important way of diseminating information in places where many persons are illiterate,” Miss Molly Mullan said at a meeting of the Christchurch Federated Business and Professional Women’s Club, at which she spoke on aspects of life in India. Talks on oaring for stock and poultry, and improving agricultural methods, were given, said Miss Mullan. Before she took up her present position as principal of St. Margaret's College, Miss Mullan spent 16 years in India, as principal of the Bishop Azariah High School, at Vijayavada, 300 miles north of Madras. India was a country of complete and complex contrasts, Miss Mullan said. “There are rich, and terribly poor: bril-

liantly educated and abysmally stupid. “Indians are at the top of professions and careers all over the world. To balance that, you have the terrible problem of illiterates who don’t want to learn. You go out to the villages and try to teach some of the women and they laugh at you. They can’t see anything for them in learning. “How do you restore homogeneity out of such contrasts?” Country Life No true ideas of life in India could be gained until one went out into the country, Miss Mullan said. It was impossible to do that unless accompanied by someone who knew the countryside and the people. The best thing was to become attached to some mission in India, which would pass a traveller from station to station.

“The missionaries are the ones who know the people.” “In the village the caste system is still thoroughly and deeply entrenched,” she said. It had been for thousands of years, and no person was going to be able to change it straight away, though it was breaking down in cities. Great Honour

The high-caste Brahmin had a kind of culture that New Zealanders knew noth-

ing about, Miss Mullan said. It was a great honour to be invited into a Brahmin home. “When you are invited into that culture you think, well, they have been like this for 4000 years—while our ancestors were running round in woad.” Every member of a Brahmin family will have musical, poetic, or artistic abilities and a guest will be entertained by items from every single member of a family, from tots up. In the merchant quarter of a village, many men might be worth a great deal of money, but they would not be able to read or write “They keep all their accounts in their head.”

In the outcast quarter would be found the dregs of humanity filthy, unkempt, suffering from malnutrition, Miss Mullan said.

Its marriage customs were an important ramification of Indian life, and affected every aspect of family life. Parents still decided who their children would marry, and great care was taken to select a suitable partner. Young persons knew if they behaved badly they would stand no chance of being selected by a family for a marriage partner. It was definitely to a girl’s advantage to keep herself out of trouble, or she might have to be content with an inferior partner.