WOMEN OF INDIA NEED EDUCATION RANEE DECLARES

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6890, 22 April 1929, Page 11

WOMEN OF INDIA NEED EDUCATION RANEE DECLARES

m ; . : - - BOMBAY. There was a. great leeway to be made up and a spirit of the deepest devotion was required in applying themselves to the mighty task of educating every woman in India, declared the Dowagov Rani Lali Kumari (of Mundi), who presided over the third All-India Women’s Conference on Educational Reform at Patna. ' The president deplored the extent of illiteracy of the women of Indiajand quoted the latest official statistics to sliow that only 21 out of every 1000 woinen in India were literate, and even this literacy was of t* rudimontary type. She emphasised the need of directing educational progress along sound lines. The Rani strongly urged that the highest culture'- and enlightenment should- bo the birthright of women as well as men, and: they should not be satisfied with the a mid-Victorian ideal enunciated by Tennyson in his “In Memoriam. , t: la her opinion, the question of the educational prigress of the women of India was bound up -intimately with tho -improvement of social conditions. The best of their educational programme must come to naught and all thheir resolutions would be futile if the women could not' come out of 1 ‘ Purdah” and have tho bonefits of light and tir, if little girls continuer to be hustled into marriage before they had laid the foundations of the most rudimentary oducation, and women were handicapped as at present by disabilities of various kinds, preventing them from reaching the full rights of knowledge and' experience of which they were capable. The conference adopted two resolutions. One of them regretted that while other provinces enjoyed women’s franchise, tho Provinco of Behar had been denied the elementary right of citizonship for its women, and urged members of tho Legislative Council to. remove the sex disqualification forthwith. In the other the conferonco appealed to the government to appoint a committeo including women, to inquire into the sanitary conditions under which women worked, and laid strong emphasis on the prohibition of female labour in mines.