THE NEW WOMAN OF INDIA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 49, 22 October 1912, Page 5

THE NEW WOMAN OF INDIA.

Sir Bampfylde Fuller, formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal, lias been revisiting India, and says some interesting things about it in the Nineteenth Century. “Traditional custom has been but little affected by the study of English*” he says. “During the past halfcentury we have seen that youths can pass by thousands through our schools and colleges, learning our language, studying our literature and our science, but not imbiding from either the least effective desire to change their habits. The force of environment is much more compelling ; and in India, as in Turkey and China, reform has been the outcome of residence in the West. LIFTING THE VEILS. “For Indians, perhaps, the most fruitful of reforms would be the emancipation of their wives and daughters. We shall understand this if we reflect upon the enormous influence that woman has exerted upon the environment and upon the development of the peoples of Europe. To draw an illustration from the most material standpoint, if women were not able to observe, to emulate, and to purchase, our shops, our factories would, in \great measure, have no reason for their existence. In India woman's functions have been limited to those connected with reproduction. She i»

secluded from her environment and has no influence upon it. “For many years past Indian ladies of rank have been privileged to take part in European society, and one might meet some Bengali ladies unveiled in the drawing-rooms of Calcutta. But these belonged to the small sect of the Brahmo Samaj, with whom the education and emancipation of women has been almost a point of religious doctrine. One may now perceive a deeper current. A Hindu revivalist movement—the Arya Samaj —which is of rapidly growing influence in the Punjab, opposes itself strongly to child-marriage, and is l convincing its diciplcs that a girl should not be a wife until she is at least fifteen years old. In this case, girls could stay at school until they had acquired some education; their education is strongly insisted upon, and even married women may bo found attending the schools of this sect.

“To one who had been five years absent from India it was surprising to' see the number of Indian ladies, untroubled by veils, who were visiting the places of interest at Delhi in the company of their husbands and brothers. 'Amongst the Mahrattis, also, one may notice a growing desire to widen the horizon of woman’s outlook. They have never married their daughters so preposterously young as lias been the general practice; they are now delaying marriage until fifteen or sixteen, and are showing a practical interest in the higher education of their daughters. The Parsi ladies in Bombay have long been emancipated, and it appears that it is in the West of’ India, among the Mahrattis and the people of the Punjab, that woman’s future is dawning most clearly. CLUBS FOR LADIES. “It must not lie supposed, however, that the Indian woman is sighing for liberty. In most cases she needs urgent persuasion to relinquish her veil. But she appreciates her liberty, and in Western India some ladies’ clubs have been formed where ladies of education can meet of evenings at badminton and tennis, and even at the bridge table. They are, of course, very far in advance of their humbler sisters. Reform will come slowly—as, indeed, is desirable, for its path Is thickly set with pitfalls.”