INDIAN WOMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 83, 9 April 1934, Page 2

INDIAN WOMEN

IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION. Two women wearing graceful saris attracted attention in Melbourne’s streets recently. They were Mrs. Al L. Rallia Ram and her daughter, Mis.-i Raj Alohini Rallia Ram. The mother was the first Punjabi woman to attend a university and to gain a degree, and her daughter is a recent graduate of the same university. They were on a pleasure trip to Australia, a voyage undertaken with tho object of avoiding the cold winter in their Indian home! They live in the country, in the hills, at Gurdaspur, some 74 miles from Lahore, in the Punjab, and there Aliss Ram plans when she returns to India to commence a kindergarten for the tiniest children of her town. She has obtained her bachelor of arts degree, and also has spent a year learning to be a teacher, paying as much attention a* was possible to tho study of kindergarten principles. She is hoping to go to England next year to do further study, and to visit the Montessori schools on the Continent. Her one regret about her visit to Australia in that she did not know about the kindergarten training colleges, otherwise she might have made plans to spend some further time in the country. It was in the ’nineties that Mrs. Ram commenced her university course at Allahabad University, of which the Lucknow University, which her daughter attended, was then part. She owes her opportunity to her father, who was a keen advocate of higher education for women. He, a member of an old Hindu family, became a convert to Christianity, and as a Christian lost his rights to his family’s ancestral property. Because he could not leave his children wealth, he determined that each should have the best education possible to commence life. Indian girls, Miss Ram declares, are particularly keen on education, and an increasing number arc attending the universities. Indeed, the Isabella Thobun (so named after an American woman missionary) College for Women, to which she belonged, is quite the largest department of the Lucknow University. A feeling is developing that no girl’s education can possibly be regarded as complete unless she has taken her university degree. This des k pite the fact that there are at present but two careers open to Indian girls in India —teaching and medicine. Borne few, but very few non-Christian, girls take up nursing. Nor is marriage allowed to interfere with education—many a girl takes her degree after marriage, and some do not commence their university course then. Indian men are anxious that their wives should be educated women, and encourage the girls to attend the universities. All the lectures at the Lucknow University are given in English. English is tho only possible language for such lectures, Aliss Ram considers, in an India of so many languages, ana she knows of but three universities where lectures are given in the vernacular, i ie language difficulty has also, she said rather handicappad the development of wireless in India, while tba Western music of the majority of stations only appeals to very few people. ____________