THE CHILD MARRIAGE INIQUITY IN INDIA

West Coast Times, Issue 10534, 19 July 1897, Page 4

THE CHILD MARRIAGE INIQUITY IN INDIA

(Quiver.) A missionary of the Church of England Zenana Society heard screams ißSUingfrom a hous9 in Krishnagar. She asked a man standing at the door what was the matter. It was only a little bow lately arrived in the zenana. She asked permission to enter, and was led into the women's apartments. In the dim light she could just discern a small heap in the corner, and plaintive moans told her that it was something living. She drew near and spoke, and a woe-begone face appeared, to be instantly hidden in terror a t the sight of a fair complexioned Englishwoman. By degrees the sound of a gentle voice speaking her own language and the sight of a scrap-book inspired curiosity and confidence. The heap became more and more animated as one picture after another was turned over before her eyes. " What made you sorbaro?" the lady asked. " They beat me," the child replied, and she drew up her sash, and disclosed wales, which showed that she had had ample excuse. " Why did they beat you ?" " Because I cried for my mother." And the face puckered afresh with the recollection of lost love and care. And now that her new friend, whose tenderness bad dried her tears, must leave her, what must she do? Before going away the English woman pleaded with the mother-in-law not to punish the young wife again for the same offence. "It is so natural that a child should cry for her mother," she urged. ' A smile was the only response. This was the young bride's honeymoon, and it was not an uncommon beginning of wedded life. The authoress, " A.L.O.E."— a missionary of the same society in the Punjab— met with a little pupil the day | after he; 1 arrival in her husbands zenana. The child crept into her white-haired teacher's arms, her tearful face and heaving frame mutely appealing for sympathy and help. The gentle old lady held her in a loving embrace ; but stronger arms were needed to protect a young bow from oppressive custom. It is hard to find a bright side to the picture of zenana life. The weary monotony is seldom broken. Even domestic duties are beneath the dignity of a very high-caste wife. Sire smokes, she sleeps, she chews, she plaits her hair, she counts her ]ewels ; at last she dies, without hope oi comfort. " I shall spend all my life in this narrow room," said one young wife bitterly ; " then I shall die, and they will pub me into a narrow grave, and that will be the end of me." Another, who had begun to realise that there was a fair world outside the four walls of her prison, which she could enjoy if only she were allowed, looked with liquid eyes into • the face of an English lady visitor and inquired. " Why are we so different from that ? You are like that bird," she continued, pointing to a dove which flew past the window above her. "You are like that bird flying toward heaven ; we are like the same bird, shut up in a cage with its wings clipped." Seven years ago a little girl of nine years old was seen on the parapet of a house in Bombay. A policeman, noticing that she seemed inclined to throw herself down into the street, entered, and found the reason why her life had become too heavy a burden to bear. Her husband, a man of 47, who had been married already fourteen times, had bought her from her father for fourteen rupees a month. He had beaten her, and had threatened to kill her if she failed to untie a knot in his hair within five days. The case was tried, but as there was not sufficient evidence to prove habitual cruelty, was eventually dismissed. It was reported in the Press, with an indignant protest against the " Child-marriage iniquity." Imagination fills in the dark outlines of this picture with still darker shading, and traces in the back-ground the ghosts of fourteen miserable victims. It is easy to think of the young wife, her soft little fingers, trembling and clumsy from fright, as she tries on pain of death, to fulfil the task her lord and protector has set her. Perhaps the story of Bluebeard is easy to credit.