“Woman is woman, of course everywhere. From the savage half-nude African who values the worth of her male relative by the number of scalps to his credit, to the most cultured European Queen on her throne, they are all capable of loving and hating and share in the good and evil qualities of the human race more or less equally. But each is influenced by the conditions of life, amidst which she lives. And, speaking generally, the most-degraded of Hindu women would no more approve of dancing with male friends in evening dress or moving about with them than the lowest of English women consent to be one of half a dozen wives in a Mahomedan household”.
MAY 12, 1899
The women of India
DIAMOND CUTS DIAMOND, SAYS THE OLD SAW. AND AN ENGLISHMAN’s misrepresentations are best answered by an Englishman. We know it and so we are thankful to the Pioneer for taking the trouble to set Colonel Temple right in regard to the women of India. Some foreigners have abused the Indian woman. And many have pitied her. But the pity, unlike the abuse which was mostly malicious, was ever based on a misunderstanding, as much racial as personal. Writing of Johnson Macaulay says that his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike gate; that is that he knew nothing of humanity outside London and consequently his judgements of people who were not Londoners, were grotesque and outrageous in their ignorant exaggeration. And the narrowness of view that Macaulay deplores in the great Cham of English literature, every Englishman suffers from more or less. Many Englishmen living have seen far more of the world’s life than Johnson could ever hope or dream of seeing. But seeing is not appreciating. And an Englishman is generally too partial to his own views and ideals of living to care to understand the inwardness of the life that is not his. The consequence is he makes a very indifferent judge, that is, when he is not a very unjust one, where other societies than his own are concerned. He sees that an Englishwoman, when she is ignorant, is very vulgar, that she is not happy when she is shut up in a house, or her personal freedom is restricted in any way; that she seldom, if ever, likes her married life ordered by her mother or mother-in-law; and straightway fancies that she is typical of womanhood all the world over. Woman is woman of course everywhere. From the savage half-nude African who values the worth of her male relative by the number of scalps to his credit, to the most cultured European Queen on her throne, they are all capable of loving and hating and share in the good and evil qualities of the human race more or less equally. But each is influenced by the conditions of life, amidst which she lives. And, speaking generally, the most degraded of Hindu women would no more approve of dancing with male friends in evening dress or moving about with them than the lowest of English women consent to be one of half a dozen wives in a Mahomedan household. Our tastes and appreciations we inherit just as much as traits of character. And it is a pity that all of us do not remember the fact while sitting in judgment over those who are not of our community. Colonel Temple, for instance, cannot say, as a matter of personal experience, that the Hindu woman is unhappy. She looks it, says he, and considers and adds she must be unhappy. For, how can she be happy with a mother-in-law who ever keeps nagging, with a husband in whose presence she may not sit, and with her ignorance and love for seclusion? Colonel Temple is sure she cannot be happy and says that her daily life resolves into this: “the strict performance of petty religious ceremonies, feeding, bathing, dressing, cooking and household drudgery, all so hedged round with minute regulations as to make each a special occupation, and to these must be added visiting and gossip during her afternoon leisure.” What a mean, burdensome, inane existence the Indian woman’s life is to be sure! But seriously, is the average English woman’s any better? With her, no doubt, “petty domestic” ceremonies take the place of “petty religious” ones. But we do not know that pettiness is the more bearable because it is domestic and not religious. Yet she has no mother-in-law to worry her. And that reminds us that the tyrannical mother-in-law is not the rule in Hindu Society; and even she is not so black as she is painted. Nor is she so persistent and unchanging in her cruelty to the girl-wife. Nor, to judge by what we hear from Englishmen themselves, now and again, is she such an unnecessary evil as some would have us believe. We do not pretend to be able to know English society. But the Pioneer must know what it is about when it says that “there must be many a European who, after many years of married life, wishes that he had entrusted his young wife to his own mother for a month or two after his marriage.” Colonel Temple makes a good deal of the fact – and he is not the first to do so – that the Indian woman is not book-read. To this the Pioneer makes a fitting reply, “It is true that she is absolutely ignorant of books: but is all learning to be found only in books? Colonel Temple does not say so, but surely he must know that the Indian mater-familias, as he calls her, is more often than not her husband’s and her brother’s great and trusted adviser in all matters touching the family property, and that there have been rulers behind the purdah, every whit as brilliant as our Queen Elizabeth, and that properties have been managed by women, whose voice even no man outside the family circle has ever heard, as prudently and charitably as the wealth of the Baroness Burdett Coutts.’ Colonel Temple also says: – “When there is seclusion, brightness and youthfulness are absent from the manner; the laughter is not happy, it is spiteful; the smiles are not of the pleased but of the cynical. Where there is no seclusion, brightness and youthfulness are the characteristics of the people; there is happiness and good humour in their laughter; there is pleasure and kindliness in the smiles. It comes to this as an observation on society. Lock up and distrust the women and the brilliance will flicker out of life. If you doubt this go to Hindustan, which secludes and then to Burma, Siam and Malaysia, which do not: go to China which secludes, and then to Japan which does not.” And this also we will answer in our Allahabad contemporary’s trenchant language. “Has Colonel Temple ever seen happier faces than among a brood of all castes round a shield during Mohurrum, Santhals bringing in a dead leopard, Koels going out to beat for deer, Bengali schoolboys watching a football match, Behar coolies beating a tank for indigo, North-West Rajputs coming back from a funeral, or Punjab traders waiting for the train? Frenchmen tell us that we take our pleasures sadly. Are we to infer that we distrust our women more than Frenchmen distress theirs?” Of course not.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I