STRANGE INDIAN CUSTOMS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 687, 18 July 1914, Page 5

STRANGE INDIAN CUSTOMS.

CHILD MARRIAGE AND PERPETUAL WIDOWHOOD Much light has recently been shed on Indian customs,by writers like flarold Begbie and others. But Tittle is known by the average man of the many appalling customs that atill e?iat amongst tha atrange people- of that huge land. The british Government has endeavoured to alleviate the lot of the pariahs, and other low castes, but haa hesitated to interfere too seriously, with religious beliefs and customs. The practice of Sutteeism, in which tha widow of a dead man was burned alive on her lata husband's funeral pile has been suppressed; but the practice of childmarriage still creates much misery among3t the women. For a woman to survive her husband in India is purgatory, but to grow old in her widowhood is hell. She is never allowed to remarry. Recent returns shjw that in India there are 27 million widow?, 6,000,000 under fourteen years of age, and 14,000, of them undEr four. The Zenanas contain 40,000,001) women of better caste whose lives are shadowed and unhappy. Many societies are at work uplifting arid brightening the lives of thesa unfortunate people. The Ramabai Mission, founded by an Indian widow, is very effectively working amongst the child-widows, and has done much to upY.f/. and educate them. Itß funds are chiefly gathered by holding sales of needle work and other beautiful specimens of art made bv the widows in the Mission home 3. A party : of voluntary workers is holding a sale on behalf •of the Mission on Tuesday and Wednesday next in the Municipal Hall. The public will have an opportunity of seeing and purchasing work that is rarely senn in this country, and will have the further satisfaction of knowing that they are helping a most deserving and worthy causa. •