WOMEN OF INDIA NEED EDUCATION RANEE DECURES.

Shannon News, 14 May 1929, Page 3

WOMEN OF INDIA NEED EDUCATION RANEE DECURES.

BOMBAY. There was a great leeway to be made up and a spirit, of the deepest devotion was required in applying themselves to the mighty task of educating every woman in India, declared the Dowagei P,ani Bali Kumari (of Mundi), jrho presided over the third All-India Women’s Conference on Educational Reform at Patna. t „ The president deplored the extent of illiteracy of the women of India and quoted the latest official statistics to show that only 21 out of every 1000 women in India were literate, and even this literacy was of a rudimentary type. She emphasised the need of directing educational progress along sound lines. The liani strongly urged that the. highest culture and enlightenment should be the birthright of women as well as men, and they should not be satisfied with the mid-Victorian ideal enunciated by Tennyson in his ‘ln Memoriam. ” In her opinion, the question of the educational p T- . gross of tlie women of India was bound up intimately, with the improvement of social conditions. The best of their educational programme must come to naught and all tlilieir resolutions would be futile if the women could not come out of “Purdah” and have the benefits of light and tir, if little girls continuer to. be hustled into marriage before they had laid the foundations of the most rudimentary education, and women were handicapped as at present by disabil-' itfiep of various kinds, preventing them from reaching the full rights of knowledge and experience of which they were capable. The conference adopted two resolutions. One of them regretted that while other provinces chjoycd women’s franchise, the Province of Behar had been denied the elementary right of citizenship for its women, and urged members of the Legislative Council to remove the sex disqualification forthwith. In the other the conference appealed to the government to appoint a committee including women, to inquire into the sanitary conditions under which women worked”, and laid strong emphasis on the prohibition ,of female, labour in mines. .