“SLAVES OF THE GODS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 761, 6 September 1929, Page 14

“SLAVES OF THE GODS”

SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF INDIA / JVrit ten for THE SUX) KATHERINE MAYO startled "*■ the self-complacency of India by her book, “Mother India.” Her statements were challenged. Her spirit was denounced. Her indictment of India's immemorial customs was fiercely resented. Yet C. S. Rauga Iyer, in his “Father India,” could do little more than say, by way of defence, that grave moral evils existed also in Western countries. He failed to admit that whereas in the West these evils persist despite Christian teaching which condemns and forbids them, in India they are inextricably associated with the religions of the land. It is this which tills the minds of all moral reformers in India with dismay. Her best triends are balked in all their efforts by the fact that Hinduism sanctions customs from which an enlightened conscience recoils with horror. One eminent Indian says: “Every e il custom entrenches itself in this country behind religion and secures support as a religious custom.” Undeterred by the criticism and c* nsure which her first book evoked. Miss Mayo has produced another entitled “Slaves of the Gods,” dealing afresh with the iniquities on which she had already turned so relentless a searchlight. The book is a series of 12 stories for the veracity of which she vouches, although names are, of course, veiled. In them Miss Mayo puts her finger unerringly on the plague-spots of Indian life, and says: • Thou ailest here and here.” The book is painful reading. Tender hearts will writhe under its tales ot cruelty and callousuess. Friends of India will lament that a land so fascinating in its beauty, so marvellous in its history and so influential In its philosophy, should be defiled by such practices. The stories deal

ith child-marriage, widowhood, untouchability, temple-immorality and it ndred topics, and are fearlessly frank and unsparingly candid. To each chapter of her book Miss J.layo appends statements by Hindu reformers which prove that a new spirit is astir in Indian society and that a sense of shame is compelling it revision of ancient laws. No custom is more prolific in suffering to countless millions than that of childmarriage. Children are betrothed in infancy and at far too early an age are handed over to husbands they have not seen. Reformers who desire the highest welfare of their land plead for an amendment of the laws iu this regard. Pandita Eamabai, Mrs. Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, and many others have protested against this inhuman practice, but so far with scant promised success. As Sir Hari Singh stated in the Legislative Assembly on September S, 1928: “Orthodox (Hindu) opinion has been against all reforms. It has been from time immemorial in favour of human sacrifices. It lias been in favour of suttee. It has been In favour of infanticide. It has been in favour of baby marriages.” Another evil with which Miss Mayo deals unsparingly is the treatment of women in their time of greatest pain and peril. Of little Roseleaf she says: “So in terror she crept from her chamber into the appointed outhouse. And there, shut away in stifled darkness, she lay upon a heap of foul old rags, attended only by an aged outcaste woman, most ignorant of the oppressed, lowest of the despised, dirtiest of the unclean, such as alone the Hindu code allots to aid women in their time of mortal stress.” Motherhood is with us a sacred thing and all that medical skill and nursing tenderness can do to alleviate its inevitable anguish is employed; in India the unhappy mother is banished to a noisome den and left to the care of an incompetent outcaste woman. This means an amount of misery which is simply unimaginable. As the late Walter H. Page, great American Ambassador, said: “The one central tragedy of life that has always appealed most strongly to pity, and appeals now even more strongly than ever, is the wreck of womanhood,” and if Miss Mayo’s searching book intensifies that appeal it will fulfil a splendid purpose.

If a husband dies in India the widow, whatever her age may be, is denounced as the cause of his death and treated with the utmost indignity. Her jewels are stripped off, her head is shaven, a simple sari of white cotton cloth is allowed her. One meal a day is all she may eat. She becomes an object of contempt and scorn. Mrs. Parvati wrote in 1927: “Countless Is the number of unhappy women condemned to widowhood even beforo they have ceased to be children. The sin and misery of it all is indescribable. . . . Can such things which are a disgrace to the sacred land of India be tolerated by her sons any longer?” Another says: “The culmination of a woman’s t ragedy is in her widowhood. There are twenty million widows in India, whose lot is pitiable in the extreme. It was formerly a pious practice for widows to be immolated on the luneral-pvres of their husbands; but the British Government abolished this atrocity a hundred years ago.” Indeed, as R. L. Rau admits; "In the 125 \ ears that have passed away, it must l>e said that it is after all the Englishmen mainly who have espoused the cause of women in India.”

Several of Miss Mayo's chapters refer to the oppressed Hindus, the Adi-Dravida, or the Untouchables. There are sixty millions of these depressed people in India. They are the scavengers of the country. “The Hindu religion teaches that they are born outcaste because of sins committed in some former life, and must remain outcastes until they die. There is no escape on this side of ilie grave.” Only last year the Untouchable Association of Jullundur presented a petition to the Simon Commission which said: “We do not believe in the Hindu religion, nor do we hold it in high esteem. ... In the name of humanity and the British sense of justice we beseech you to take such steps as you deem necessary, so that our vast community may longer be denied the natural rights

of the British Empire and be not left at the mercy of the Hindu tyrants.” In closing her book Miss Mayo appeals to the women of Hindu India to exert all their influence on the side of moral reform. She declares that no people can occupy, In the eyes of the world, a status higher than it accords to its women and urges the mothers to ground tlieir boys during the first formative years of their life in that cleanness, that justice, that true chivalry toward women, without which no people can increase in stature. She admits the difficulty arising from the fact that only two per cent, of India’s women can read and write, and quotes Gandhi as saying that there is no power of resistance left in the women of India to fight against any evil whatever, yet tells them “Never will you see your India standing upright and free on her own feet till you women of the Hindu world ensure to your manhood of tomorrow not better, more loving or more devoted, but wiser, stronger, more enlightened mothers.” If that appeal finds a response in the hearts of the educated womanhood of India a new and a nobler day will dawn on that illustrious and glorious country. H.H.D. Auckland.