WOMEN IN INDIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2149, 19 November 1885, Page 2

WOMEN IN INDIA.

'An Anglo-Indian newspaper thus comments upon the published letter of a Hindoo woman:—"She writes with a good deal ef, feminine emphasis,. but she amply proves her case, that the rich and poor, the old and young of her sex, suffer much misery and pain - and degradation through the strict observance of social institutions invented by men for their own advantage; Evety woman on the .death of her husband, even of a child's husband, is condemned to a life of perpetual widowhood. But a man can not only have a second wife on the death of , the first one, but can marry any number of wives at one and the same time. Even if he has only one wife, he continues to live in the bosom of his own family, and * has never, under any circumstances, to submit to the tender mercies of a mother-in-law, In India all the boys and girls are betrothed indissolubly almost as soon as they are born, At the age of eight at latest a hus- - band must be found for every girl. ~ Girls | are generally, perhaps, married at this age, and their parents are still at liberty' to send them to school until they are ten years old. But after that the leave of the mother-in-lafir must be "Obtained^'But even in these advanced times,' our correspondent,' and even in B'ombay —the chief centre of civilisation—how many mothers-in-law are there who send their daughters to school after thoy. are ten years ol 1?' Thus the girls are taken ■ away from school just when they are beginning to understand and appreciate education. Even girls belonging to themost advanced families are mothers before ■ they are fourteen, and have thencefourth to devote themselves to the hard realities of life, . ! 1

. " The unfortunate Hindoo bride may neither ait nor speak in the presence of any elder member of her husband's family, She must work with tho servants, rise early, and go to bed late, and be perpetually abused and frequently beaten by her mother-in-law. She must live in tho most rigid seclusion. Her husband, who is entirely depeudent on his family, • can never take her side, and, fresh himself from college, is apt to despise her for her • ignorance, and to tolerate her'as a necessary evil. The children either die off like weakly seedlings, or grow up .without vigor. The women lose their beauty at twenty, are long past their primo at thirty, and old at forty. But a worse f.ite awaits them if, instead of- being - Hindoo wives, they become Hindoo widows. Of this wretched fate our correspondent fortunately knows nothing personally,, and so cannot write from experience. But there are 22,000,OOOwidows in India, many of whom lost their nominal husbands when they were children, and none of whom can ever marry again. For the rest of their lives they are deprived of ornaments and colored garments, their heads are shaved, they are condemned to the. coarsest clothes and poorest food, and wear out their days in seclusion as tho owest drudges of the household."