Less than 2 per cent, of the women of British India are literate in the sense of being able to write a letter of a few simple phrases, and read its answer, in any one language or dialect. To be exact, such literates numbered, in 1921, eighteen to the thousand.[1] But in the year 1911 they numbered only ten to the thousand. And, in order to estimate the significance of that increase, two points should be considered: first, that a century ago literate women, save for a few rare stars, were practically unknown in India; and, second, that the great body of the peoples, always heavily opposed to female education, still so opposes it, and on religio-social grounds.
[1. India in 1914-25, L. F. Rushbrook Williams, C.B.E., p. 276.]
Writing in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Abbé Dubois said:[2]
[2. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, pp. 336-7.]
The social condition of the wives of the Brahmins differs very little from that of the women of other castes...They are considered incapable of developing any of those higher mental qualities which would make them more worthy of consideration and also more capable of playing a usefuf part in life...As a natural consequence of these views, female education is altogether neglected. A young girl's mind remains totally uncultivated, though many of them have good abilities...It would be thought a disgrace to a respectable woman to learn to read; and even if she had learnt she would be ashamed to own it.
This was written of the Hindu. But Islam in India has also disapproved of the education of women, which, therefore, has been held by the vast majority of both creeds to be unnecessary, unorthodox, and dangerous.
In the year 1917, the Governor-General of India in Council appointed a commission to inquire and recommend as to the status of the University of Calcutta and of tributary educational conditions in Bengal. This commission comprised eminent British educators from the faculties of the Universities of Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester, and London, allied with eminent Indian professionals. Bengal, the field of inquiry, has long stood distinguished among all other provinces of British India for its thirst for learning. The testimonies accumulated by the Commission during its three years' work may consequently be taken as not unkindly reflecting the wider Indian horizon.
With regard to the education of women, it is therefore of interest to find Mr. Brajalal Chakravarti, Secretary of the Hindu Academy at Daulatpur, affirming:[3]
[3. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 414.]
It is strictly enjoined in the religious books of the Hindus that females should not be allowed to come under any influence outside that of the family. For this reason, no system of school and college education can be made to suit their require-ments...Women get sufficient moral and practical training in the household and that is far more important than the type of education schools can give.
Another of the Commission's witnesses, Mr. Hari-das Goswamy, Head Master of the High School at Asansol, amplified the thought, saying:[4]
[4. Ibid., p. 426.]
It is not wise to implant in [girls] by means of education tastes which they would not have an opportunity to gratify in their after life, and thus sow the seeds of future discontent and discord.
And Mr. Rabindra Mohan Dutta,[5] member of the faculty of the University itself, even while deploring that "darkness of ignorance and superstition" which, he asserts, puts the women of India "in continual conflict and disagreement with their educated husbands, brothers or sons," would yet follow the orthodox multitude, genuinely fearful of importing into the Indian home, from the distaff side,
the spirit of revolutionary and rationalistic iconoclasm condemning all our ancient institutions that are the outcome of a long past and are part of our flesh and blood as it were.
[5. Ibid., p. 422.]
When, however, the topic of women's education comes up for discussion in Indian political bodies, speakers arise on the side of change. In the Delhi Legislative Assembly, Dr. Hari Singh Gour [6] denounces the sequestration and suppression of women. And Munshi Iswar Saran, [7] member for the cities of the United Provinces, points out, in a spirit of ridicule, that it is
[6. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 363.]
[7. Ibid., 1922, Vol. II, Part II, p. 1631.]
...the sin of this Kali Yuga [Age of Destruction] that youngsters receive education and then decline to be ordered about by their elders...Such is our foolhardiness that we have started giving education to our girls...If this is going on, I ask whether you believe that you will be able to dictate to your daughters?
I recall the heat with which a wealthy young Hindu of my acquaintance, but just returned from an English university, asserted that he would never, never take an Indian bride, because he would not tie himself to "a wife of the tenth century." And among western-educated Indians in the higher walks of life, the desire for similarly educated wives sometimes rises even to a willingness to accept such brides with dowries smaller than would otherwise be exacted.
But this factor, though recognizable, is as yet small. Bombay, perhaps, gives its women more latitude than does any other province. Yet its Education Report asserts:[8]
[8. Quoted in Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Eighth Quinquennial Review, pp. 129-30.]
Educated men desire educated wives for their sons and presumably educate their daughters with the same object in view, but they generally withdraw them from school on any manifestation of a desire to...push education to any length which might interfere with or delay marriage.
The Report of the Central Provinces affirms:[*]
[*. Ibid.]
Even those parents who are not averse to their daughters' being literate consider that the primary course is sufficient, and that after its completion girls are too old to be away from their homes.
And Assam adds:[*]
[*. Ibid.]
[Parents] send their girls to school in order to enable themselves to marry them better and occasionally on easier terms. But as soon as a suitable bridegroom is available the girl is at once placed in the seclusion of the purdah.
Certainly the great weight of sentiment remains intact in its loyalty to ancient conditions. To disturb them were to risk the mould of manhood. The metaphor of Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Mental and Moral Science in Calcutta University, implies the dreaded risk: "Man," writes this Hindu philosopher, "is a home-brew in the vat of woman the brewster, or, as the Indian would put it, a home-spun in the loom of woman the spinster."[9]
[9. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 62.]
On such general grounds, says the Calcutta University Commission,[10] is the feeling against women's education "very commonly supported by the men, even by those who have passed through the whole course of western education." If the child be sent to school at all, it is more often to put her in a safe place out of the family's way, rather than to give her instruction for which is felt so faint a need and so great a distrust.
[10. Ibid.,VoLII, Parti, p. 5.]
To use the words of Mr. B. Mukherjee, M.A., F.R.E.S.:[11]
[11. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 440.]
The strict social system which makes the marriage of a girl religiously compulsory at the age of twelve or so also puts an end to all hope of continuing the education of the ordinary Hindu girl beyond the [marriageable] age.
It is estimated that over 73 per cent, of the total number of girls at school are withdrawn before they achieve literacy, and in the year 1922, in the great Bengal Presidency, out of every hundred girls under instruction but one was studying above the primary stage.[12]
[12. Progress of Education in Bengal, J. W. Holme, M.A,, Sixth Quinquennial Review.]
Such small advance as has been achieved, in the desperately up-hill attempt to bestow literacy upon the women of India, represents, first and foremost, a steady and patient effort of persuasion on the part of the British Government; second, the toil of British and American missionaries; and, third, the ability of the most progressive Indians to conceive and effect the transmission of thought into deed. But it is estimated that, without a radical change in performance on the part of the Indians themselves, ninety-five more years of such combined effort will be required to wrest from hostility and inertia the privilege of primary education for as much as 12 per cent, of the female population."
The Seva Sadan Society, pioneer Indian women's organization to provide poor women and girls with training in primary teaching and useful work, was started in 1908, in Poona, near Bombay. By the latest report at hand, it has about a thousand pupils. This society's success shows what the happier women of India could do for the rest, were they so minded. But its work is confined wholly to Bombay Presidency; and unfortunately, it has no counterpart, says the official report, in any other part of India.[13]
[13. Cf. Village Schools in India, Mason Olcott, Associated Press, Calcutta, 1926, p. 90.]
As will be shown in another chapter, the administration of education as a province of Government has of late years rested in Indian hands.
In 1921-2, British India possessed 23,778 girls' schools, inclusive of all grades, from primary schools to arts and professional colleges. These schools contained in the primary stage 1,297,643 pupils, only 24,555 in the Middle Schools and a still smaller number--5,818--in the High Schools.[14]
[14. The figures in this paragraph are drawn from Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. II.]
"Although," says the report, "the number of girls who proceed beyond the primary stage is still lamentably small--30,000 in all India out of a possible school-going population of fifteen millions--still it shows an increase of thirty per cent, over the attendance in 1917."[15]
[15. Progress of Education in India, Vol. I, p. 135.]
In Bombay Presidency, in 1924-5 only 2.14 per cent, of the female population was under instruction of any kind,[16] while in all India, in 1919, .9 per cent, of the Hindu female population, and 1.1 per cent, of the Muhammadan females, were in school.[17]
[16. Bombay, 1924-25, Government Central Press, Bombay, 1926, pp XV-XVI.]
[17. Progress of Education in India, 1917-22, Vol. I, p.] 126.]
"It would be perfectly easy to multiply schools in which little girls would amuse themselves in preparatory classes, and from which they would drift away gradually during the lower primary stage. The statistical result would be impressive, but the educational effect would be nil and public money would be indefensibly wasted."[18]
[18. Ibid., pp. 138-9.]
But, in the fight for conserving female illiteracy, as in those for maintaining the ancient midwifery and for continuing the cloistering of women, the great constant factor on the side of Things-As-They-Were will be found in the elder women themselves. Out of sheer loyalty to their gods of heaven and their gods of earth they would die to keep their daughters like themselves.
As that blunt old Sikh farmer-soldier, Captain Hira Singh Brar, once said, speaking from his seat in the Legislative Assembly on a measure of reform:[19]
[19. Legislative Assembly Debates, 1925, Vol. V, Part III, p. 2830.]
So many Lalas and Pandits get up on the platforms and say, "Now the time has come for this .reform and that." But what happens? When they go home and when we meet them next morning they say, "What can we do? We are helpless. When we went back home, our ladies would not allow us to do what we wanted to do. They say they do not care what we talk, but they would not allow us to act accordingly."
Abreast of these priestesses of ancient custom in pre-serving the illiteracy of women, stands another mighty influence--that of economic self-interest; a man must marry his daughter or incur an earthly and eternal penalty that few will face. He can rarely marry her without paying a dowry so large that it strains his resources; to which must be added the costs of the wedding--costs so excessive that, as a rule, they plunge him deep into debt. This heavy tax he commonly incurs before his daughter reaches her teens. Why, then, should he spend still more money on her, to educate her; or why, if he be poor and can use her labor, should he go without her help and send her to school, since she is so early to pass forever into another man's service? The idea has been expressed by Rai Harinath Ghosh, Bahadur,[20] fellow of Calcutta University:
[20. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 425.]
People naturally prefer to educate their boys, well knowing that in future they will make them happy and comfortable in their old age, and glorify their family, whilst the girls, after marriage, will be at the mercy of others.
To the average Indian father, of whatever estate, this range of reasoning appears conclusive. And so the momentous opportunities of the motherhood of India continue to be intrusted to the wisdom and judgment of illiterate babies.
Given such a public sentiment toward even rudimentary schooling for girl children, the facts as to more advanced learning may be easily surmised. Mr. Mohini Mohan Bhattacharjee, of the Calcutta Univer sity faculty, expressed it in these words:[21]
[21. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 411.]
The higher education of Indian women...may almost be said to be beyond the scope of practical reform. No Hindu or Muhammadan woman of an orthodox type has ever joined a college or even read up to the higher classes in a school. The girls who receive university education are either Brahmo[22] or Christian...The time is far distant when the University will be called upon to make arrangements for the higher education of any large or even a decent number of girls in Bengal.
[22. The Brahmo or Brahmo Samaj is a sect numbering 6,388 persons, as shown in the Census of India of 1921, p. 119.]
By the latest available report, the women students in arts and professional colleges, in all British India, numbered only 961. But a more representative tone than that of Mr. Bhattacharjee's rather deprecatory words is heard in the frank statement of Rai Satit Chandra Sen, Bahadur:[23]
[23. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p 449.]
Amongst advanced communities in the West, where women are almost on a footing of equality with men and where every woman cannot expect to enter upon married life, high education may be a necessity to them. But...the western system...is not only unsuitable, but also demoralising to the women of India...and breaks down the ideals and instincts of Indian womanhood.
There remains, then, the question of education after marriage. Under present conditions of Indian thought, this may be dismissed with a word--"impracticable."[24] Directly she enters her husband's home, the little wife, whatever her rank, is at once heavily burdened with services to her husband, to her mother-in-law and to the household gods. Child-bearing quickly overwhelms her and she has neither strength nor leave for other activities. Further, she must be taught by women, if taught at all, since women, only, may have access to her. And so you come to the snake that has swallowed his tail.
[24. The Seva Sadan Society in Bombay has among its pupils a certain percentage of married women of the laboring class who come for two or three hours' instruction daily.]
For, as we have just seen, the ban that forbids literacy to the women of India thereby discourages the training of women teachers who might break the ban. Those who have such training barely and feebly suffice for the schools that already exist. Zenana teaching has thus far languished, an anaemic exotic--a failure, in an undesiring soil.
Returning to the conviction of the uselessness of spending good money on a daughter's education, this should not be supposed a class matter. Nobles and rich men share the sentiment with their lesser compatriots.
The point is illustrated in Queen Mary's College in Lahore. This institution was founded years ago by two English ladies who saw that the fractional percentage of Indian girls then receiving education came chiefly if not wholly from the low castes, whilst the daughters of princes, the wives and mothers of princes to come, the future regents, perhaps, for minor sons, were left in untouched darkness. The undertaking that the two ladies began enlisted the approval of Government. The reigning princes, spurred on by the visit of Queen Mary to India, subscribed a certain sum. This sum Government tripled. Suitable buildings were erected and equipped, and there the liberality of the princes practically ceased.
For, as will be found in every direction in which the trait can be expressed, the raising of a building as a monument to his name, be it school, hospital, or what not, interests the wealthy Indian; but for its maintenance in service he can rarely if ever be induced to give one penny. In this case it was necessary, in order to combat initial indifference, to present schooling practically free. Today, the charges have been advanced to stand approximately thus: day scholars, junior, $1.50 per month; senior, $3.00 per month; boarding scholars, $10 to $20 per month, inclusive of all tuition, board, laundry, and ordinary medical treatment.
These terms contemplate payment only for the time actually spent at college. And still some of the fathers are both slow and disputatious over the settlement of accounts. "You send a bill of two rupees [$.66] for stationery, all used up in your school by my two daughters in only two months. I consider this bill excessive. They should not be allowed to use so much costly material; it is not right. It should not be paid," protests one personage; and the representative of another conducts a three weeks' correspondence of inquiry, remonstrance, and reproach over a charge for two yards of ribbon to tie up a little girl's bonnie black locks.
Partly because of the original policy of nominal charges adopted by Government to secure an entering wedge, partly because of their traditional dissociation of women and letters, the rich men of India as a whole remain today still convinced at heart that, if indeed their daughters are to be schooled at all, then Government should give them schooling free of charge.
Queen Mary's College, a charming place, with classrooms, dormitories, common rooms and gardens suitably and attractively designed, is staffed by British ladies of university training. The curriculum is planned to suit the needs of the students. Instruction is given in the several languages of the pupils--Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, etc., and, against the girls' pleas, native dress is firmly required--lest the elders at home take fright of a contagion of western ideas. Throughout the school's varied activities, the continuous effort is to teach cleanliness of habit; and marks are given not only on scholarship but on helpfulness, tidiness, truthfulness, and the sporting spirit.
Outdoor games in the gardens are encouraged to the utmost possible degree, and a prettier sight would be hard to find than a score or so of these really lovely little gazelle-eyed maidens playing about in their floating gauzes of blue and rose and every rainbow hue.
"They have not ginger enough for good tennis," one of the teachers admits, "but then, they have just emerged from the hands of grandmothers who think it improper for little girls even to walk fast. Do you see that lively small thing in pink and gold? When she first came, two terms ago, she truly maintained that her 'legs wouldn't run.' Now she is one of the best at games.
"But what a pity it is," the teacher continues, "to think of the life of dead passivity to which, in a year or two at best, they will all have relapsed!"
"Will they carry into that after-life much of what they have learned here?" I ask.
"Think of the huge pervading influence that will encompass them! The old palace zenana, crowded with women bowed under traditions as fixed as death itself! Where would these delicate children find strength to hold their own alone, through year upon year of that ancient, changeless, smothering domination? Our best hope is that they may, somehow, transmit a little of tonic thought to their children; that they may send their daughters to us; and that so, each generation adding its bit, the end may justify our work."
Queen Mary's is the only school in all India instituted especially for ladies of rank. Not unnaturally, therefore, some of the new Indian officials, themselves without rank other than that which office gives, covet the social prestige of enrolling their daughters in Queen Mary's. The question of enrollment rests as yet with an English Commissioner, and the Commissioner lets the young climbers in. With the result that the princes, displeased, are sending fewer of their children than of yore.
"Shall our daughters be subjected to the presence of daughters of babus--of upstart Bengali politicians!" they exclaim, leaving no doubt as to the reply.
And some of the resident faculty, mindful of the original purpose of the school, anxiously question:
"Is it wise to drive away the young princesses? Their future influence is potentially so much further-reaching than that of other women, however intelligent. Should we not strain all points to get and to hold them?"
But to this question, when asked direct, the Commissioner himself replied:
"In British India we are trying to build a democracy. As for the Native States, undoubtedly it would be well to educate the future Maharanis; 1 say to their fathers, the Princes: 'If you want to keep for your daughters a school for their own rank, it can easily be done--but not on Government funds. You must pay for the school yourselves.' But this, invisible as the cost would be to men of their fortunes, they are not apt to do."
Another center of interest in Lahore is the Victoria School, occupying the palace of a grandson of the famous Ranjit Singh, in the heart of the old city, just off the bazaar. The head of this institution is an extremely able Indian lady, Miss K. M. Bose, of the third generation of an Indian Christian family. Miss Bose's firm and powerful character, her liberal and genial spirit, her strong influence and fine mind, indicate the possibilities of Indian womanhood set free.
In Victoria School are five hundred girl pupils. "Some are rich, some poor," says Miss Bose, "but all are of good caste, and all are daughters of the leading men of the city. If we took lower caste children here, it would increase expense to an impossible degree. The others would neither sit nor eat with them. Separate classes would have to be maintained, an almost double teaching staff employed, and so on through innumerable embarrassments.
"'The tuition fees?' Merely nominal; we Indians will not pay for the education of our daughters. In days but just gone by, the richest refused to pay even for lesson books. Books, teaching, and all, had at first to be given free, or we should have got no pupils. This school is maintained by Government grant and by private subscriptions from England."
Many rooms on many floors honeycomb the old barren rabbit-warren of a palace, each chamber filled with children, from mites of four or five in Montessori classes up to big, hearty Muhammadan girls of fifteen or sixteen, not yet given in marriage. Like Queen Mary's, this is a strict purdah school. The eye of man may not gaze upon it. When it is necessary to introduce some learned pundit to teach his pundit's specialty, he is separated from thé class he teaches by a long, deep, thick, and wholly competent curtain. And he is chosen, not only for learning, but also for tottering age.
"I am responsible for these schools," says the Commissioner, smiling ruefully, "and yet, being a man, I may never inspect them!"
Work, in Victoria School, is done in six languages--Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Sanskrit, with optional English.
"We give no books to the children until they can really read," says Miss Bose. "Otherwise they merely memorize, learning nothing."[25] And the whole aim and hope of the scheme is to implant in the girls' minds something so definitely applicable to their future life in the zenana that some part of it may endure alive through the years of dark and narrow things so soon to come.
[25. The Muslim Indian boy may be letter-perfect in long sections of the Arabic Koran without understanding one word that he speaks; similarly the young Hindu, so both English and Indian teachers testify, easily learns by rote whole chapters of text whose words are mere meaningless sounds to his mind.]
Reading, writing, arithmetic enough to keep simple household accounts; a little history; sewing--which art, by the way, is almost unknown to most of the women of India; a little drawing and music; habits of cleanliness and sanitary observance--both subjects of incredible difficulty; first aid, to save themselves and their future babies as far as mayties of the domestic code--these are the main studies in this practical institution. Added to them is simple cooking, especially cooking for infants and invalids, using always the native type of stove and utensils; and the handling and serving of food, with particular emphasis on keeping it clean and off the floor.
"Their cooking, in later life, they would never by nature do with their own hands, but would leave entirely to filthy servants, whence come much sickness and death," says the instructress. "Our effort here is to give them a conviction of the use and beauty of cleanliness and order in all things."
Miss L. Sorabji, the Indian lady-principal of the Eden High School for girls at Dacca, thus discreetly suggests the nature of the teacher's struggle:[26]
[26. Calcutta University Commission Report, Vol. XII, p. 453.]
Undesirable home influences are a great hindrance to progress. Unpunctuality, sloth, untidiness, carelessness regarding the laws of health and sanitation, untruthfulness, irresponsibility, absence of any code of honour, lack of home discipline, are some of the difficulties we have to contend with in our schools. Character-building is what is most needed.
And--the patient upbuilding of a public opinion that, eventually, may create and sustain a genuine and practical Indian movement toward self-help.
At present one beholds a curious spectacle: the daughters of rich landlords; of haughty Brahman plutocrats; of militant nationalist politicians, ferocious denouncers of the white man and all his works, fed and lodged by the dimes and .sixpences of dear old ladies in Illinois and Derbyshire, and taught the a-b-c of responsible living by despised Christians and outcaste apostates.