A beautiful Rolls-Royce of His Highness's sending was whirling us along the road from the Guest House to the Palace. My escort, one of the chief officials of the Prince's household, a high-caste orthodox Brahman scholar easily at home in his European dress, had already shown readiness to converse and to explain.
"Let us suppose," I now asked him, "that you have an infant daughter. At what age will you marry her?"
"At five--at seven--but I must surely marry her," he replied in his excellent English, "before she completes her ninth year."
"And if you do not, what is the penalty, and upon whom does it fall?"
"It falls upon me; I am outcasted by my caste. None of them will eat with me or give me water to drink or admit me to any ceremony. None will give me his daughter to marry my son, so that I can have no son's son of right birth. I shall have, in fact, no further social existence. No fellow caste-man will even lend his shoulder to carry my body to the burning-ghat. And my penance in the next life will be heavier still than this."
"Then as to the child herself, what would befall her?"
"The child? Ah, yes. According to our law I must turn her out of my house and send her into the forest alone. There I must leave her with empty hands. Thenceforth I may not notice her in any way. Nor may any Hindu give her food or help from the wild beasts, on penalty of sharing the curse."
"And would you really do that thing?"
"No; for the reason that occasion would not arise. I could not conceivably commit the sin whose consequence it is."
It was noticeable that in this picture the speaker saw no suffering figure save his own.
A girl child, in the Hindu scheme, is usually a heavy and unwelcome cash liability. Her birth elicits the formal condolences of family friends. But not always would one find so ingenuous a witness as that prosperous old Hindu landowner who said to me: "I have had twelve children. Ten girls, which, naturally, did not live. Who, indeed, could have borne that burden! The two boys, of course, I preserved."
Yet Sir Michael O'Dwyer records a similar instance of open speech from his own days of service as Settlement Commissioner in Bharatpur:[1]
[1. India As I Knew It, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, Constable & Co., Ltd» London, 1925, p. 102.]
The sister of the Maharaja was to be married to a great Punjab Sirdar. The family pressed [the Maharaja being a minor] for the lavish expenditure usual on those occasions--• £30,000 to £40,000--and the local members of the State Council supported their view. The Political Agent--the State being then under British supervision--and I strongly protested against such extravagance in a year of severe scarcity and distress. Finally, the matter was discussed in full Council. I asked the oldest member of the Council to quote precedents--how much had been sanctioned on similar marriages of the daughter or sister of a Maharaja in the past. He shook his head and said there was no precedent. I said, "How can that be?--the State has been in existence over two hundred years, and there have been eleven successions without adoption, from father to son; do you mean to tell me that there were never any daughters?" The old man hesitated a little, and then said, "Sahib, you know our customs, surely you know the reason. There were daughters born, but till this generation they were not allowed to grow up." And it was so.
But it is fair to remember that infanticide has been common not with primitive races only but with Greece, with Rome, with nearly all peoples known to history save those who have been affected by Christian or Muhammadan culture. Forbidden in India by Imperial law, the ancient practice, so easily followed in secret, seems still to persist in many parts of the country.[2]
[2. See Census of India, Vol. I, Part I, 1921, Appendix VI. See also The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, M. L. Darling, Oxford, 1925, pp. 58-9.]
Statistical proof in such matters is practically unattainable, as will be realized later in this chapter. But the statement of the Superintendent of the United Provinces Census[3] regarding girl children of older growth is cautious enough to avoid all pitfalls:
[3. Census of India, 1911, Vol. XV, p. 190.]
I very much doubt whether there is any active dislike of girl babies...But if there is no active dislike, there is unquestionably passive neglect. "The parents look after the son, and God looks after the daughter." The daughter is less warmly clad, she receives less attention when ill, and less and worse food when well. This is not due to cruelty, or even to indifference; it is due simply to the fact that the son is preferred to the daughter and all the care, attention and dainties are lavished on him, whilst the daughter must be content with the remnants of all three...The result is that [the female] death-rate between one and five is almost invariably somewhat higher than the male death-rate.
This attitude toward the unwanted was illustrated in an incident that I myself chanced upon in a hospital in Bengal. The patient, a girl of five or six years, had fallen down a well and sustained a bad cut across her head. The mother, with the bleeding and unconscious child in her arms, had rushed to the hospital for help. In a day or two tetanus developed. Now the child lay at death's door, in agony terrible to see. The crisis was on, and the mother, crouching beside her, a figure of grief and fear, muttered prayers to the gods while the English doctor worked. Suddenly, there at the bedside, stood a man--a Bengali babu--some sort of small official or clerk.
"Miss Sahib," he said, addressing the doctor, "I have come for my wife."
"Your wife!" exclaimed the doctor, sternly. "Look at your wife. Look at your child. What do you mean!"
"I mean," he went on, "that I have come to fetch. my wife home, at once, for my proper marital use."
"But your child will die if her mother leaves her now. You cannot separate them--see!" and the child, who had somehow understood the threat even through her mortal pain, clung to her mother, wailing.
The woman threw herself prostrate upon the floor, clutched his knees, imploring, kissed his feet, and with her two hands, Indian fashion, took the dust from his feet and put it upon her head. "My lord, my lord," she wept, "be merciful!"
"Come away," said he. "I have need of you, I say. You have left me long enough."
"My lord--the child--the little child--my Master!"
He gave the suppliant figure a thrust with his foot. "I have spoken"--and with never another word or look, turning on the threshold, he walked away into the world of sun.
The woman rose. The child screamed.
"Will you obey?" exclaimed the doctor, incredulous for all her years of seeing.
"I dare not disobey," sobbed the woman--and, pulling her veil across her stricken face, she ran after her man--crouching, like a small, weak animal.
The girl, going to her husband by her ninth or twelfth year, or earlier, has little time and less chance to learn from books. But two things she surely will have learned--her duty toward her husband and her duty toward those gods and devils that concern her.
Her duty toward her husband, as of old laid down in the Padmapurana[4] is thus translated:[5]
[4. The Puranas, ancient religious poems, are the Bible of the Hindu peoples.]
[5. Hindu Manners. Customs, and Ceremonies, pp. 344-9.]
There is no other god on earth for a woman than her husband. The most excellent of all the good works that she can do is to seek to please him by manifesting perfect obedience to him. Therein should lie her sole rule of life.
Be her husband deformed, aged, infirm, offensive in his manners; let him also be choleric, debauched, immoral, a drunkard, a gambler; let him frequent places of ill-repute, live in open sin with other women, have no affection whatever for his home; let him rave like a lunatic; let him live without honour; let him be blind, deaf, dumb or crippled, in a word, let his defects be what they may, let his wickedness be what it may, a wife should always look upon him as her god, should lavish on him all her attention and care, paying no heed whatsoever to his character and giving him no cause whatsoever for displeasure...
A wife must eat only after her husband has had his fill. If the latter fasts, she shall fast, too; if he touch not food, she also shall not touch it; if he be in affliction, she shall be so, too; if he be cheerful she shall share his joy...She must, on the death of her husband, allow herself to be burnt alive on the same funeral pyre; then everybody will praise her virtue...
If he sing she must be in ecstasy; if he dance she must look at-him with delight; if he speak of learned things she must listen to him with admiration. In his presence, indeed, she ought always to be cheerful, and never show signs of sadness or discontent.
Let her carefully avoid creating domestic squabbles on the subject of her parents, or on account of another woman whom her husband may wish to keep, or on account of any unpleasant remark which may have been addressed to her. To leave the house for reasons such as these would expose her to public ridicule, and would give cause for much evil speaking.
If her husband flies into a passion, threatens her, abuses her grossly, even beats her unjustly, she shall answer him meekly, shall lay hold of his hands, kiss them, and beg his pardon, instead of uttering loud cries and running away from the house...
Let all her words and actions give public proof that she looks upon her husband as her god. Honoured by everybody, she shall thus enjoy the reputation of a faithful and virtuous spouse.
The Abbé Dubois found this ancient law still the mode of nineteenth-century Hinduism, and weighed its aspect with philosophic care. His comment ran:[6]
[6. Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, p. 231.]
A real union with sincere and mutual affection, or even peace, is very rare in Hindu households. The moral gulf which exists in this country between the sexes is so great that in the eyes of a native the woman is simply a passive object who must be abjectly submissive to her husband's will and fancy. She is never looked upon as a companion who can share her husband's thoughts and be the first object of his, care and affection. The Hindu wife finds in her husband only a proud and overbearing master who regards her as a fortunate woman to be allowed the honour of sharing his bed and board.
In the handling of this point by the modern, Rabin-dranath Tagore, appears another useful hint as to the caution we might well observe in accepting, at their face value to us, the expressions of Hindu speakers and writers. Says Tagore, presenting the Hindu theory:[7]
[7. The Book of Marriage, Keyserling, pp. 112-13.]
For the purpose of marriage, spontaneous love is unreliable; its proper cultivation should yield the best results...and this cultivation should begin before marriage. Therefore from their earliest years, the husband as an idea is held up before our girls, in verse and story, through ceremonial and worship. When at length they get this husband, he is to them not a person but a principle, like loyalty, patriotism, or such other abstractions...
As to the theory of the matter, let that be what it may. As to the actual practice of the times, material will be recalled from the previous pages of this book bearing upon the likeness of the Hindu husband, as such, to "loyalty," "patriotism," or any impersonal abstraction.
Mr. Gandhi tirelessly denounces the dominance of the old teaching. "By sheer force of a vicious custom," he repeats, "even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a superiority over women which they do not deserve and ought not to have."[8]
[8. Quoted in The Indian Social Reformer, Oct. 29, 1922, p. 135.]
But a creed through tens of centuries bred into weak, ignorant, and fanatical peoples is not to be uprooted in one or two hundred years; neither can it be shaken by the wrath of a single prophet, however reverenced.
The general body of the ancient law relating to the status and conduct of women yet reigns practically supreme among the great Hindu majority.
In the Puranic code great stress is laid upon the duty of the wife to her mother-in-law. Upon this foundation rests a tremendous factor in every woman's life. A Hindu marriage does not betoken the setting up of a new homestead; the little bride, on the contrary, is simply added to the household of the groom's parents, as that household already exists. There she becomes at once the acknowledged servant of the mother-in-law, at whose beck and call she lives. The father-in-law, the sister-in-law, demand what they like of her, and, bred as she is, it lies not in her to rebel. The very idea that she possibly could rebel or acquire any degree of freedom has neither root nor ground in her mind. She exists to serve. The mother-in-law is often hard, ruling without mercy or affection; and if by chance the child is slow to bear children, or if her children be daughters, then, too frequently, the elder woman's tongue is a flail, her hand heavy in blows, her revengeful spirit set on clouding her victim's life with threats of the new wife who, according to the Hindu code, may supplant and enslave her.
Not infrequently, in pursuing my inquiry in the rural districts, I came upon the record of suicides of women between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. The commonest cause assigned by the Indian police recorder was "colic pains, and a quarrel with the mother-in-law."
As to the direct relation o£ wife to husband, as understood in high-class Hindu families today, it has thus been described by that most eminent of Indian ladies, whose knowledge of her sisters of all ranks and creeds is wide, deep, and kind, Miss Cornelia Sorabji:[9]
[9. Between the Twilights, Cornelia Sorabji, Harper Brothers, London, 1908, pp. 125-32.]
Chief priestess of her husband, whom to serve is her religion and her delight...moving on a plane far below him for all purposes religious, mental and social; gentle and adoring, but incapable of participation in the larger interests of his life...To please his mother, whose chief handmaiden she is, and to bring him a son, these are her two ambitions...The whole idea of marriage in the east revolves simply on the conception of life; a community of interests, companionship, these never enter into the general calculation. She waits upon her husband when he feeds, silent in his presence, with downcast eyes. To look him in the face were bold indeed.
Then says Miss Sorabji, continuing her picture:[10]
[10. Ibid., pp. 45-6.]
When she is the mother of a son, greater respect is hers from the other women in the zenana ...she has been successful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives the woman herself is most marked. She is still a faithful! slave to her husband, but she is an entity, a person, in so far as that is possible in a Hindu zenana; she can lift her head above the women who taunted her, her heart above the fear of a rival.
This general characterization of the wife in the zenana of educated, well-to-do, and prominent Hindus finds its faithful echo in one of many similar incidents that came to my notice in humbler fields. For the orthodox Hindu woman, whoever she be, will obey the law of her ancestors and her gods with a pride and integrity unaffected by her social condition.
The woman, in this case, was the wife of a small landowner in a district not far from Delhi. The man, unusually enlightened, sent her to hospital for her first confinement. But he sent her too late, and, after a severe ordeal, the child was born dead.
Again, the following year, the same story was repeated. The patient was brought late, and even the necessary Caesarean operation did not save the child. Still a third time the zemindar appeared, bringing the wife; but now, taught by experience, he had moved in time. As the woman came out of the ether, the young English nurse bent over her, all aglow with the news.
"Little mother, happy little mother, don't you want to see your baby--don't you want to see your boy?"
The head on the pillow turned away. Faintly, slowly the words came back out of the pit of hopeless night:
"Who wants to see--a dead baby! I have seen--too many--too many--dead--dead--" The voice trailed into silence. The heavy eyelids closed.
Then Sister picked up the baby. Baby squealed.
On that instant the thing was already done--so quickly done that none could measure the time of its doing. The lifeless figure on the bed tautened. The great black eyes flashed wide. The thin arms lifted in a gesture of demand. For the first time in all her life, perhaps, this girl was thinking in the imperative.
"Give me my son!" She spoke as an empress might speak. "Send at once to my village and inform the father of my son that I desire his presence." Utterly changed. Endued with dignity--with self-respect--with importance.
The father came. All the relatives came, heaping like flies into the little family quarters attached, in Indian women's hospitals, to each private room. Ten days they sat there--over a dozen of them, in a space some fifteen by twenty feet square. And on the tenth, in a triumphant procession, they bore home to their village mother and son.
Rich or poor, high caste or low caste, the mother of a son will idolize the child. She has little knowledge to give him, save knowledge of strange taboos and fears and charms and ceremonies to propitiate a universe of powers unseen. She would never discipline him, even though she knew the meaning of the word. She would never teach him to restrain passion or impulse or appetite. She has not the vaguest conception how to feed him or develop him. Her idea of a sufficient meal is to tie a string around his little brown body and stuff him till the string bursts. And so through all his childhood he grows as grew his father before him, back into the mists of time.
Yet, when the boy himself assumes married life, he will honor his mother above his wife, and show her often a real affection and deference. Then it is that the woman comes into her own, ruling indoors with an iron hand, stoutly maintaining the ancient tradition, and, forgetful of her former misery, visiting upon the slender shoulders of her little daughters-in-law all the burdens and the wrath that fell upon her own young back. But one higher step is perhaps reserved for her. With each grandson laid in her arms she is again exalted. The family line is secure. Her husband's soul is protected. Proud is she among women. Blessed be the gods!