Lighted to Lighten fornia >nal ty The Hope of India By Alice B. Van Doren THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES REGINA THUMBOO The First M. A. from Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow Lighted to Lighten The Hope of India A Study of Conditions among Women in India By ALICE B. VAN DOREN 1922 Published by THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS West Medford, Massachusetts Copyright, 1922, by THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON THE UNITED STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS The Vermont Printing Company Brattleboro 75 FOREWORD THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE sends out this book on Indian girlhood to meet the young women of America with their high privilege of edu- cation, that often unrealized and unacknowledged gift of Christ. Miss Van Doren has given emphasis in the book to the privileged young woman of India; she shows the possibilities, and yet you will see in it something of the black shadow cast by that religion which holds no place for the redemption of woman. If you could see it in its hideousness which the author can only hint at, you would say as two American college girls said after a tour through India, "We cannot endure it. Don't take us to another temple. We never dreamed that anything under the guise of religion could be so vile." And somehow there has seemed to them since a note of insincerity in poetic phrasings of Hindu writers who pass over entirely gross forms of idolatrous faith to indulge in noble sentiments which suggest plagiarism. A distinguished author said recently, "I can never read Tagore again after seeing the women of India." From sacred temple slums of South India to shambles of Kalighat it is re- volting, sickening, shameful. It is pleasanter to dwell on the beauties of Hinduism and ignore the unprint- able actualities, but if we are to help we must feel 3CS1277 4 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN how terrible and immediate the need is. No one can really meet that need but the educated Indian Chris- tian women whom God is preparing in this day for service. They are the ones who are Lighted to Lighten. They are the Hope of the future. Fifty years ago, after the Civil war, the light began in the organization of Woman's Missionary Societies. Through all the years women have gone, never very many, sometimes not very strong, limited in various ways, but with one stern determination, at any cost "to save some." Now at the close of your war, young women of America, a new era is beginning in which you are called to take your part. You will not be the pioneers. The trail is blazed. It has been proven that Indian girls can be educated, their minds are keen and eager, they are Christian, many of them, in a sense which girls of America cannot comprehend. Their task is infinitely greater than yours. If they fail, the redemp- tion of Indian womanhood will not be realized, and so we see them taking as the college emblem, not the beautiful, decorated brass lamp of the palace, but the common, little clay lamp of the poorest home and going out with the flickering flame to lighten the deep darkness of their land. College girls in America some- times wear their degree as a decoration. To these girls it is equipment, armor, weapons, for the tear- ing down of strongholds. These girls must be leaders. They cannot escape the challenge. Until now the undertaking has seemed hopeless. FOREWORD 5 What could a few foreign women do among those millions? But the great, silent revolution has begun. Eastern women are seeking self-determination as na- tions seek it. They are asserting rights to soul and mind and body. They refuse to be chattels, and going out to release these millions come these little groups of Christian college girls who are to furnish leader- ship. Have we no part ? Yes, as allies we are needed as never before. Unless from the faculties of our colleges, as well as from our student volunteers, ade- quate aid is sent at once these little groups may fail. This is your "moral equivalent of war." To go and help them in this Day which is their Day of Decision requires vision, devotion, a glorious giving of life which will count just in proportion as the need is immediate, the battle in doubt, failure possible. Mis- sion Boards must go haltingly for lack of women and of funds until groups of women from colleges in America hear the call of Christ and follow Him, for God Himself will not do this work alone. He has chosen that it shall be done through you. From our colleges and medical schools recruits and funds must be sent until those who are in the new colleges over there are trained and ready to win India for their Master. To bring them over here for training is not altogether good. There are dangers in this our age of jazz. It is not good to send out very young girls to a far country during the formative years lest a strange language and customs and a new civilization should unfit them to go back to their "Main Street" 6 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN and adjust themselves. The Indian Colleges are best for the undergraduate Indian girl and are the only ones for the great majority. We must make these the best possible, truly Christian in their teaching and standards, in impressions on the lives of students as well as in their mission to the people of India. This book is for study in our church societies of older girls and of women, and very especially for girls in the colleges, who should consider this as one of the greatest fields for service in the world to-day. We preach internationalism. Let our churches and col- leges practice it. MRS. HENRY W. PEABODY Miss ALICE M. KYLE MRS. FRANK MASON NORTH Miss GERTRUDE SCHULTZ Miss 0. H. LAWRENCE MRS. A. V. POHLMAN Miss EMILY TILLOTSON NOTE: The Central Committee recommends Dr. Fleming's book, "Building with India", for advanced study classes and groups who wish really to study. For Women's societies wishing programs for meetings we think Miss Van Doren's book better as it is less difficult and more concrete. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD 3 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 8 PREFACE 9 INTRODUCTION 11 I YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 13 II AT SCHOOL 31 A HIGH SCHOOL 37 III THE GARDEN OF HID TREASURE 57 LUCKNOW 61 IV AN INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE 83 V SENT FORTH TO HEAL 110 VI WOMEN WHO Do THINGS 130 INDEX 153 Facing Page Regina Thumboo Frontispiece What Will Life Bring to Her? 16 Meenachi of Madura 21 Married to the God 24 Will Life Be Kind to Her? 28 A Temple in South India 33 The Sort of Home that Arul Knew 37 Priests of the Hindu Temple 44 Tamil Girls Preparing for College 48 The Village of the Seven Palms 43 Basketball at Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow 53 Biology Class at Lucknow College 60 A Social Service Group Lucknow College 65 Village People 69 Girls of All Castes Meet on Common Ground 76 Shelomith Vincent 80 Street Scenes in Madras 85 Scenes at Madras College 92 At Work and Play 97 The New Dormitory at Madras College 101 The Old India 108 Contrasts 112 First Building at New Medical School, Vellore 115 Dr. Scudder and the Medical Students at Vellore 117 Where God is a Stone Image Where God is Love 119 A Medical Student in Vellore 122 Better Babies 124 Freshman Class at Vellore Latest Arrivals at Vellore 126 Dora Mohini Maya Das 131 Mrs. Paul Appasamy 135 Putting Spices in Baby's Milk 138 Baby on Scales 142 A Representative of India's Womanhood 152 8 PREFACE THESE chapters are written with no claim to their being an accurate representation of life in all India. That India is a continent rather than a country is a statement so often repeated that it has become trite. To understand the details of girl-life in all parts of this continent would require a variety of experience which the present writer cannot claim. This book is written frankly from the standpoint of one who has spent fifteen years in the South, and known the North only from brief tours and the ac- quaintance which reading can give. For help in advice and criticism thanks are due to friends too numerous to name ; especial mention, how- ever, should be made of the kindness of three Indian critics who have read the manuscript : Miss Maya Das of the Y. W. C. A., Calcutta, Mr. Chandy of Banga- lore, and Mr. Athiseshiah of Voorhees College, Vellore. TO-MORROW "If there were no Christian College in India, the foreshad- owings of a great To-morrow would demand its creation. It is needed : (1) for training native leadership in this age when all India is demanding Indian leadership along all lines, and is impatient of foreign control. (2) for developing Christian workers for the multitudes in India who are turning to Christianity and need care and shepherding in schools and in all phases of daily life. (3) for the education of those who will be the hpmemakers of their country, that the stamp of Christianity may be upon the minds and lives of mothers and wives in this New India. (4) for moralizing the social life in India which otherwise would have the bias of an increasingly dispropor- tionate educated male population. (5) for demonstrating the uplifting influence of Christ upon that sex which has been so disastrously ignored and repressed in India, and for proving that the best is none too good for Indian womanhood. 'Better women' are the strongest factor in the development of a Better India. (6) for definitely distributing the ideals of Christian wom- anhood to all parts of Southern Asia from which the College draws its students. Personal witness to the value of Christian education for women is a real Kingdom message. (7) for training women to take their part in the new na- tional life of awakened India. This training must be by contact with lives already devoted to Christ, more than by precept, for 'character is caught, not taught.' (8) for meeting the needs of the more educated classes of India, as the evangelistic and other parts of mission work minister specifically to the needs of the masses." (9) In furnishing pre-medical training for the hundreds of women who must be educated to follow in the footsteps of the Great Physician. 10 INTRODUCTION TO say that the world is one is to-day's common- place. What causes its new solidarity? What but the countless hands that reach across its shores and its Seven Seas, hands that devastate and hands that heal ! There are the long fingers of the cable and telegraph that pry through earth's hidden places, gathering choice bits of international gossip and handing them out to all the breakfast tables of the Great Neighborhood. There are the swift fingers of transcontinental train and ocean liner, pushing the dweller from the West into the Far East, the man from the prairie into the desert. There are the devastating fingers of war that first fashion and then carry infernal machines and spread them broadcast over towns and ships and fertile fields. Thank God, there are also hands of kindness that dispense healing medicines, that scatter schoolbooks among untaught children, ind the Word of God in all parts of earth's neighborhood. And, lastly, there are hands that seem never to leave the house roof and the village street, yet gain the power of the long reach and set thousands of candles alight across the world. "Why don't you let them alone? Their religion is good enough for them," was the classic comment of the armchair critic of a generation ago. Time has answered it. Nothing in to-day's world ever lets any- thing else alone. We read the morning paper in 11 12 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN terms of continents. To the League of Nations China and Chile are concerns as intimate as Upper Silesia. To the Third Internationale the obscure passes of Af- ghanistan are a near frontier. Suffrage and prohibi- tion are echoed in the streets of Poona and in the councils of Delhi. Labor strikes in West Virginia and Wales produce reactions in the cotton mills of Madras. And the American girl in high school, in college, in business, in society, in a profession, is producing her double under tropic suns, in far-off streets where speech and dress and manners are strange, but the heart of life is one. That time is past ; we cannot let them alone; we can only choose what shall be the shape and fashioning done by hands that reach across the sea. CHAPTER ONE YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY "Once upon a "Once upon a time" 1 men and worn- Time." en dwelt in caves and cliffs and fash- ioned curious implements from the stones of the earth and painted crude pictures upon the walls of their rock dwellings. Archaeologists find such traces in England and along the river valleys of France, among the sands of Egyptian deserts and in India, where armor heads, ancient pottery, and cromlechs mark the passing of a long forgotten race. Thus India claims her place in the universal childhood of the world. The Brown- "Once upon a time," 2 when the Stone skinned Tribes. Men had passed, a strange, new civ- ilization is thought to have girdled the earth, passing probably in a "brown belt" from Mediterranean lands across India to the Pacific world and the Americas. Its sign was the curious symbol of the Swastika; its passwords certain primitive customs common to all these lands. Its probable Indian representatives are known today as Dravidians the brown-skinned peo- ple still dominating South Indian life, whose exact place in the family of races puzzles every anthropolo- gist. It was then that civilization was first walking up 1. History of India, E. W. Thompson, Christian Literature Society, London and Madras, pp. 11-12. 2. Outline of History, H. G. Wells, Vol. I, pp. 146-8. 13 14 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN and down the great river valleys of the Old World. While the first pyramids 3 were a-building beside the long green ribbon of the Nile and the star-gazers 4 of Mesopotamia were reading future events from her towers of sun-dried bricks, Dravidian tribes were cultivating the rich mud of the Ganges valley, a slow- changing race. Did the lonely traveler, I wonder, troll the same air then as now to ward away evil spirits from the star-lit road? Did the Dravidian maiden do her sleek hair in the same knot at the nape of her brown neck, and poise the earthen pot with the same grace on her daily pilgrimage to the river ? The Aryan "Once upon a time" Abraham pitched Brother. his tent beneath the oaks of Mamre, and Moses shepherded his father-in-law's flocks at "the back side of the desert." It was then that down through the grim passes of the Himalayas, where now the British regiments convoy caravans and guard the outposts of Empire, a people of fair skin and strange speech migrated southward to the Land of the Five Rivers and the fat plains of the Ganges. Aryan even as we, the Brahman entered India, singing hymns to the sun and the dawn, bringing with him the stately Sanskrit speech, new lore of priest and shrine, new pride of race that was to cleave society into those hori- zontal strata that persist to-day in the caste system. Thus through successions of Stone-Age men, Dravid- 3. Outline of History, H. G. Wells, Vol. I, pp. 196-199. 4. Outline of History, H. G. Wells, Vol. I, pp. 189-190. YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 15 ian tribes, and Aryan invaders, India stretches her roots deep into the past. But while there were trans- piring these "Old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago," where were we? The superior Anglo-Saxon who speaks complacently of "the native" forgets that dur- ing that same "once upon a time" when civilization was old in India, his ancestors, clad in deer skin and blue paint, were stalking the forests of Europe for food. Gifts to the Nor did these old civilizations for- West. bear to reach hands across the sea and share with the young and lusty West the fruits of their knowledge. On a May morning, as skilful car- riers swing you up to the heights of the South India hills, there is a sudden sound reminiscent of the home barnyard, a scurry of wings across the path, and a gleam of glossy plumage; Mr. Jungle Cock has been disturbed in his morning meal. Did you know that from his ancestors are descended in direct lineage all the Plymouth Rocks and the White Leghorns of the poultry yard, all the Buff Orpingtons that win gold medals at poultry shows? Other food stuffs India originated and shared. Sugar and rice were delicacies from her fields carried over Roman roads to please the palates of the Caesars. 6 Traditions of Besides these contributions to the Womanhood. world's pantry, there were gifts of 5. Ancient Times, Breasted, pp. 658-9. 16 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN the mind and spirit. To those days of long ago mod- ern India looks back as to a golden age, for she was then in the forefront of civilization, passing out her gifts with a generous hand. Of that ancient heritage not the least part is the tradition of womanhood, a heritage trampled in the dust of later ages, its restora- tion only now beginning through that liberty in Christ which sets free the woman of the West and of the East. Much might be written on the place of the Indian woman in folk-lore epic and drama. Helen of Troy and Dido of Carthage pale into common adventuresses when placed beside the quiet courage and utter self- abnegation of such Indian heroines as Sita and Damay- anti. The story of Rama and Sita is the Odyssey of the East, crooned by grandmothers over the evening fires ; sung by wandering minstrels under the shade of the mango grove ; trolled by travelers jogging in bul- lock carts along empty moonlit roads. Sita's devotion is a household word to many a woman-child of India. Little Lakshmi follows the adventures of the loved heroine as she shares Rama's unselfish renunciation of the throne and exile to the forest with its alarms of wild beasts and wild men. She thrills with fear at Sita's abduction by the hideous giant, Ravana, and the wild journey through the air and across the sea to the Ceylon castle. She weeps with Rama's despair, and again laughs with glee at the antics of his monkey army from the south country, as they build their WHAT WILL LIFE BRING TO HER? YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 17 bridge of stones across the Ceylon straits where now- a-days British engineers have followed in their simian track and train and ferry carry the casual traveler across the gaps jumped by the monkey king and his tribe. Sita's sore temptations in the palace of her con- queror and her steadfast loyalty until at last her hus- band comes victorious they are part of the heritage of a million Lakshmis all up and down the length of India. Of the loves of Nala and Damayanti it is difficult to write in few words. From the opening scene where the golden-winged swans carry Nala's words of love to Damayanti in the garden, sporting at sunset with her maidens, the old tale moves on with beauty and with pathos. The Swayamvara, or Self Choice, harks back to the time when the Indian princess might herself choose among her suitors. Gods and men compete for Damayanti's hand among scenes as bright and stately as the lists of King Arthur's Court, until the princess, choosing her human lover, throws about his neck the garland that declares her choice. Happy years follow, and the birth of children. Then the scene changes to exile and desertion. Through it all moves the heroine, sharing her one garment with her un- worthy lord, "thin and pale and travel-stained, with hair covered in dust," yet never faltering until her husband, sane and repentant, is restored to home and children and throne. So the ancient folk-lore goes on, in epic and in drama, with the woman ever the heroine of the tale. 18 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN True it is that her virtues are limited; obedience, chastity, and an unlimited capacity for suffering large- ly sum them up. They would scarcely satisfy the ambitions of the new woman of today; yet some among us might do well to pay them reverence. Those were the high days of Indian womanhood. Then, as the centuries passed, there came slow eclipse. Lawgivers like Manu 6 proclaimed the essential im- purity of a woman's heart; codes and customs began to bind her with chains easy to forge and hard to break. Later followed the catastrophe that completed the change. The Himalayan gateways opened once more and through them swarmed a new race of in- vaders, passing out of those barren plains of Central Asia that have been ever the breeding grounds of nations and swooping upon India's treasures. In one hand the green flag of the Prophet, in the other the sword, these followers of Muhammad sealed for a millennium the end of woman's high estate. All was not lost without a mighty struggle. 7 From those days come the tales of Rajput chivalry tales that might have been sung by the troubadours of France. Rajput maidens of noble blood scorned the throne of Muslim conquerors. Litters supposed to carry captive women poured out warriors armed to the teeth. Men and women in saffron robes and bridal garments mounted the great funeral pyre, and when the conquering Allah-ud-din entered the silent 6. Code of Manu, Book 9, quoted Lux Christ!, Mason, p. 14. 7. India through, the Ages, Florence Annie Steele, Routledge, pp. 95-104, 116-18. YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 19 city of Chitore he found no resistance and no captives, for no one living was left from the great Sacrifice of Honorable Death. After that came an end. Everywhere the Muham- madan conqueror desired many wives; in a far and alien land his own womankind were few. Again and again the ordinary Hindu householder, lacking the des- perate courage of the Rajput, stood by helpless, like the Armenian of to-day, while his wife and daughter were carried off from before his eyes, to increase the harem of his ruler. Small wonder that seclusion be- came the order of the day a woman would better spend her life behind the purdah of her own home than be added to the zenana of her conqueror. Later when the throes of conquest were over and Hindu women once more ventured forth to a wedding or a festival, small wonder that they copied the manners of their masters, and to escape familiarity and insult became as like as possible to women of the conquering race. Thus the use of the veil began. At that beginning we do not wonder ; what makes us marvel is that a repressing custom became so strong that, even after a century and a half of British rule, all over North India and among some conservative families of the South seclusion and the veil still per- sist. Walk the streets of a great commercial town like Calcutta, and you find it a city of men. An occa- sional Parsee lady, now and then an Indian Christian, here and there women of the cooly class whose lowly 20 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN station has saved their freedom otherwise woman- kind seems not to exist. The high hour of Indian womanhood had passed, not to return until brought back by the power of Christ, in whose kingdom there is "neither male nor female, but all are one." Yet as the afterglow flames up with a transient glory after the swift sunset, so in the gathering darkness of Muhammadan domination we see the brightness of two remarkable women. There was Nur Jahan, the "Light of the World," wife of the dissolute Jahangir. Never forgetful, it would seem, of a childish adventure when the little Nur Jahan in temper and pride set free his two pet doves, twenty years later the Mughal Emperor won her from her soldier husband by those same swift methods that David employed to gain the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. And when Nur Jahan became queen she was ruler indeed, "the one overmastering influence in his life." 8 From that time on we see her, restraining her husband from his self-indulgent habits, improving his admin- istration, crossing flooded rivers and leading attacks on elephants to save him from captivity; "a beautiful queen, beautifully dressed, clever beyond compare, contriving and scheming, plotting, planning, shielding and saving, doing all things for the man hidden in the pampered, drink-sodden carcass of the king; the man who, for her at any rate, always had a heart." Think of Nur Jahan's descendants, hidden in the zenanas of 8. India through the Ages, pp. 190-200. MEENACHI OF MADURA The Average Girl, a Bride at Twelve YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 21 India. When their powers, age-repressed, are set free by Christian education, what will it mean for the fu- ture of their nation? Then there came the lady of the Taj,Mumtaz Mahal, beloved of Shah Jahan, the Master Builder. We know less of her history, less of the secret of her charm, only that she died in giving birth to her thirteenth child, and that for all those years of married life she had held her husband's adoration. For twenty-two succeeding years he spent his leisure in collecting precious things from every part of his world that there might be lacking no adornment to the most ex- quisite tomb ever raised. And when it was finished rare commentary on the contradiction of Mughal char- acter the architect was blinded that he might never produce its like again. All that was a part of yesterday a story of rise and fall ; of woman's repression, with outbursts of great- ness; of countless treasures of talent and possibilities unrecognized and undeveloped, hidden behind the doors of Indian zenanas. What of to-day? TO-DAY: Meenachi of Madura, if she could be- The Average Girl, come articulate, might tell us some- thing of the life of the average girl to-day. Being average, she belongs neither to the exclusive streets of the Brahman, nor to the hovels of the untouchable outcastes, but to the area of the great middle class which is in India as everywhere the backbone of soci- ety. Meenachi's father is a weaver of the far-famed 22 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN Madura muslins with their gold thread border. Her earliest childhood memory is the quiet weavers' street where the afternoon sun glints under the tamarind trees and, striking the long looms set in the open air, brings out the blue and mauve, the deep crimson and purple and gold of the weaving. There were rollicking babyhood days when Mee- nachi, clad only in the olive of her satin skin with a silver fig leaf and a bead necklace for adornment, wandered in and out the house and about the looms at will. With added years came the burden of cloth- ing, much resented by the wearer, but accepted with philosophic submission, as harder things would be later on. Toys are few and simple. The palmyra rat- tle is exchanged for the stiff wooden doll, painted in gaudy colors, and the collection of tiny vessels in which sand and stones and seeds provide the equiva- lent of mud pies in repasts of imaginary rice and curry. Household duties begin also. Meenachi at the age of six grasps her small bundle of broom-grass and sweeps each morning her allotted section of verandah. Soon she is helping to polish the brass cooking pots and to follow her mother and older sisters, earthen water- pot on hip, on their morning and evening pilgrimages to the river. Being only an average girl, Meenachi will never go to school. There are ninety and nine of these "aver- age" unschooled girls to the one "above the average" to whom education offers its outlet for the questing spirit. She looks with curiosity at the books her YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 23 brother brings home from high school, but the strange, black marks which cover their pages mean nothing to her. Not for her the release into broad spaces that comes only through the written word. For, mark you, to the illiterate life means only those circumscribed experiences that come within the range of one's own sight and touch and hearing. "What I have seen, what I have heard, what I have felt" there experience ends. From personal unhappiness there is no escape into the world current. Meenachi is twelve and the freedom of the long street is hers no more. Yellow chrysanthemums in her glossy hair, a special diet of milk and curds and sweet cakes fried in ghee, and the outspoken congratula- tions of relatives, male and female, mark her entrance into the estate of womanhood. What the West hides, the East delights to reveal. Now follows the swift sequel of marriage. The husband, of just the right degree of relationship, has long been chosen. The family exchequer is drained to the dregs to provide the heavy dowry, the burdensome expenditure for wedding feast and jewels, and the pres- entatiqn of numerous wedding garments to equally numerous and expectant relatives. Meenachi is car- ried away by the splendor of new clothes and jewels and processions, and the general tamash of the occa- sion. Has she not the handsomest bridegroom and the most expensive trousseau of this marriage month ? Is she not the envy of all her former playmates ? Only now and then comes a strange feeling of loneliness 24 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN when she thinks of leaving the dear, familiar roof, the narrow street with its tamarind trees and many-col- ored looms. The mother-in-law's house is a hundred miles away, and the mother-in-law's face is strange. Will Meenachi be sad or happy? The answer is complex and hard to find, for it depends on many con- tingencies. The husband what will he be? He is not of Meenachi's choosing. Did she choose her father and mother, and the house in which she was born? Were they not chosen for her, "written upon her forehead" by her Karma, her inscrutable fate? Her husband has been chosen ; let her make the best of the choice. Will she be happy? The future years shall make answer by many things. Will she bear sons to her husband ? If so, will her young body have strength for the pains of childbirth and the torturings of ignorant and brutal midwives? Will her Karma spare to her the life of husband and children? In India sudden death is never far; pestilence walks in darkness and destruction wastes at noon day. The fear of disease, the fear of demons, the fear of death will be never far away; for these fears there will be none to say, "Be not afraid." So Meenachi, the bride, passes out into the unknown of life, and later into the greater unknown of death. No one has taught her to say in the valley of the shad- ow, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." The terrors of life are with her, but its consolations are not hers. MARRIED TO THE GOD A Little Temple Girl YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 25 Widowhood. Of widowhood I shall say little. Since the ancient days of suttee when the wife mounted her husband's funeral pyre volumes have been written on the lot of the Indian widow. To-day in some cases the power of Christianity has awakened the spirit of social reform and the rigors of widow- hood are lessened. Among the majority the old re- mains. In general, the higher you rise in the social scale, the sterner the conventions and fashions of widowhood become. In Madras you may visit a Widow's Home, where through the wise efforts of a large-hearted woman in the Educational Department of Government more than a hundred Brahman girl-widows live the life of a normal schoolgirl. No fastings, no shaven heads, no lack of pretty clothes or jewels mark them off from the rest of womanhood. Schools and colleges open their doors and professional life as teacher or doctor offers hope of human contact and interest for these to whom husband and child and home are forever forbidden. In all India you may find a very few such institutions, but "what are these among so many?" The millions of repressed child widows still go on. Wives of the Worse is the fate of those whose Idol. Karma condemns them to a life of religious prostitution. Perhaps the first-born son of the family lies near to death. The parents vow a frantic vow to the deity of the local temple. "Save 26 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN our son's life, O Govinda; our youngest daughter shall be dedicated to thy service." The son recovers, the vow must be fulfilled, and bright-eyed, laughing Lakshmi, aged eight, is led to the temple, put through the mockery of a ceremony of marriage to the black and misshapen image in the inmost shrine, and thence- forth trained to a religious service of nameless in- famy. The story of Hinduism holds the history of some devout seekers after God, of sincere aspiration, in some cases of beautiful thought and life. This deep- est blot is acknowledged and condemned by its better members. Yet in countless temples, under the bright- ness of the Indian sun, the iniquity, protected by vested interests, goes on and no hand is lifted to stay. Suppose each American church to shelter its own house of prostitution, its forces recruited from the young girls of the congregation, their services at the disposal of its worshippers. The thought is too black for utterance; yet just so in the life of India has the service of the gods been prostituted to the lusts of men. Reform. The achievements of Christianity in India are not confined to the four million who consti- tute the community that have followed the new Way. Perhaps even greater has been the reaction it has ex- cited in the ranks of Hinduism among those who would repudiate the name of Christian. Chief among the abuses of Hinduism to be attacked has been the tra- ditional attitude toward woman. Child marriage and YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 27 compulsory widowhood are condemned by every social reformer up and down the length of India. The battle is fought not only for women, but by them also. Agi- tation for the suffrage has been carried on in India's chief cities. In Poona not long since the educated women of the city, Hindu, Muhammadan, and Chris- tian, joined in a procession with banners, demanding compulsory education for girls. Of women not Christian, but freed from ancient bonds by this reflex action of Christian thought, per- haps the most eminent example is Mrs. Sarojini Naidu. Of Brahman birth, but English education, she dared to resist the will of her family and the tradition of her caste and marry a man of less than Brahman extrac- tion. Now as a writer of distinction second only to Tagore she is known to Europe as well as to India. In her own country she is perhaps loved best for her intense patriotism, and is the best known woman con- nected with the National Movement. Chiefly, however, it is among the Christian com- munity that woman's freedom has become a fact. Women such as Mrs. Naidu exist, but they are few. Now and then one reads of a case of widow-remar- riage successfully achieved. Too often, however, the Hindu reformer, however well-meaning and sincere, talks out his reformation in words rather than deeds. He lacks the support of Christian public opinion; he lacks also the vitalizing power of a personal Christian experience. It is easy to speak in public on the evils of early marriage; he speaks and the audience ap- 28 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN plauds. He knows too well that in the applauding audience there is not a man whose son will marry his daughter if she passes the age of twelve. So the ardent reformer talks on, with the abandon of the darky preacher who exhorted his audience "Do as I say and not as I do"; and hopes that in some future incar- nation life will be kinder, and he may be able to carry out the excellent practices he really desires. A Hindu girl of high family was allowed to go to college. There being then no women's college in her part of India, she entered a Government University in a large city, where there were a few other women students. Western standards of freedom prevailed and were accepted by men and women. Rukkubai shared in social as well as academic life. With a strong arm and a steady eye, she distinguished herself at tennis and badminton, and came even to play in mixed doubles, a mark of the most "advanced" social views to be found in India. After college came marriage to a man connected with the family of a well known rajah. The husband was not only the holder of a University degree similar to her own, but a zealous social reformer, eloquent in his advocacy of women's freedom. Life promised well for Rukkubai. A year or two later a friend visited her behind the purdah, with the doors of the world shut in her face. The zeal of the reforming husband could not stand against the petty persecutions of the older women of the family. "I wish," said Rukkubai, "that WILL LIFE BE KIND TO HER? YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 29 I had never known freedom. Now I have known and lost" Yet not all reformers are such. There are an in- creasing number whose deeds keep pace with their words. Such may be found among the members of The Servants of India Society, who spend part of the year in social studies; the remainder in carrying to ignorant people the message they have learned. Such is the heritage of the Hindu woman of ancient freedom ; centuries when traditions of repression have gripped with ever-tightening hold; to-day a new fer- ment in the blood, a new striving toward purposes half realized. Of to-morrow, who can say? The future is hidden, but the chapters that follow may perhaps serve to bring us into touch with a few of the many forces that are helping to shape the day that shall be. CHAPTER TWO AT SCHOOL Hindu or 1 the last chapter we have spoken Christian. of the Hindu girl as yet untouched by Christianity, save as such influence may have fil- tered through into the general life of the nation. We have had vague glimpses of her social inheritance, with its traditions of an ancient and honorable estate of womanhood ; of the limitations of her life to-day ; of her half-formed aspirations for the future. Of education as such nothing has been said. As we turn now from home to school life, we shall turn also from the Hindu community to the Christian. This does not mean that none but Christian girls go to school. In all the larger and more advanced cities and in some towns you will find Government schools for Hindu girls as well as those carried on by private en- terprise, some of them of great efficiency. Yet this deliberate turning to the school life of the Christian community is not so arbitrary as it seems. In the first place, the proportion of literacy among Christian women is far higher than among the Hindu and Muhammadan communities. Again, because a large proportion of Christians have come from the de- pressed classes, the "submerged tenth," ground for uncounted centuries under the heel of the caste sys- tem, their education is also a study in social uplift, one 31 32 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN of the biggest sociological laboratory experiments to be found anywhere on earth. And, lastly, it is through Christian schools that the girls and women of America have reached out hands across the sea and gripped their sisters of the East. The School "And the dawn comes up like thunder under the Palm Outer China 'cross the Bay." Trees. Far from China and far inland from the Bay is this South Indian village, but the dawn flashes up with the same amazing swiftness. Life's daily resurrection proceeds rapidly in the Village of the Seven Palms. Flocks of crows are swarming in from their roosting place in the palmyra jungle beside the dry sand river ; the cattle are strolling out from be- hind various enclosures where they share the family shelter; all around is the whirr of bird and insect as the teeming life of the tropics wakes to greet "my lord Sun." Under the thatch of each mud-walled hovel of the outcaste village there is the same stir of the returning day. Sheeted corpses stretched on the floor suddenly come to life and the babel of village gossip begins. In the house at the far end of the street, Arul is first on her feet, first to rub the sleep from her eyes. There is no ceremony of dressing, no privacy in which to conduct it if there were. Arul rises in the same scant garment in which she slept, snatches up the pot of unglazed clay that stands beside the door, poises it lightly on her hip, and runs singing to the village well, AT SCHOOL 33 where each house has its representative waiting for the morning supply. There is the plash of dripping water, the creak of wheel and straining rope, and the chatter of girl voices. The well is also the place for making one's morning toilet. Arul dashes the cold water over her face, hands, and feet. No soap is required, no towel the sun is shining and will soon dry everything in sight. Next comes the tooth-brushing act, when a smooth stick takes the place of a brush, and "Kolynos" or "Colgate" is replaced by a dab of powdered charcoal. Arul combs her hair only for life's great events, such as a wedding or a festival, and changes her clothes so seldom that it is better form not to mention it. Breakfast is equally simple, and the "simple life" at close range is apt to lose many of its charms. In the corner of the one windowless room that serves for all domestic purposes stands the earthen pot of black gruel. It is made from the ragi, little, hard, round seeds that resemble more than anything else the rape seed fed to a canary. It looks a sufficiently unappe- tizing breakfast, but contentment abounds because the pot is full, and that happens only when rains are abundant and seasons prosperous. The Russian peasant and his black bread, the Indian peasant and his black gruel dark symbols these of the world's hunger line. There is no sitting down to share even this simple meal, no conception of eating as a social event, a family sacrament. The father, as lord and master, 34 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN must be served first ; then the children seize the one or two cups by turn, and last of all comes Mother. Arul gulps her breakfast standing and then dashes into the street. She is one of the village herd girls ; the sun is up and shining hot, and the cattle and goats are jostling one another in their impatience to be off for the day. The dry season is on and all the upland pastures are scorched and brown. A mile away is the empty bed of the great tank. A South Indian tank in our par- lance would be an artificial lake. A strong earth wall, planted with palmyras, encircles its lower slope. The upper lies open to receive surface water, as well as the channel for the river that runs full during the mon- soon months. During the "rains" the country is full of water, blue and sparkling. Now the water is gone, the crops are ripening, and in the clay tank bottom the cattle spend their days searching for the last blades of grass. "Watch the cows well, Little Brother," calls Arul, as she hurries back on the narrow path that winds be- tween boulders and thickets of prickly pear cactus. Green parrots are screaming in the tamarind trees and overhead a white-throated Brahmany kite wheels mo- tionless in the vivid blue. The sun is blazing now, but Arul runs unheeding. It is time for school she knows it by the sun-clock in the sky. "Female educa- tion," as the Indian loves to call it, is not yet fashion- able in the Village of the Seven Palms. With twenty- five boys there are only three girls who frequent its halls of learning. Of the three Arul is one. Her AT SCHOOL 35 father, lately baptized, knows but little of what Christ's religion means, but the few facts he has grasped are written deeply in his simple mind and show life-results. One of these ideas is that the way out and up is through the gate of Christian education. And so it is that Arul comes to school. She is but eight, yet with a mouth to feed and a body to clothe, and the rice pot often empty, the halving of her daily wage means self-denial to all the family. So it is that Arul, instead of herding cattle all day, runs swiftly back to the one-roomed schoolhouse under the cocoanuts and arrives not more than half an hour late. The schoolroom is so primitive that you would hardly recognize it as such. Light and air and space are all too little. There are no desks or even benches. A small, wooden blackboard and the teacher's table and rickety chair are all that it can boast in the way of equipment. The only interesting thing in sight is the children themselves, rows of them on the floor, writing letters in the sand. Unwashed they are, uncombed and almost unclothed, but with all the witchery of child- hood in their eyes. In that bare room lies the possi- bility of transforming the life of the Village of the Seven Palms. But the teacher is innocent of the ways of modern pedagogy, and deep and complicated are the snares of the Tamil alphabet with its two hundred and sixteen elusive characters. BaJfiinj, too, are the mysteries of number combination. "If six mangoes cost three annas, how much will one mango cost?" Arul never 36 LIGHTED TO LIGHTEN had an anna of her own, how should she know ? The teacher's bamboo falls on her hard, little hand, and two hot tears run down and drop on the cracked slate. The way to learning is long and beset with as many thorns as the crooked path through the prickly pear cactus. Bible stories are happier. Arul can tell you how the Shepherds sang and all about the little boy who gave his own rice cakes and dried fish, to help Jesus feed hungry people. She has been hungry so often that that story seems real. The years pass over Arul's head, leaving her a little taller, a little fleeter of foot as she hurries back from the pasture, a little wiser in the ways of God and men. Still her father holds out against the inducements of child labor. Arul shall go to school as long as there is anything left for her to learn. And into Arul's eyes there has come the gleam of a great ambition. She will leave the Village of the Seven Palms and go into the wide world. The most spacious existence she knows of is represented by the Girls' Boarding School in the town twenty miles away. To enter that school, to study, to become a teacher perhaps but beyond that the wings of Arul's imagination have not yet learned to soar. The meaning of service for Christ and India, the opportunity of educated womanhood, such ideas have not yet entered Arul's vocabulary. She will learn them in the days to come. Countless villages of the Seven Palms; countless schools- badly equipped and poorly taught; countless Aruls feeling within them dim gropings, half-formed H