Part 8 (1/2)
”I have seen many women in the villages, though not educated, showing the capacities of a good lawyer. I think that women have a special talent in performing this business, and hence would do much better than men. Tenderness and mercy are qualities greatly required in a judge or magistrate. Women are famous for these and so their judgments which will be the products of justice tempered by mercy will be commendable. A man cannot understand so fully a woman, the workings of her mind, her thoughts and her views, as a woman can; so in order to plead the cause of women there should be women lawyers who could understand and put their cases in a very clear light.”
Another feels the need of women in politics:
”According to the present system in India, the government is carried on by men alone. Thus women are exclusively shut off from the administration of the country. The good and bad results of the government affect men and women alike. Therefore, it is only fair that women also should have an active part in the government of the country.
Women should be given seats in the Legislative Council where they would have an opportunity to listen to the problems of the country and try to solve them.
”From ordinary life we see that women are more economical than men.
Therefore, it would be better for the country if women could take a part in economic matters. When the rate of tax is fixed men are likely to decide it merely from a consideration of their income without thinking about small expenses. Women are acquainted with every expense in detail.
If women could take part in economic affairs, the expenditure of a country would be directed in a better and more careful way.
”In national and international questions also women can take a part.
Women are more conservative, sympathetic, and kind than men. Great changes and misery which are not foreseen at all are brought by wars between different countries. Women, too, can consider about the affairs of wars as well as men. Their sympathetic and conservative views will help the people not to plunge into needless wars and political complications.
”Women know as well as, and perhaps more than men, the evils which result from the illiteracy of people and their unsanitary conditions.
Men spend much of their time outside home, while women in their quiet homes can see their surroundings and watch the needs of people around them. So women can give good ideas in matters concerning education and sanitation. In this way, women can influence the public opinion of a place and the government of a country depends much on the nature of public opinion.”
But with all these ”new woman theories” the claims of home are not forgotten:
”Among the many possibilities opening out to women, we cannot fail to mention _home life_, though it is nothing new.
”According to the testimony of all history, the worth and blessing of men and nations depend in large measure on the character and ordering of family life. 'The family is the structural cell of the social organism.
In it lives the power of propagation and renewal of life. It is the foundation of morality, the chief educational inst.i.tution, and the source of nearly all real contentment among men.' All other questions sink into insignificance when the stability of the family is at stake.
In short, the family circle is a world in miniature, with its own habits, its own interests, and its own ties, largely independent of the great world that lies outside. When the family is of such great importance, how much greater should be the responsibilities of women in the ordering of that life? Is it not there in the home that we develop most of our habits, our lines of thought and action?
”Even while keeping home, woman can do other kinds of work. She can help her husband in his varied activities by showing interest and sympathy in all that he does; she can influence him in every possible way. Then also she may do social and religious work, and even teaching, though she has to manage a home. But _the_ work that needs her keenest attention is in the home itself, in training up the children. Happiness and cheerfulness in the home circle depend more or less on the radiant face of the mother, as she performs her simple tasks, upon her tenderness, on her unwearied willingness to surpa.s.s all boundaries in love. She is the 'centre' of the family. The physical and moral training of her children falls to her lot.
”Now, the developing of character is no light task, nor is it the least work that has to be done. The family exists to train individuals for members.h.i.+p in a large group. In the little family circle attention can be concentrated on a few who in turn can go out and influence others.
The family, therefore, is the nursery of all human virtues and powers.
”In conclusion, expressing the same idea in stronger words, it is to be noted that whether India shall maintain her self-government, when she receives it, depends on how far the women are ready to fulfill the obligations laid upon them. This is a great question and has to be decided by the educated women of India.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: In the Laboratory, Madras]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Tennis Champions with Cup AT WORK AND PLAY]
One Reformer and What She Achieved.
Of the wealth of human interest that lies hidden in the life-stories of the one hundred and ten students who make up the College, who has the insight to speak? Coming from homes Hindu or Christian, conservative or liberal, from the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the modern Indian city, or the far side of the jungle villages, one might find in their home histories, in their thoughts and ambitions and desires, a composite picture of the South Indian young womanhood of to-day. Countries as well as individuals pa.s.s through periods of adolescence, of stress and strain and the pains of growth, when the old is merging in the new. The student generation of India is pa.s.sing through that phase to-day, and no one who fails to grasp that fact can hope to understand the psychology of the present day student.
In Pushpam's story it is possible to see something of that clash of old and new, of that standing ”between two worlds” that makes India's life to-day adventurous--too adventurous at times for the comfort of the young discoverer.
Pushpam's home was in the jungle--by which is meant not the luxuriant forests of your imagination, but the primitive country unbroken by the long ribbon of the railway, where traffic proceeds at the rate of the lumbering, bamboo-roofed bullock cart, and the unseemliness of Western haste is yet unknown. Twice a week the postbag comes in on the shoulders of the loping _tappal_ runner. Otherwise news travels only through the wireless telegraphy of bazaar gossip. The village struggles out toward the irrigation tank and the white road, banyan-shaded, whose dusty length ties its life loosely to that of the town thirty miles off to the eastward. On the other side are palmyra-covered uplands, and then the Hills.
The Good News sometimes runs faster than railway and telegraph. Here it is so, for the village has been solidly Christian for fifty years. Its people are not outcastes, but substantial landowners, conservative in their indigenous ways, yet sending out their sons and daughters to school and college and professional life.
Of that village Pushpam's father is the teacher-catechist, a gentle, white-haired man, who long ago set up his rule of benevolent autocracy, ”for the good of the governed.”