Twenty years ago there were in India five million more men than women,
and there has been no change in that respect. The chief cause of this
disparity is the habitual slaughter of girl babies. The unwelcome
babes are killed with opium pills or exposed to wild beasts. The
Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, in her agonizing book, _The High Caste
Hindu Woman_, writes with bitter sarcasm, that
"even the wild animals are so intelligent and of such
refined taste that they mock at British law and almost
always steal _girls_ to satisfy their hunger." "The
census of 1870 revealed the curious fact that three
hundred children were stolen in one year by wolves from
within the city of Umritzar, _all the children being
girls_."
Hindoo females who escape the opium pills and the wolves seldom have
occasion to congratulate themselves therefor. Usually a fate worse
than death awaits them. Long before they are old enough, physically or
mentally, to marry, they are either delivered bodily or betrothed to
men old enough to be their grandfathers. A great many girls are
married literally in the cradle, says the authoress just quoted (31).
"From five to eleven years is the usual period for this marriage among
the Brahmans all over India." Manu made twenty-four the minimum age
for men to marry, but "popular custom defies the law. Boys of ten and
twelve are now doomed to be married to girls of seven to eight years
of age." This early marriage system is "at least five hundred years
older than the Christian era." As superstitious custom compels poor
parents to marry off their daughters by a given age "it very
frequently happens that girls of eight or nine are given to men of
sixty or seventy, or to men utterly unworthy of the maidens."[261]