In an article on "Child Marriages in Bengal,"[262] D.N. Singha
explains the superstition to which so many millions of poor girls are
thus ruthlessly sacrificed. "It is," he says,
"a well-nigh universal conviction among Hindoos that
every man's soul goes to a hell called Poot, no matter
how good he may have been. Nothing but a son's fidelity
can release or deliver him from it, hence all Hindoos
are driven to seek marriage as early as possible to
make sure of a son." "A son, the fruit of marriage,
saves him from perdition, so that the one purpose of
marriage is to leave a son behind him."[263] A
daughter's son may take his son's place: hence the
eagerness to marry off the girls young. In other words,
in order to save themselves from a hell hereafter the
brutal fathers drive their poor little daughters to a
hell on earth. And what is worse, public opinion
compels them to act in this cruel manner; for, as the
same writer informs us, the man who suffers his
daughter to remain unmarried till she is thirteen or
fourteen years old is "subjected to endless annoyances,
beset with stinging remarks, unpleasant whisperings and
slanderous gossip. No orthodox Hindoo will allow his
son to accept the hand of such a grown-up girl."
How preventive of all possibility of free choice or love such a custom
is may be inferred from another brief extract from the same article:
"The superstitious notion of a Hindoo parent that it is
a sin not to give his daughter in marriage before she
ceases to to be a child impels him urgently to get her
a husband before she has passed her ninth or tenth
year. He sends out to match-makers and spares no pains
to discover a bridegroom in some family of rank equal
or superior to his own. Having found a boy ... he
endeavors to secure him by entreaty or by large offers
of money or jewels."
The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati (22) gives some further grewsome details
which would seem like the inventions of a burlesque writer were they
not attested by such unbiassed authority. "Religions enjoin that every
girl must be given in marriage; the neglect of this duty means for the
father unpardonable sin, public ridicule, and caste excommunication."
But in the higher castes the cost of a marriage is at least $200,
wherefore if a man has several daughters his ruin is almost certain.
Female infanticide is often the result, but even if the girls are
allowed to grow up there is a way for the father to escape. There is a
special high class of Brahmans who make it their business to marry
these girls. They go up and down the land marrying ten, twenty,
sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty of them, receiving presents
from the bride's parents and immediately thereafter bidding good-by to
her, going home never to see their "wife" again. The parents have now
done their duty; they have escaped religious and social ostracism at
the expense, it is true, of their daughters, who remain at home to
make themselves useful. These poor girls can never marry again, and
whether or not they become moral outcasts, their life is ruined; but
that, to a Hindoo, is a trifling matter; girls, in his opinion, were
not created for their own sake, but for the pleasure, comfort, and
salvation of man.