and the pioneers of the movement were drawn from their ranks. This
is the natural result of the educational policy pursued by the
various missionary societies, and of the later age of marriage among
Christians. Some of them are mentally very well fitted for their
studies; there are others again who are largely subsidized by public
or private funds, and possess ability to pass the average standard,
but not sufficient mental power to gain full benefit from their
training. Here, for instance, are two girls, daughters of an Indian
clergyman, both passing well, and taking employment, one as a Mistress
in a Government school, the other as an Inspectress in the Provincial
Service; contrast with them a trembling, shrinking girl from a Native
State who has received a scholarship from her State because she has
matriculated and because she is one of an impoverished family of
twelve, a particularly urgent case! Throughout her career the fear
of failure and poverty intensifies the strain already possibly too
great for a delicate constitution, and a girl who might have made an
excellent Primary teacher is sacrificed on the altar of so-called
higher education. And yet, as has already been indicated, the system
affords the needed opportunity for the clever girl, and possesses this
justification. The Christian students are mostly to be found in the
Isabella Thoburn College, in Madras, and a few in Calcutta, chiefly at
the Diocesan School and College. Since the latter was founded, about
fifteen years ago, five B.A.’s have passed out and several F.A.’s.[131]
New college buildings have recently been added with boarding
accommodation for forty-five resident students. It is managed by the
Community of St John Baptist, known generally as the Clewer Sisterhood.
Miss Chunder Mukki Bose, M.A.,[132] to whose guidance the Bethune
College has owed much of its prestige, and the late Lilavati Singh,
M.A., Vice-Principal of the Isabella Thoburn College, stand out as the
most prominent Indian Christian graduates, while the dramatic episode
of Mrs Nvimabala Shome’s graduation as B.A. at the same time as her
husband in Calcutta, gave an object-lesson in matrimonial equality.
She subsequently took her M.A. in England, and devoted much of her life
to the organization of one of the mission High schools in Calcutta.
Indian Christian graduates are to be found all over India undertaking
responsible work with great credit.
The Mohammedan girl graduates cannot be discussed as a class, for even
if we go back to the “glory of women,” the Sheikha Shuhda of the Middle
Ages, who lectured at Bagdad on literature and rhetoric, they are
only found here and there as isolated figures. One Mohammedan girl of
a well known Bombay family passed first among girl candidates in the
Bombay Presidency in 1910, and is now studying at Wilson College.
It will thus be seen that the women students of India are a very
heterogeneous body, representing almost every shade of religious
opinion, and varying possibly in their mental capacity to a greater
extent than the women of other lands.
+UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY+
-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+
Engi-|Agri- | | | | L | |
neer-|cul- | | | | a | |
ing. |ture. |Science. | | Arts. | w.| Medicine. |
-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+
M.D. M.S. M.D. M.S.
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
^ ^ ^
| | |
| | |
M.B. B.S. |
+----------+ |
| | |
| | |
M.A. | | L.M.S.
+---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
B.Sc. | B.A. | | 2nd Exam.| | |
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
|Inter- | | | | | | |
|mediate.| | | | | |2nd L.M.S.|
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
| | | Inter- | | Preli- | | |
| | | mediate.| | minary. | |1st L.M.S.|
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | |Previous.| | | | |
+--------+<--+---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | |
| | | |
| |------------------>| |
+---------+ +----------+
Matriculation (age 16).
-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+--------------------------+
+NOTES.+--The course in the other universities is somewhat
similar.
Calcutta offers a degree as Bachelor of Teaching.
The degree of L.M. and S. is abolished in Calcutta and the Panjāb, but
retained in the meantime in Bombay and in Madras after a six years’
course.
Matriculation age in Madras and the Panjāb is fifteen.
_Quinquennial Review of Progress of Education in India_,
vol. ii. p. 65.
[Illustration: Missionary Settlement for University Women Students’
Hostel, Bombay]
The question of the curriculum and of the nature of the studies
required for the degree examinations has a very definite relation to
the numerical problem stated above. Are these of a nature to attract
increasing numbers? Are they sufficiently in accord with the Indian
ideal of womanhood or with the aspirations of the reformers? The facts
are worth analysis. From the first, the courses for men and women have
been identical; no temporary expedient of a women’s examination such as
the Cambridge Higher Local, and the St Andrews L.L.A., has been adopted
by any of the Indian Universities; women must cover the same ground
as men or none at all. The various courses in Bombay are indicated in
the accompanying diagram. The range of subjects is somewhat similar to
that of the University of London; for the B.A. examination, the average
candidate presents himself in English, Philosophy, or History, and
one Classical or Modern language. There is a corresponding scientific
course, English remaining compulsory throughout. The Intermediate
examination covers a wider range of subjects. The details differ in
different Universities, but the standard on the whole is similar.
Calcutta alone requires a compulsory essay in the vernacular for the
B.A., and the emphasis laid on Sanskrit and Arabic is not the same as
that laid on Latin and Greek in the Western Universities. The Panjāb
University has a separate Oriental Course, for which as yet no woman
has entered. The M.A. is given on the results of further examination,
and, in some Universities, after a fresh course of study. The
proportion of students who go through the whole course is small: for
every seventeen who pass the Intermediate, only five become Bachelors
of Arts, and only one a Master.[133] I have been unable to procure
separate figures for women, but apparently the proportion is even less,
and there are very few women who have obtained the degree of M.A. The
examination system of the Universities has been subjected to severe
criticism, both by enlightened Indians and by Europeans, the chief
indictments being embodied in Lord Curzon’s Universities’ Commission
Report of 1904, and we find tentative reforms in the subsequent Act.
The “yattering” graduate who knows nothing and can decide nothing,
but who can repeat yard after yard from any prescribed text-book,
is the byword of those who wish to taunt India, and there is a germ
of truth in the reproach. The effort to impart the highest Western
culture through Indian teachers who have only partially assimilated
it themselves, must prove to some extent unsatisfactory. Since the
Public Service Commission in 1886, Indians have been admitted to
the Educational Service in much larger numbers: for example, the
Presidency College in Calcutta had in 1880 a complete staff of English
professors and Oriental specialists; in 1911, only eight are English
and twenty-three Indian, though in the meantime the number of pupils
has increased from 350 to 700.[134] It is possible that here real
efficiency has been sacrificed from the commendable motives of economy
and a desire to utilize the Indians in their own Universities. To
command a supply of the best men from home would involve a heavy
financial strain, and yet, unless the Oriental, who can live on a
smaller salary, has spent some years in Europe, he is hardly fitted to
guide a University where the curriculum largely consists of Western
subjects. It is interesting to find Mr Gokhale emphasizing the need
of studying in a foreign University as a preliminary to professional
work in India.[135] It is the presence of a fully equipped English
staff (who are there for other reasons than the mere acquisition of a
“living” wage) which forms the attractive force of a Mission college
to the ambitious young Indian. The whole question is an exceedingly
difficult one, and has been fully discussed recently by both Mr
Chailley and Sir Valentine Chirol; it is raised here only in so far as
it affects the women who study in mixed colleges. It should also be
noted that there is no English lady on the staff of Bethune College,
the only Government college for women. The feminine counterpart of the
typical graduate indicated above is apparently his decided superior,
for the Indian feminine virtues of modesty and reticence come to her
aid, and she does not air her acquired knowledge. Still her knowledge
is only acquired, not yet assimilated, and there is a lamentable lack
of books in her study. The library at Bethune College is not utilized
to the same extent as one in a corresponding English institution.
Actual personal contact with some of the Indian students is a pathetic
experience, as we are forced to realise how little real grit there is
behind their text-book knowledge. They have gained no broad outlook
on life: a tired brain has struggled through so many hours a day of
lecture work and book work, and no energy is left for thought! Climatic
and constitutional conditions account, to a certain extent, for this
result; lack of hereditary culture to a still greater degree; but
it is fostered largely by the conditions under which the girls have
studied, and by the failure of Anglo-Saxon women to give them of their
best. Where the women study apart in the additional classes of their
former High schools they certainly receive individual attention, which
results in creditable passes, and this is possibly the chief merit of
a system which has little to be said for it from other points of view.
The complete staff of the Isabella Thoburn College, the well-utilized
library, and the reputation which its graduates have won throughout
India, are facts which should be noted in this connexion. The Diocesan
College is establishing a similar tradition.
There is another side to University life than the purely intellectual,
namely, the human and personal. This, with all its varied
manifestations in the common pursuit of sport or of music, in the
discussion of social problems and of mental difficulties, or still more
in the gentle art of doing nothing, lends the charm to college days
and is perhaps the more dominant factor in after life. The influence
of certain personalities, men or women, who can be trusted, who can
look at life’s problems from the same point of view as their students,
and are able to throw light on their difficulties with the ripeness of
experience and to lead them to a new moral or religious outlook, is
often in the long run more powerful than that of the actual literature
studied. If the University or college fails as a school of character
it has failed of its _raison d’être_. Precisely on this ground has
the strongest indictment recently been made against the Indian system.
“There has been no more deplorable feature in the recent political
agitation than the active part taken in it by Indian schoolboys and
students.”[136] A University course inevitably shakes the foundations
of their thought, and in many cases has resulted in a revolt from all
former moral or religious standards of conduct without providing a new
basis for life. Under a stricter _régime_, with liberal grants
and every possible encouragement of private hostels where religious
instruction is possible, an effort is being made to combat this lack in
the training of character. The case of women students presents certain
parallel features, and also difficulties peculiarly its own.
The larger proportion of women students in Bombay in attendance at the
mixed classes are living in their own homes; a few from the country
are in residence at the Students’ Hostel of the Missionary Settlement
for University Women,[137] where, though the majority are Christian,
students of other faiths can be received under special arrangements.
A Jain lady was at one time in residence there. This hostel is in
close proximity to both the Wilson and the Grant Medical Colleges,
and supplies a real need, but its residents so far have not been very
numerous.
The women students of Bombay as a whole have no corporate life of their
own; they may attend some of the joint debating societies and kindred
meetings, but do not as a rule take part. Their common rooms offer
rather a geographical _pied-à-terre_ than a means of social unity. As
regards athletics, badminton is pursued in a somewhat spasmodic way in
one college, and by invitation to the Principal’s house in another, but
the question of exercise in relation to non-resident students is always
a moot point in a tropical climate. Some attempt to develop social life
is made by the women graduates from British or Colonial Universities
who are in charge of the students’ hostel; they visit the common rooms
of two of the colleges, and occasionally organize debates or kindred
functions at the hostel, to which the residents may invite other
students. The writer was present at one such debate on the question of
educating men and women on similar lines, and the opinions expressed
by some of the Indian girls are embodied in much of the foregoing.
This influence is also of a religious nature, being in connexion with
the Students’ Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and
indirectly counts for much. It is, however, an extraneous one, and
therefore many of the students, especially in the Government colleges,
are beyond its reach. With their actual lecturers they can have, in the
nature of the case, little or no personal contact, and the real need
seems to be the introduction of women on the staff of these colleges,
together with the tutorial system, which has proved itself so useful
in mixed non-residential universities in Britain. The case is very
strongly put by Mr Covernton, who was till recently Principal of the
Elphinstone College.
“It is becoming a problem how to provide accommodation and adequate
supervision for these girls. It is ridiculous to expect that young
unmarried graduates, fresh from Oxford and Cambridge, can mould the
minds and characters of Parsi, much less of Brahman girls; while the
training of Eurasian girls is still more difficult. Moreover, the close
association of male and female involved in a mixed education is so
totally opposed to the traditions of the East, as well as so fraught
with possibilities of evil, that in my opinion the system is rather a
barrier than an encouragement to female education.--A special lecturer
and tutor of female students should be appointed to the Elphinstone
College. She should be a British graduate, and a member of the Indian
Educational Service. Her subject should preferably be English, because
it is very easy to get women well-qualified to teach that subject.
She would take complete charge of the girls’ studies in that subject,
and would in addition supervise their general reading, their games,
and most important of all their manners and conduct.”[138] As regards
conduct the general bearing and influence of these girls in the mixed
colleges has been most creditable in very trying circumstances,
but there is certainly a need to relax the evident tension of the
position, which is little in accordance with Oriental ideas.
The condition of the women students in Madras who attend the mixed
colleges is somewhat similar. There is an excellent hostel managed by
the Students’ Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, where
students of all faiths can reside, and former pupils of the mission
schools can still remain in connexion with them. I understand that the
same strain exists here, with the consequent lack of energy for any
corporate life. An English woman graduate writes from Madras of the
great need in South India of a first grade women’s college.
In Calcutta conditions are entirely different; there is a good hostel
in connexion with the Bethune College, and the Christian girls who
attend it are resident in their former schools. There are only a few
non-residential students, but as the colleges attended by the Arts
students are very small, the system assimilates to the tutorial, and
there is ample opportunity for contact between student and lecturer.
In the Bethune College, however, where the majority of teachers are
men, the conflict with Oriental ideas arises again, and one is not
surprised, apart from other reasons, at the absence of Moslem or
orthodox Hindu girls. Here again it seems unfortunate that there is no
corporate life or unity amongst the women students as a whole, or even
in the Bethune hostel itself. In the latter it would depend entirely
on Indian initiative, and though one would expect it to assume a
different form from the customary Saxon one, its entire absence can
only be accounted for by unfavourable conditions.
The corporate life of the Isabella Thoburn College has already been
emphasized; a glance at the students’ _Lal Bagh Chronicle_
is enough to convince the reader of its reality, and of its
characteristically Indian nature.
The case of the Indian woman medical student must be considered
apart from the life of the Arts colleges. As a rule few women,
except an occasional Parsi, pass from the one to the other, and
there is little contact. It is unnecessary here to emphasize the
need for every possible encouragement for Indian women to take up
the practice of medicine. The sorrows and sufferings of Indian women
behind the _parda_, who would rather face death than admit a
male practitioner, are well known. If to some the statements made
by missionary writers seem exaggerated, they have only to turn to
the petition presented to the Viceroy in 1890 by the medical women
practising in India to find evidence of the saddest facts. Indian
medical students are divided broadly into two classes, those who
study in one of the four Government colleges affiliated to one or
other of the chief Universities, and those who study in the medical
schools for a very much lower qualification.[139] Of the first class
again some are genuine University students going up for the degrees
indicated on page 204, while others are content merely with the college
diploma which qualifies for practice in India. The medical schools,
of which there are twenty-seven in different parts of India, are
“intended primarily for the instruction of candidates for employment
in Government Service as hospital assistants, but many of their
pupils also go into private practice.”[140] They confer the title of
sub-assistant-surgeon. A few women students are to be found in the
former class: in 1907 it included thirty-four Indian women in all,
and there has not been any marked increase in recent years. An even
smaller number of these take the highest qualification. All that has
been said of the strained life of the women Arts students applies
even more strongly to the medicals. It is a very hard and difficult
life, and there is little in the environment to lessen the burden.
The statistics of the medical schools on the other hand show a larger
figure, 138 in 1907, with a considerable increase in recent years.
It is in these schools that the administrators of the Countess of
Dufferin’s Fund,[141] which has done so much for the medical treatment
of women, place most students, though some are also to be found
studying in the Universities. Three of these schools are specially
women’s schools--the North India Medical School for Christian Women
at Ludhiana, the female branch of the Agra Medical School, and one
centre in the Bombay Presidency with some half-dozen pupils. The work
of the former, as it illustrates by contrast the serious problem of
the mixed medical schools and colleges, is worthy of special notice.
This school, which is under the management of a private committee,
including members of the Indian Medical Service, was originally founded
in 1894 through the agency of seven missionary societies working in
the United Provinces and the Panjāb. Its aim was to secure “that the
young Christian women who pass through a medical course, and then go
out to Government or Native State or Mission Hospital work, should be
so safeguarded and trained that they shall be worthy representatives
of the religion they profess.”[142] The dangers of the joint-system of
instruction in all subjects, with unlimited association in hospitals
and museums, is apparent in every centre, with its consequent effect
in some cases of bringing “female education and emancipation into
discredit.” A letter of application to the Ludhiana School throws some
light on prevalent conditions:--
“I require a Female Hospital Assistant for my Hospital, and am very
anxious to get one who has been trained under Medical Women. As your
School is the only one in India of this sort, would you be kind
enough to let me have one? This is not a Mission Hospital but one
for _parda_ Moslem women only, under the Dufferin Fund, and it
is essential that the Assistant be respectable. (This I find rather
difficult to get amongst the class trained under males.) It is perhaps
against your rules to supply Dufferin Fund Hospitals, but I hope you
will stretch a point and oblige me by letting me have one, as I have
had a great deal of trouble for the past year with Assistants.”
The students of the Ludhiana School flock from all parts of India for
the benefit of this tuition under qualified medical women. There are at
present some twenty-seven Indian Christian students and five Eurasians,
taking the four years’ course, while some thirty others are training as
“compounders.” The linked women’s hospital,[143] with a record of 1300
in-patients and 26,000 new out-patients in 1910, affords the necessary
opportunity for practice. The staff is drawn from India, Britain, and
America, and consists of eight fully qualified medical women. The
record of the school is one of slow and steady progress in efficiency
and numbers, and the latest stage is the proposed affiliation to
the Panjāb University, the negotiations for which are progressing
favourably. Under these conditions the school would be able as a
college to send students up for the M.B., B.S. examination, and the
Government students would be transferred to it from Lahore.
The hostel life of the students is under careful superintendence, and
arrangements are being made for the accommodation of non-Christian
students. The contrast between the life here and that of women medical
students in Bombay or Calcutta is marked; and if it be argued that
the highest professional ability cannot be obtained with so limited
a hospital roll, there is surely need for modifying in some way
the conditions at these centres. Two Government hostels for women
medical students exist in Calcutta in close proximity to the two
hospitals;[144] the question, however, concerns not only hostel life
but professional training under circumstances which will not injure
character. The complete separation in the London and Edinburgh Schools
of Medicine for Women affords a striking contrast. A certain number of
Indian students, perhaps one or two a term, come over for a full or
supplementary course in British colleges, as this qualification secures
a better post on return.
[Illustration: Ludhiana School of Medicine--Hospital Court Yard with
Patients]
To sum up, the problem respecting Indian women students, in both
Arts and Medicine, arises, apparently, from the need of a numerical
increase, from the lack of conditions so adapted to Oriental ideas
that the highest courses shall be open without difficulty to women of
all ranks, and from the lack of a curriculum calculated to raise the
standard of the intellectual work done. Moreover, mental training must
be combined with such opportunities for the development of character as
shall ensure to Indian women the leaders they require.