INDIAN MOTHERHOOD
When it is known that the girl-wife is to fulfil her destiny by giving
her lord a child, she becomes a person of importance in her home circle,
and there are endless ceremonies to be observed. Feasts are given
friends, and many days are passed in rejoicing. One of the earliest
celebrations is given the children of all friends and relatives, when
the glass-bangle man comes with his wares, which are bought and freely
distributed to the guests. About two months before the baby is expected
the mother takes the daughter to her home, where she remains until after
the formal purification, which is forty days after the birth of a girl,
and thirty should she be so fortunate as to give a man-child to the
world. At the end of that time her husband or his mother must come and
take her home again. It would be an insult to send a lesser person,
unless it were absolutely impossible for either of them to be the
messenger. This custom of the young mother giving birth to her first
child under her own family roof-tree is followed by Mohammedans as well
as by Hindus.
The midwife in the villages is generally the wife of the barber, and
naturally her knowledge of medicine is very much limited. She is ruled
entirely by superstition and old-time custom. Her chief knowledge
consists in different prayers, and a woman who is an expert in this
field of obstetrics is always in demand, because there is no time when
prayers are a greater necessity than at the birth of a child. Both the
baby and its mother are peculiarly susceptible to the evil eye, to the
influences of lucky and unlucky days, and a thousand other superstitions
that make this time of a woman’s life one of great danger. Happily for
Indian women, the Marchioness of Dufferin, and the wives of other
viceroys, have taken the cause of Indian womanhood to heart, and have
established hospitals for women and supply nurses for the home. There
are nearly two hundred and fifty hospitals and dispensaries throughout
India, and women doctors with degrees from the highest institutions in
Europe are giving their life to help the women of India. These doctors,
with their assistants, their native students, and trained nurses, during
the year 1903 took care of a million and a half of girls and women. Yet
there is a vast opportunity for the enlarging of the work, as I was told
that there are still a hundred million people who have no knowledge of
the blessings to be obtained from European medicine and surgery, but who
depend entirely upon the native doctors and midwives.
Many hospitals are maintained by missionaries, who have always been the
forerunners in work to help the helpless, and it will only be a question
of time when the mothers of India will not be compelled to be sacrificed
to the superstition and ignorance of the women who are the only ones
allowed near them in their time of travail. Even the most advanced men
in India to-day would hardly allow a man doctor to attend his wife at
the birth of a child. He would rather lose the life of the wife than so
violate the customs of his class.
When the child is born, the date of the month, the hour of the day, and
the star that is in the ascendant are carefully noted in order that the
guru, or family priest, may cast the horoscope. Many of these
astrologers are astute humbugs, and impose upon the credulity of their
patrons to an enormous degree.
[Illustration:
CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA.
To face p. 132.]
The house where a child has been born, as well as those who live in it,
are considered impure for ten days, unless it is a rented house, when
only the room in which the mother lies is unclean, and into which no one
can enter except the midwife. The room is kept extremely warm, and
incense is burned in it every day, and leaves are hung in front of the
door to ward off evil spirits. On the eleventh day the linen and
clothing is sent to the washman, and the mother, taking the child in her
arms and with the husband sitting beside her, goes through the ceremony
of purification by the family priest, after which he purifies the entire
household and the rooms. Still the mother is not supposed to receive her
friends, and must keep apart from the rest of the family until the
thirty or forty days are passed, when she passes through another
purification ceremony, and then goes to the temple to offer sacrifice.
Even the little baby is considered impure for twenty days, and must not
be touched unless clothed in silk or woollen.
The new-comer has a succession of ceremonies to celebrate his arrival
into this world of sorrows. On the twelfth day he is named; on a later
day the first bracelets are put upon his arms and tiny anklets upon his
ankles. When he is six months old he is given his first food. Five kinds
of syrup are made, and the baby is given a taste of each one, and rice
is put into his mouth. The father offers sacrifice to the household
gods, the first loin-cloth is tied on the little man, the women sing,
music is played, and feasting is indulged in by all. Each event is made
the occasion of an elaborate feast, to which friends and relatives are
invited and presents are given to the guests and to the priests. In
fact, the priests seem to be omnipresent at all occasions in a Hindu
family. A woman whom I was visiting was complaining of the many
ceremonies that had taken place in her family during the past year, and
she said that she was thoroughly tired of the worry and expense
connected with them. I said: “But who benefits by these elaborate feasts
and rituals that give so much trouble and cause such an outlay in
presents and money?” She said wearily: “Who benefits? Why, the priests
and the Brahmans. They always reap their harvest, whether we are born,
marry, or die. If we are wicked, we must ask them to intercede for us;
if we are good, we must ask them to thank the gods for us; and if we
die, they must help us across the river of fire. We can do nothing of
ourselves; they are our taskmasters with ever-open palm.”
If the newborn son survives the first two years—and the mortality of
babies is frightful, especially in the cities—he will quite likely have
the opportunity of having the tonsure made for the first time, and this
event is only rivalled by the entertainment given when, whether boy or
girl, the ears are pierced by the goldsmith and it is announced that
babyhood is passed. These endless feasts would be ruinous to the poor
Hindu were it not for the fact that it is practically the only time when
he entertains his friends. There is no promiscuous dinner-giving as
among the Western people; friends are invited only in connection with
some religious rite or to inaugurate a special event in the family.
If a member of one of the higher castes, the mother who has watched her
baby grow from babyhood into boyhood, looks forward to the most solemn
and important event in his life, the ceremony called “the introduction
to knowledge,” when he is invested with the sacred cord. This ceremony
lasts from four to five days and is nearly as expensive as a wedding.
The father must provide many pieces of cotton cloth and small gold and
silver coins to be given as presents to the guests. He must have
unlimited food and a great collection of pottery, because, as at a
marriage feast, the dishes are broken after their first use.
This cord may be seen on all Brahmans and on the members of a few of the
higher castes, hanging from the left shoulder to the right hip. It is
composed of three strands of cotton, each strand formed by nine threads.
The cotton with which it is made must be gathered from the plant by the
hand of a Brahman, and corded and spun by persons of the same caste, in
order that it may not be defiled by passing through the hands of persons
who are ceremonially unclean. For a young boy the cord has only three
strands, but after he is married it is composed of six strands and may
have nine. It is symbolical of the body, speech, and mind, and when the
knots are tied, means that the man who wears the thread has gained
control over these three organs that cause all worldly troubles.
At the end of the ceremony the guests accompany the boy, who is
elaborately dressed and seated in an open palanquin, through the streets
to the sound of singing, music, and merry-making. On his return to his
home, he, for the first time, performs the sacrifice of fire, showing
that he is now a member of his caste and a twice-born son of India.
If the mother belongs to a poor family, quite likely her boy will work
to earn a few annas to add to the family exchequer, or if they are
farmers, his days will be passed in the fields frightening the greedy
crows from the ripening crops or driving away the animals that infest
the fields which are near the jungles. In Baroda, education is
compulsory; but many a mother gets around the law by paying the fine of
two rupees a month, and selling her small boy’s labour for five rupees,
thus gaining a livelihood.
England has established free schools in every town and village, and
there is little excuse even for the boy or girl of poor parents not to
have an education. Even members of the depressed classes, or, as they
are called, the pariahs, have their schools. The question that is
agitating the minds of the educators is what form of education should be
given these sons of a people who have been practically slaves for many
centuries. Many contend that they should have only a technical
education, that the sons of the carpenter caste should be made better
carpenters, and that they should not be made barristers. A lady said to
me: “Said, my sweeper’s son, goes to school, and after getting an
education he naturally feels himself better than his father, a sweeper,
or his uncle, who is my groom. He cannot affiliate himself with a higher
caste than that into which he was born, as they will not accept him, and
he has outgrown his own caste. What is he to do? He puts on a foreign
hat and leaves his home, and in the next census, drops his name of Said
Faruki and becomes John James Jones, a half-caste, and the census-taker
wonders why there has been such an increase in half-castes. The
population of half-castes grows from the lower castes who wish to raise
themselves, but it is kept down in the census returns by the half-castes
who wish to better themselves socially, and call themselves Portuguese
or subjects of some other dark-skinned race of Europeans.”
This question of the education of the Indian youth is a very serious
problem with which those who have the welfare of India at heart have to
contend. Many a boy when he returns to his home and his people says:
“Why did they educate me?” There are few avenues of livelihood open to
the Indian boy, as there is no Army or Navy or Church in which to enlist
so many of the younger sons as in England or America. The main prizes
are the Government offices, and failing these, the chief desire of all
Indians is to be a lawyer. There are few places in the Government employ
now, and the country is flooded with impecunious barristers.
The Indian feels that he has a real grievance in the question of the
Civil Service examinations. For the higher positions in this service it
is necessary for the student to go to England and obtain his degree at
an English university. The question of expense is a bar to the great
majority. One often hears of parents mortgaging their homes and
practically selling themselves to the moneylender for life, that the boy
may have this one great opportunity. If he wins, they have not struggled
in vain, but if he fails, life will be very grey and grim, because quite
likely his life and his son’s, and his son’s son’s life will be given in
a vain attempt to get rid of the burden of debt which seems to always
hang over the heads of India’s poor.
The question of the education of the daughter is not so much a matter of
thought to the middle-class Mohammedan or Hindu mother, because at the
time when, if she were in Western lands, she would be taking her books
under her arm and starting for her first day at school, in India she is
getting married. She may, if in a village, attend the school with her
brothers until she is eight or nine years old, but rarely, except in the
highest classes, does the little girl have a longer opportunity for
study. In the cities the rich families are sending their daughters to
private schools, and the Oriental home is the happy hunting ground for
the English governess, who is engaged to teach, not only the knowledge
to be found in books but also the etiquette to be observed in English
society, as it seems to be the main object in life of the educated
Indian, both man and woman, to be more English in manner than are the
English themselves.
In all the better class homes the piano is seen, and seldom now does the
daughter of the house play upon the veena or any instrument of Indian
music. In Calcutta I went to a reception given by a great Indian lady.
With the exception of the costumes worn by the pretty dark-eyed
Bengalis, and the absence of men, I would have thought I was in an
English house at an afternoon tea. English was spoken by nearly every
one, the music was European, the refreshments were from an English
caterer, and there was no distinct note of India in all the afternoon’s
ceremonies. Most of the ladies wore high-heeled French slippers, and
many of them had their beautifully draped saris twined around bodies
held in place by the French corset, which must have been most
uncomfortable for these people, used to untrammelled freedom in regard
to their dress.
Times are changing so fast in India that it is hard to say “This is a
custom” or “That is a custom.” Education is opening the eyes of the
younger generation of Indian women to the fallacy of many of the
old-time rites and superstitions. Still, many of the mothers are
conservative and feel keenly their daughter’s departure from the beliefs
of her day, yet the pressure is so strong that many of these
conservative mothers are sending their daughters to the schools, both
mission and Government, where in the former they avail themselves
eagerly of the education, but are not influenced by the religious
teaching. One devout Mohammedan mother said to me: “Yes, I send my
daughter to a mission school, as it is the best in our town. I feel that
they cannot hurt her, as she has had a good religious training in the
home.”
A great many of the mothers feel that the present system of education
for women in India is wrong, and that the text-books are not the ones
that should be adopted for the use of Indian children. The stories have
little to do with Indian life, and the children do not understand them.
For instance, stories of snowstorms, ice, and things that are to be seen
in a foreign land, are far above the understanding of the average Indian
girl. It is also said that the girl is taught of Joan of Arc and of
English heroines, but nothing is said of the heroines of Indian history,
nor is anything taught of Indian history before the English occupation.
There is nothing given the child to inspire a feeling of patriotism, nor
is she given any moral training except in the mission schools. She is
given a certain amount of book knowledge, which quite likely she cannot
assimilate, and is considered educated. I remember visiting a girls’
school where the teacher asked a class of girls to recite Wordsworth’s
poetry, extracts from Shelley and Keats; they could tell the place of
birth and give the list of English poets and chronology of the English
kings most glibly, but what actual good it afforded the Indian girl to
have all these interesting facts in her little head I could not see.
The Indian girl learns easily and is often most eloquent. There are no
better public speakers than are the Bengali women, who seem to share
with their men in the alertness of their brain. A prominent educator of
India said:—
I have come in contact with people from all over the world in my
capacity as educator, but I believe there are no men of any country
who can compare with the Indian in quickness of thought and in
capacity to learn. Within the small round head of the Bengali is a
dynamo of resistless energy, that is for ever working, either for
good or bad, but which ever way it turns, we of England must
recognize its power.
The crying need of India is the great teacher, both man and woman; the
teacher who will really take an interest in his pupils and not feel the
bar of race. This is the fault of the average man who comes to India,
and if he does not have it when he arrives he soon acquires a pride in
being one of the ruling race. The Indian boy and girl are extremely
clever, and feel instantly this racial prejudice of the Englishman, and
consequently resent his attitude of superiority. Tennyson’s indictment
of English schoolmasters could be justly applied to many of the teachers
in India to-day:—
Because you do profess to teach, and teach us nothing, feeding not
the heart.
There are wanted teachers who will give the Indian boy and girl the true
value of an education other than its advantages from an economic
standpoint. That must be considered also, and in a land where the crowds
are great and famines many, it assumes even a larger importance in the
lives of the boys who must become the wage-earners, than it does in
Western lands, where life is not such a fierce struggle for the
necessities. But along with the training for the making of a livelihood
should be given another training. These boys and girls of India who are
just starting on the road that their Occidental brothers and sisters
have been treading for many generations should be given the broader view
of education, its worth and meaning. They should be taught by loving
teachers the true knowledge of which so beautiful a definition is given
by Bishop Mant:—
What is true knowledge! Is it with keen eye
Of Lucre’s sons to thread the mazy way?
Is it of civil rights, and royal sway,
And wealth political, the depths to try?
Is it to delve the earth, to soar the sky?
To marshal nations, tribes in just array;
To mix and analyze, and mete and weigh
Her elements, and all her powers descry?
These things, who will may know them, if to know
Breed not vainglory; but, o’er all, to scan
God in his works and Word shown forth below,
Creation’s wonders and Redemption’s plan;
Whence came we, what to do, and whither go:
This is true knowledge, and the whole of man.