Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friendsMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
History
Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friends
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
India; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900 -- Friends and associates
successful campaign, and we should not be surprised if we met him again
on the old battlefield, anxious to win new victories as the defender of
a good cause.
The number of widows in India is simply appalling. According to the
census of the year 1881 their number of all ages amounted, at that time,
to twenty million nine hundred and thirty thousand six hundred and
twenty-six. Of these six hundred and sixty-nine thousand one hundred
were under nineteen years of age.
From 15 to 19 years of age 382,736
From 10 to 14 years of age 207,388
Under 9 years of age 78,976
———————
669,100
Even native states have taken up the cause of the unhappy children. Some
of the Rajput states some years ago declared against premature marriage,
and Mysore has now followed their good example, passing a law not only
to prevent child-marriages, but to make it penal for an old man to marry
a young girl. I doubt whether such a law would pass even our own
Parliament. Clause 3 says:—
“Any person who causes the marriage of a girl who has not completed
fourteen years of age, with a man who has completed fifty years of age,
and any person who knowingly aids and abets, within the meaning of the
Indian Penal Code, such marriage, shall be punished with simple
imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine, or
with both.”
The Madras Presidency will now have to follow the example of Mysore,
instead of taking the lead, as it ought to have done. In a Memorandum
accompanying the Bill for the Madras Presidency, it is stated that in
1882 there were 157,466 girls married under the age of nine, and that
there were 5,621 widows under the same age. Think of widows under nine
years of age!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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