The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental WomenCooper, Elizabeth
Religion
The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
Cooper, Elizabeth
East Asia -- Social life and customs; Women -- East Asia
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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