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
When the widow is a child, not yet arrived at the age of living with her
husband, the only ceremony at the death is the cutting of the tali cord.
The other ceremonies and degradations are reserved for the time when she
arrives at the full age of wifehood, when the whole ceremony is enacted
as though the wife had been a real wife, and the little girl-widow is
compelled to join that great army of women in India, nearly twenty
million strong, of whom a million are child-widows.
I met a great many widows in India, and even among the Brahmo Samaj,
which sect is now trying to break the tyrannical yoke of custom, I never
heard of one who dared to brave public opinion and remarry. I knew one
charming widow—I think the most beautiful woman I saw in India—who had
practically broken all class restrictions except this last. It was said
that she had been in love with a man for many years, and he had
repeatedly tried to persuade her to undergo the censure of her people by
marrying him, but she dared not do it. She was only thirty years old,
but she must remain until the end of her life a widow, almost an
outcast.
In the cities and among the modernized people of India this state does
not hold such sorrow for women as in the villages and country districts,
where the people have not come into contact with Western civilization.
In these purely Hindu towns, where all social life is controlled by
custom and the influences of superstition and religion, when the woman
can no longer wear the red mark of wifehood upon her forehead, her case
is pitiable.
The Indian Government has made laws legalizing the remarriage of widows,
but even when it has the Government sanction, custom and tradition are
too strong, and practically no woman will take advantage of it. It would
mean not only lifelong disgrace for her, but also would reflect so
severely upon her relatives and the members of her caste that they would
be involved in endless disgrace.
There are many homes scattered throughout India for these helpless
women. Pundita Ramabai has a place near Poona where she has nearly eight
hundred widows in her charge, and they are a sad sight as they go in
squads of from two to three hundred to their work at the printing press
or at the looms attached to the mission. Some widows had been with her
for years, and quite likely will remain for life, as no one will marry a
widow, and they do not seem to be acquiring a practical education with
which they could earn their living in the world. The Gaekwar of Baroda
is solving the widow question by educating them as teachers at the
Government expense, only asking that in return for his care they devote
a certain number of years as school-teachers in his State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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