The Queen's Daughters in IndiaBushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
History
The Queen's Daughters in India
Bushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
Prostitution -- India; Women -- India -- Conduct of life; Women -- India -- Social conditions
These Cantonments are all under military rule. As our work lay only
within the Cantonments the military regulations, of course, applied
to us. One of these rules made it possible at any time for us to be
excluded, for it refers to "persons whom the Commanding Officer deems
it expedient to exclude from the Cantonment, with or without assigning
any reason for excluding them therefrom" (Cantonments Act, chap. 5,
sec. 26, clause 23). It was necessary, therefore, that we should not
attract attention to the fact that we were making investigations as
to whether the resolution of the House of Commons was being obeyed or
not by the military authorities. Had our errand been suspected, we
could have been sent out of the Cantonment at once, with no explanation
and no opportunity for redress. We therefore proceeded as quietly as
possible.
Towards the last our enquiries proceeded very rapidly, for we had
learned to accomplish as much in one day as would formerly have
occupied a week. The winter season was over, and we were now in
the month of March, with the heat of the advancing Indian summer
daily increasing in terrible force, and becoming oppressive to our
unaccustomed Anglo-Saxon constitutions. We travelled by night and
worked by day, hastening on to the completion of our task. At times,
arriving at our destination in the middle of the night, we rested,
exhausted, in the ladies' waiting-room at the railway station, where
there were cane-seated settees, on which we spread our travelling rugs
and remained until the morning. A native woman was always in charge,
and good refreshment-rooms were at hand, so that we saved much time and
avoided publicity in this way. We often travelled in what were known
as "intermediate compartments," knowing that we should attract less
attention than as first or second-class passengers. We simply asked
for guidance at every step of the way through these months of anxiety
and toil; and we knew that our prayers were answered.
We had various interpreters. One of these was a specially gifted
woman. She had a sweet, plaintive voice, and sang the native songs
with touching effect on the poor women whom we visited; one we always
recall as having been a wonderful instrument through God of moving
their hearts. It was a pilgrim hymn with a recurring strain of warning
against the love of the world, dress, jewellery, and sinful pleasures;
and reminding us all that this life is swiftly passing, and that death
may soon overtake us. Often before the refrain was finished the poor
women would be seen sobbing as they listened, joining in the sorrowful
strain that recurred again and again; and as soon as the song was ended
pouring out their pitiful histories and their protests against the
degradation into which they had been thrust by the infamous system of
legalised vice under which they were slaves.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Trading-posts for the supply of necessaries to the soldiers; but
the author means, in explicit terms, the chakla or brothel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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