Our Indian Sisters (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The debased condition of women in India is both a reflection of India’s economic backwardness and a bar to its progress. In the limits of an article we can only examine a few of the aspects of this problem.

It has been said that comparisons are odious, but nevertheless they have their uses in that they heighten contrasts. Only by relating the status of women in India to the status of women in Western countries may we appreciate the deplorable state of the former.

In the West nowadays every girl receives some education, usually earns her living for a period and attains a degree of independence unknown even a hundred years ago. She chooses her husband and, if wise enough, determines if and when she will have children. She chooses her religion or discards it, appears in public and possesses the franchise. With what she will enjoy under Socialism it is meagre, but by comparison with her Indian sister she has a world within her grasp.

Before examining the position of Indian women it may be useful to explain, though very briefly, how it came about.

Peoples evolve in a similar manner, but do so unevenly, and in India we see capitalism side by side with relics of Feudalism. In the isolated villages primitive communism is only just disappearing before the inroads of modern industry. India has been invaded by many different groups of people throughout her history, but the principle invaders have been Turkish people. India has therefore many religions, but the predominating religions are Hindoism and Mohammadanisni. Out of every 100 persons in India 68 are Hindus and 22 are Mohammadans (Muslims).

With the development of property women came to be regarded as chattels and religion adopted that status in its evolution. The Muslims secluded their women in order to secure them from robbery and the Hindus adopted this method. It is known as the Purdah system and consists of secluding the girl when she attains puberty. Religion also decreed, as in many early religions that the woman’s god on earth is her husband and she must serve him as such. Her life is only really justified when she bears a son wlio will assist her husband’s soul to continue its journey to its next life, which is one of many. The Brahamins (priestly group) dominate the Hindu religion and at birth, death, marriage, etc., the Brahmin must be paid. The Brahmin makes it incumbent on parents to arrange marriages early for their children, at birth or shortly after. At puberty the girl is sent to her husband despite the fact that the Sanda Act of 1929 penalises the marriage of girls under 14 and of youths under 18, this act has never been adequately enforced. The woman has no rights of divorce or property under Hindu law mainly it is explained because marriage is a sacrament.

The Muslim woman comes off better in theory than her Hindu sister as marriage is to her “a contract for the procreation of children” and as such may be dissolved by both parties. The Muslim woman has property rights and the custody of her children after a divorce, but it is in the main a facade of freedom as Purdah shuts her off from the world and makes enforcement of rights difficult and, due to lack of education, she may even be ignorant of them. Her husband’s divorce is easier than hers, and he may illtreat her and take other wives.

The seclusion of both Hindu and Moslem women is really the worst crime perpetrated against them, property rights began it, religion sanctioned it and the dead hand of custom continues it. Tuberculosis is rife among Purdah women.

“In Calcutta between the ages of 10 and 15 years for every boy that dies of tuberculosis 3 girls die. Between the ages of 15 and 20 for every boy that dies of tuberculosis five girls die.”

(Quoted from “Key of Progress,” a symposium written by Indian and other writers and edited by A R. Caton, 1930. Page 108). Early marriage is the main factor responsible for the high rate of tuberculosis among women.

Venereal diseases are rife in India and the stock is therefore often infected at the start, and early marriage produces a very high rate of abortions among the girls below sixteen. The maternal mortality rate in India is three times—great as in U.S.A.—24.5 against 8.5. Full-term pregnancy may prove to be a catastrophe also. The girl who is kept indoors away from air and sunlight and fed mainly on vegetables and rice nearly always has some degree of rickets and in Purdah continues to develop adult rickets known as osteomalacia. The bones soften and bend and the pelvis may becomes so completely altered from its normal snape as to render normal delivery impossible and Caesarian section is the only method possible should the girl be got to hospital in time. The girls require ante-natal care more than then western sisters but seldom get it. The so called midwives or dais are worse than untrained and have no knowledge of even the rudiments of cleanliness; the wonder is that any mothers survive. More hospitals are being provided but Purdah women are slow to make use of them and in any case they must be completely staffed by women, for the Purdah woman is so well schooled in her creed that she would rather die undelivered than be attended by a male doctor.

The Indian mother possesses much maternal instinct but little maternal capacity for she is still only a child herself. She lives in the joint family system which operates in most parts of India and here her mother-in-law assumes control and trains her in the bad old ways. The Hindu religion whilst on the one hand debasing women on the other it makes the grandmother a matriarchal symbol of great veneration, hence her power, but alas she has had no opportunity to learn aught save a few outmoded superstitions. Religion also teaches that over zealous care of babies angers the jealous gods against them, making neglect preferable. Whilst this is bad in any country, in disease ridden tropical India it is disastrous and the infant mortality rate per 1,000 births is 162 as against Australia’s 38.

The girl’s ignorance is not only limited to infant care but to all branches of knowledge. Literacy among the women of India in 1941 was 5 per cent., the following indicates the reason why :—

“It is not so much the view that ‘education is unbecoming the modesty of the sex,’ as the view that education is entirely futile and has no bearing on home life which must to-day be combated. And who could deny that a year, or perhaps two, spent in parrot-like repetitions of meaningless words, is an absolute waste of time? Even as a creche (the usual use to which primary schools are put), the primary school is hopelessly unattractive. There is none of the apparatus little children love, no sand heaps, coloured books, chalks, or handwork; only an abracadabra of sounds and signs leading nowhere. . . . Over the middle and high schools where literacy at least might be attained, Purdah and early marriage have cast their long shadows.”— (“Key of Progress,” page 18), and again, “In no province does one girl out of five attend school; in some provinces not one of 20 or 25.” (page 3).

Schools for girls have only existed since the middle of the last century and it must be remembered that co-education is rarely permitted. Girls must be taught by women, and parents are rarely interested in careers for girls, so the vicious circle continues resulting in a lack of women teachers, nurses, and doctors. What schools exist are mainly in the towns and though the population of the towns is almost that of America yet 80 per cent. of India’s population live in the villages.

Education is administered by the provincial governments and these have failed to obtain sufficient money to establish an adequate number of schools; co-education is, however, permitted in Madras, but hardly anywhere else. A further problem is that of the caste division; an untouchable may not attend school with the Brahmin, etc., and requires a separate school, rarely attained. Until present customs are broken down the activities of the Indian woman in the sphere of education are greatly restricted.

The life of the Indian village women may be less strict in the observance of Purdah if she be very poor, but education will be nil. Village life has become poorer due to facts beyond the scope of this article which are bound up with the destruction of native crafts, lessened productivity of the soil, heavy taxation and religious customs requiring payments. During the last century tea and coffee plantations were set up, factories built in the towns, mines opened up and railways laid down. Many of the impoverished peasants offered their labour power, but the man was so exploited that it became necessary for the wife and family to share his toil. Modern industry acknowledges no religious laws so the wife exchanged Purdah for a confinement of another sort.

Women work in the mines in India, and though eliminated from them in 1935, have been brought back during the present war. The 1931 census stated there were 8,600 women employed in “the exploitation of minerals” and the 1942 census gave 281,563 women employed in factories. Comparatively few women therefore work away from the home, and industry is mainly confined to the towns where payment and housing are very poor.

“In Bombay a woman earns half of what a man earns, in Ahmedabad it is more than half and in Sholapur it is much less than half. It would be absurd to suggest that the relative efficiency and productivity vary in this way in these three industrial centres. An assumption therefore that the employers are able to exploit woman labour in different degrees in these places is perhaps nearer the truth.” (page 155, “Our Cause,” edited S. K. Nehru).

Workers are always badly housed, but in India this means something worse than in other countries.

“A description of the housing of factory workers in Ahmedabad shows that out of 23,706 tenements observed, 5,669 had no provision of water, 5,360 had no latrines, few had any kind of drainage. . . . the tenements of Bombay provide unsanitary housing on large scale in a more compact shape.” (Page 150, “Our Cause”)

No study of women in India would be complete without consideration of prostitution which exists on a large scale and may be divided for purposes of discussion into religious and commercial, needless to say both are now commercial.

The religious prostitutes or devadasis, to give them their proper name, are girls vowed to the temple service by their parents, and are “married” to the god. Their duties consist of singing and dancing before the idol at certain times, and at others they are at the disposal of pilgrims, whose contributions go to tho temple whilst the girls receive maintenance. The community in Madras alone numbers 200,000 ! Many wish to free themselves from this slavery but legislation on their behalf is slow. Dr. Reddi, who has been active on their behalf comments: —

“Government officials in the assembly have always ignored the progressive Indian view in social matters, while they have showed too much anxiety to respect orthodox sentiments which have been suicidal to the social and moral welfare of the Indian masses.” (P. 184.185, “Key of Progress.”)

Commercial prostitution is also on a large scale. The 1931 census figures for female “beggars, vagrants and prostitutes” were 486,539. The rise of Industry is a partial explanation of its existence as it is almost nil in country districts; soldiers and sailors frequent towns and ports and evidence shows that the Government in the past has endeavoured to keep a special group for the use of the British Army in order that the incidence of V.D. might in some measure be controlled. Many of the prostitutes are recruited from India’s widows.

Before the advent of the British it had been customary to burn the widow with the husband’s corpse because it was believed she was the cause of the death. The British rendered it illegal but were powerless to remove the stigma attached to widowhood. In 1931 there were 25,496,660 widows who are treated as outcasts, half-starved and abused by their families, and many turn to prostitution.

Other recruits for the profession come through Pathan money lenders who terrorize poor people into giving up their daughters when they cannot pay the money borrowed. Once in these hideous dens of vice the girls lead a life that is a hell on earth, the keepers take all the money merely feeding the women and forcing them to serve whether ill or well, even when suffering from acute forms of venereal disease.

The position of women in India therefore is one which evokes horror. We find mere babes married, divorced, widowed and prostituted, the former and the latter appearing equally evil. The cause of widows is particularly bad although a few societies are springing up to educate them as teachers. The women who have escaped Purdah to enter factories or mines have gone, under present conditions of exploitation, from one slavery to another. Many work earnestly for the cause of women, but in India as elsewhere the fate of women is bound up with that of men and only a change in the social system will work any real salvation.

In Turkey and parts of Russia, where previously the conditions of women resembled that of India, intense industrialization was the determining factor in changing their way of life. Capitalist society demanded female labour for the factories and got it, with the blessings of Kemel Ataturk and Stalin : Industry, though growing in India during the present war, is infinitesimal in comparison with the wealth of the country and the needs of its peoples. Indian would-be capitalists are stirring and will either open up the country themselves or force this situation upon the British who have hitherto preferred to keep it as a dumping ground for their own imports : India’s wealth will be exploited and with it, her people. The change will not be a happy one until the workers become experienced enough to make their claims heard, but the position of Indian women at least cannot be worsened. Modern industry when firmly established requires moderately healthy, literate workers as the Russians discovered. We can only await that time and when it comes India’s women and men will be receptive to Socialist ideas and finally demand Socialism, which is the only solution to the problem of the Indian workers as it is to the problems of the rest of the workers throughout the world to-day.

W. P.