Carrie Chapman Catt - Diaries, India, January - February? 1912 (Box 1, Folder 5)

...and to disturb this distinction would mean war. The obstacle to a united India are to be found in things which to us appear the merest trivialities but to India with her religious reverence for custom become insurmountable barriers. Caste rules, also complicated beyond the comprehension of any Westerner are a certain preventive of unity or democracy. Yet it must be said that there is a minority, the proud descendants of the old India, happily emancipated from ignorance and superstition, who dream the restoration of India to her former greatness and of a united nation taking its place among the world's nations.

There is also an agitation embarrassing to the British government which is seditious, without a definite purpose. It occasionally throws bombs and prints and preaches revolution. If its aim is definite at all, it apparently is the hope to free India from British rule and give place to the agitators who believe in their own capacities for rulership. The British generally account for this element by the fact that the leaders are young men who have been educated and as there seems no place in Indian life for such educated men, they attempt...

...to create one. I imagine this class to count for little in the general progress. These people are the sound and sane guides of the new India. An annual Congress, similar to those withheld in our various countries has been held for 24 yrs, for the purpose of formulary demands and planning campaigns to carry them out. Numerous newspapers exist which dearly discuss Indian affairs and the rights of men. No woman's movement to compare with that of men exists. There is no organization, no meetings, no newspapers to voice the demands of the women. Yet there are certain premonitions which as certainly predict the evening of an organized movement, as the bud gives promise to a flower. The educated woman of India is awakened to the need of...

...six she stretches out her hand to help and she strikes a wall of custom which makes present progress well nigh impossible. That wall of custom is built of three kinds of stones. The customs of purdah, as child marriage and widowhood & ignorance. We have seen visited Turkish Syrian and Egyptian women, but nowhere have we seen such absolute "purda" (meaning seclusion, liberally behind a curtain) as in India. The upper caste women, except in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta are positively never seen. One sees occasionally a "female carriage" in the street, a small vehicle entirely enveloped by a thick curtain. One imagines a woman may be sitting within the airless enclosure but this is the only sign the visitor gets that there are such women in charge of them. In Benares the Holy City of India on a holy day the Ganges is always holy and baths...

...within it are certain to ward off evil but when taken on a holy day the waters possess still greater miraculous power. Thousands upon thousands bathe in the river that day. We saw a tent like thing supported by 12 men coming down the long steps to the river. They marched into the river with it and there they stood. Our guide explained that a high caste woman had come to bathe and worship. When the Christian missionaries opned the school the low caste children attended, for there is no purdah for the working, nor her daughters. Now there are schools for high caste girls. They are brought to the school and tanken home in closed carts, and no human being but the teachers who are always women ever sees...