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

...them. Our head mistress told me that one day some children tired of the stifling air in the covered cart lifted the curtain to peep out and a a father chancing to pass spoke to them. The event nearly broke up the school! Of course there can be no public usefulness for women, no organization, no real agitation until such seclusion is moderated. That the curtain is slowly lifting is evident however. In Bombay and Calcutta there are purdah parties where Hindu and Mohammedan ladies meet with Europeans to enjoy music or lectures. They have a club house, sustained by all three classes and where I saw a game of tennis played by two...

...Parsees against a Hindu and a Mohammedan. Many Hindoos go in street quite freely and unveiled and a society has been formed called Seva Sadan Sisterhood composed of Hindu Parsee and Mohammedan women, its object being to break down the barriers of religious prejudice and to assist each other in higher culture. In the interim there is a growing sentiment favorable to liberation of women from purdah but each woman hesitates to lead. As a healthy indication of what is coming, some of the Hindoos are explaining that purdah is no part of the Hindu religionbut was forced on them by the Mohammedans.

Child marriage is still common and many say as common as ever, but the marriage is gradually being made a little later. Instead of being from four to six the laides are more often eight or nine and girls sometimes even escape matrimony until twelve or thirteen. The condition of child widows is a trifle less oppressive. One group has agitated for the remarriage of widows, and still another group in favor of the remarriage provided the widows are virgins. The result is that some widows have been married, and altho society - has condemned those thus [illegible], the presentiment has been formed. These widows are still forced to take off all their veils, show their heads, fast, pray much and keep in special retirement. Special effort to relieve the [illegible] of their...

lives have been made, [Pruidila Rauratais?] school for widows has 1300 pupils. One large school [illegible] managed by Hindoo ladies is at Surat and the mission schools have made special effort to get widows at pupils. In these schools they are trained so that some of them will find work as teachers in the rapidly increasing schools for girls. All over India kind missionaries are conducting girls schools and are surely inspiring their pupils with broader ideas. Unfortunately the Christian mission secure pupils from the lower caste mainly.* The certain marriage of the girl pupils comes just at the age when the mind is ready to grasp higher things and private education. The government conducts a number of girls schools and different groups of religious faiths are each maintaining schools for girls but in 1910 only 3.9% of the women of India could read or write.

Small and disappointing as these signs of progress may be, they offer hope that the three chief barriers to better conditions for women will in time be removed. Like watchfires in the outposts of a great army which notify each camp where the friends are sleeping, individual women have lifted their torch of truth all over India each notifying every other friend of woman's freedom where she stands. The Maharani of Baroda (an important native state) has just published a book called "The Position of Women in India." The contents are not what its teller would indicate, but is instead a summary of what women are doing the in Western world, especially prepared as a message to the...