CHAPTER V

WOMAN'S PLACE

"To lift the woman's fallen divinity
Upon an equal pedestal with man's."

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free."

TENNYSON, _The Princess_.


[Sidenote: Social inferiority of women.]

Next to caste, the chief social feature of India is the position of
women in the community. Hindus and Mahomedans alike assign to the female
sex an inferior position. In Mahomedan mosques, for example, no woman is
ever seen at prayer; she would not be permitted to take part. Only by
the neglect of female children in India, and the special disadvantages
from which women suffer there, can it be explained why in India in 1901
there were only 963 females to every 1000 males. In India, as in Europe
and all the world over, more boys than girls are born, but in the course
of life the balance is soon redressed, and in the whole population in
every country in Europe, except Italy[22] and Bulgaria, the females
actually outnumber the males. Why are the Indian figures so different?
Pro-Hindu enthusiasts may glorify the Hindu social system, and wish to
deny the social inferiority of the female sex; average Anglo-Indians may
be suspected of being unsympathetic in their statements; but the Census