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Among the Mohammedans, who are not handicapped by such penalties, the married state is equally common, partly owing to Hindu example and partly to the general conditions of primitive society, where a wife is almost a necessity both as a domestic drudge and as a helpmate in field work." The worst of the matter is that, despite the efforts of social reformers child-marriage seems to be increasing.
He passionately adored Christ as his true Master. Yet he was practically Unitarian, and his later years belied the promise of his brilliant beginnings. Though a member of the Brahmo-Somaj, he split the body in two by his violation of its prohibition of child-marriage, and wasted his strength in attempts to combine Western rationalism with the ecstatic fervors of the East.
There is nothing in the Vedas to justify the cruelties of the Hindu gods and the practices of the priests. They do not authorize animal worship, caste, child-marriage, the burning of widows or perpetual widowhood, but the Brahmins have built up a stupendous system of superstition, of which they alone pretend to know the mystic meaning, and their supremacy is established.
This new intelligentsia, convinced as it was of the value of Western ideals and achievements, could not fail to be dissatisfied with many aspects of Indian life. In fact, its first efforts were directed, not so much to politics, as to social and economic reforms like the suppression of child-marriage, the remarriage of widows, and wider education.
Then we have a woman of the other sort, clinging, abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and made the victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man. She it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a legal dissolution of her immoral union.
But though legalised in 1856, the cases of re-marriage among the higher castes of Hindus in any year can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Report of the Census of India, 1901, takes a gloomy view regarding the province of Bengal, the most forward in many respects, but the most backward in respect of child-marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows.
Child-marriage is coming into disrepute, and caste, though not destroyed, is crippled, and its preposterous assumptions are falling before the march of social progress.
European free thought and Deism have not fared better, for the Brahmo Samaj which was founded under their inspiration has only 5504 adherents . In social life there has been some change: caste restrictions, though not abolished, are evaded by ingenious subterfuges and there is a growing feeling against child-marriage.
His first onslaught upon Ranade's position, however, failed, and instead of supplanting him, it was he who was compelled in 1890 to sever his connexion with the Education Society. Tilak's defeat was short lived. The introduction of the Age of Consent Bill, in 1890, to mitigate the evils of Hindu child-marriage, gave him a fresh opening.
The women may no more rise above their caste than the male members of the family; and they are predestined to take up life's most serious duties before their fleeting childhood has spent itself. No wonder they look old before they are thirty! If any one doubts the prevalence of child-marriage in India, a trip through the country will very quickly dispel his doubts.
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