Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/113

Rh to the country, no one resented his place in life. “Why kick against the inevitable?” he would argue. “I shall come again; who knows but that in my next genesis I might not myself be sitting on that topmost step?” All is in a man’s own hands—he will reap hereafter, as he sows now this minute. …

And Hindu women? How has caste affected them? We have seen that it was invented primarily for their benefit, for though a man might marry beneath him, no woman was allowed like liberty. The natural result of this arrangement was that there were too few men to go round in the higher castes; and in a scheme of life and after life which has no room or use for spinsters, the only resource was to marry them off as quickly as possible, whence, in the opinion of some, infant marriage, though the instinct of self-preservation against Mahommedan raids must have done something.

Of course, no woman realizes this, and the reason she will give you for Baby marriages is that a Father’s class of Heaven depends on the age at which his daughter was married. If she is settled between three and five he goes