Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/78

 women of Natal was passed upon them, and they were forcibly vaccinated. So these brave women were shut away from life, but the fight now so splendidly begun went on.

A few days after the release of these last women, two gave Birth to children, and another, a young girl of about twenty, passed away, and a third hovered between life and death for months, but the goal was won. To-day, all these women are back in their homes and are busy in the usual routine of an Indian woman's life. There is absolutely none of the pride of heroism about them. They are the same patient, dutiful women that India has produced for centuries; yet they endured the publicity, and no one who does not know India can understand how terrible to the Indian woman such publicity is. They endured the physical hardship, the mental sorrow, the heartache; for nearly all who did not take young children with them left young ones at home, endured hunger strikes, because they were deprived of fat to eat and sandals to put on endured it all without harshness or bitterness. India has many things to be proud of, but of none more than the part the Indian