Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/181

 there were its girls’ schools in Serampore, Burdwan, Kalna, and Katwa, and in Krishnagar, Dacca, Bakarganj, Murshidabad, Birbhum, and Chittagong. The schools, in the Mufasal were nineteen in number, and the average attendance is said to have been 450. There is one noteworthy circumstance to be mentioned concerning these institutions. They were under Christian influence, and in them the preaching of the doctrines of Christianity went on along with the imparting of secular instruction.

The aim of the Bethune School was not to forward the cause of any particular religion. Its chief object was to train up girls in useful branches of knowledge so that they might discharge their various duties to themselves and to others, and that in future they might understand and meet their responsibilities as daughters, wives, and mothers. But yet it had to meet with a fierce opposition from the hands of prejudice. Though men like Madan Mohan Tarkalankar, Debendranath Tagore, Ram Gopal Ghosh, and others, sent their girls to it, yet the Hindu society at large, consisting mostly of the illiterate and superstitious, denounced it, saying that the education of women would cause a complete revolution, and that it would be impossible in any way to utilise the book-learned girls in the future who, instead of attending to domestic duties themselves, would assume the airs of “mem-sahibs,” and fag their husbands to death.

It is, however, needless to say that the educated in the native community were unanimous in their gratitude to Mr Bethune for the establishment of the school. They loved him, too, and in the trying position in which he was soon to find himself he could count upon their love and friendship. That the heart of the educated native beat in unison with his was a sufficient comfort to him in the hour of his unpopularity with the majority of his country-