Page:Report on public instruction in the lower provinces of the Bengal presidency (1850-51).djvu/25

Rh After Babu Ram Lochun Ghose, the Principal Sudder Ameen of Kishnaghur had addressed the assembly in Bengali, Mr. Bethune resumed—

"I am extremely sorry that I have not been able to understand one word of what my friend Ram Lochun Ghose has been saying; the more so, because I am informed that he has been earnestly and eloquently addressing you on a subject in which you are probably aware that I feel deeply interested, and which is of the highest importance to the happiness of every one present.

"The education of your females is the next great step to be taken in the regeneration of the Hindu character, and it is a consolatory reflection that while many social reforms of which you stand greatly in need are thought to be opposed to the doctrines of your religion and customs, it is generally admitted by every learned native who has examined the question that there is no such obstacle in the way of your consenting to receive this great blessing. The practical difficulty which still in a great degree obstructs the progress of the good work is the seclusion in which you have for a long time been accustomed to think it necessary to confine your women.

"If I were addressing an assembly of Europeans only, I should content myself with observing that this custom is unreasonable: among Hindus I know that whatever arguments are brought forward to show that it is so will derive additional claims on your attention from the fact that it is an unreasonable novelty. Your old records seem to point out that it was not the ancient usage of your race: a common theory derives its origin from the customs of your Mahomedan conquerors, when it is likely enough that, partly from a courtly affectation of imitating what you found in vogue among those who were in the possession of power and consideration, partly from a real dread of the excesses in which a licentious and unscrupulous soldiery might indulge, you adopted these new habits which are now received as national among you. Both reasons have passed away, and with them should disappear their consequences, if it were not so much more easy to adopt pernicious prejudices than to get rid of them again. But the work is begun: it cannot stop now: the race of educated men whom we are training up will not much longer bear to have imposed on them mere slavish objects of sensual desire, but will seek, in the mothers of their children, for rational, well-educated, well-informed companions, the intelligent partners of their