Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/456

 366 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

below the views I have expressed on this phase of female education in my preface to the first number of the Bhagmee Samaj series :

" The provision of education for unmarried girls docs not solve the problem of female education. Thou- sands of girls at the age of \2 become victims of child- marriage and disappear from view. They become mother. So long as we have not got rid of this cruel wrong, hus- bands will have to become their wives' teachers. In the fitness of husbands for this task lies high hope for the nation. All endeavour for the national uplift is vain so long as instead of becoming our companions, our better halves and partners in our joys and sorrows, our wives remain our cooks and objects of our lust. Some treat their wives as if they were beasts. Some Sanskrit text and a celebrated verse of Tulsidas are responsible for this deplorable state of things. Tulsidas has said that beasts, fools, Sudras and women are fit to receive bodily punishment. I am a devotee of Tulsidas. But my worship is not blind. Either the couplet is apocryphal, or Tulsidas following the popular current has thoughtlessly written it off. With reference to Sanskrit expressions, we are haunted by the superstitious belief that everytning Sanskrit is scriptural ! It is pur duty to purge ourselves of the superstition and uproot the habit of considering women as our inferiors. Their is another body of men who in pursuit of their passions decorate their wives from period to period 'during twenty-four hours e\en as we decorate our idols. We must shake ourselves free of this idolatry. Then at last they will be what Uma was to Shankara, Sita to Rama, Damayanti to Nala, they will be our companions, they will discourse

�� �