Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/59

 There are high schools for girls in all the great cities of India. Progressive Indian women have made use of the education they have been fortunate enough to secure in these schools to have themselves trained as teachers and doctors, nurses and missionaries. They visit the zenanas, and endeavour to show the poor ignorant inmates how to live hygienic lives. In most of the Native States there is elementary education in the vernacular for both sexes up to a certain age. Many of the best educated women of India are women of known immoral behaviour, according to Western standards, beautiful dancing women, probably women who have deliberately chosen that life, as did many of the most famous of the Greek HetairœHetairæ [sic], because of the larger opportunity of culture that it offered. It is less their fault than the fault of others that they are forced to employ in the offices of passion the intellectual gifts and acquirements that might, with fair opportunity, have given them a place on the scroll of the world's famous women. The most active women for the emancipation of their sex are the Parsee women, whilst many highly-endowed Indian women are engaged in the Nationalist movement which seeks to establish self-government for India.

India has had many splendid and distinguished women in the days of her departed