84. A. MACKENZIE ESQ., SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT OF INDIA: I wish you a hearty god-speed in your compaign against these two monstrous evils, which have so long been sapping the morals, the mind, and the physique of India........................... It is quite true that, with much that is hopeful, there is much to discourage those who would fain see India growing. Many of my native friends who were sound enough is theory on the subject of infant marriage, failed when the question came to personal and practical issues. They could be pilots of others, but sank themselves to be castaways. It is because I think such a movement as you desire to inaugurate, would strengthen the knees of such feeble folk, that I especially wish you success 85. SIR STEUART BAYLEY.-That they are both serious evils, no one can doubt, and I believe the evil of them to be generally recognised among the educated Hindus. 86. MANOMOHAN GHOSE.-I look upon the system (of child marriages) as the greatest curse of our country, and entirly agree with you in all that you have said. 87. S. N. TAGORE ESQ., C.S.-The pernicious custom of child marriage ought especially to engage our attention. It is a canker that eats into the vitals of our national existence, and if not removed in time, may lead to the degeneracy and decay of the whole race. 88. DINSHAW ARDESIR TALEYARKHAN.-When girls are scarce in any caste, a grown up youth or an ederly man will not grudge to have the smallest girl in marriage. In fact she would not be within reach, without a large dowry. In a rail. way train, some time ago, I came across a high caste Hindu gentleman, certainly much over thirty, in company with a girl hardly eleven who was his wife, thin and pale beyond description and a figure of lean flesh and nominal bones, which folded up and fell into deep slumber as soon as the carriage moved. It perplexes me often to know how a renovated spirit can be inwardly induced, to mitigate premature womanhood, and not omitting such manhood too...... And yet it is a wonder, how this nation has succeeded, for ages, in preserving such a marked harmony of their homes. If we have weakly children, the homes at least are happy, contented, well regulated and economical. We must be careful in not losing this natural feature, while we cautiously attempt to bring about a new good...... Our English ideas actually jar with their sympathies, their antipathies, and all the important affections of their heart and head. The boys and girls have no world of their own, which we delude ourselves by believing they would have, as soon as we give it to the m. They are the creatures of their parents, brought up in the time-honoured instincts, associations and motives of caste organisms. 89. RAO BAHADUR SIRDAR GOPALRAO HARI DESHMUKH, LATE MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, BOMBAY :-With regard to early marriage, I consider it a most pernicious custom which makes the nation very weak. It is necessary that in a country, there should be a number of bachelors who would venture upon enterprize, foreign travel &c. What makes Hindus so feeble, is the custom of early marriage. They have hardly strength either to become soldiers, or to cultivate land, or to go for trade to foreign countries. They are unfit as colonizers. Every man has a family. Even little boys are burdened with wives and children. A girl cannot be kept unmarried beyond ten years: hence parents are very anxious at any cost to get her wedded, even to an old man or a sickly youth. The consequence of this is, that the race is being gradually deteriorated. Children die soon, and there are more widows now than there were 50 years ago. The evil is very great, and is corroding the very vitals of the nation.......................At present women have no status in society, and they are made to give a silent consent to all cruelties. 90. N. C. BISWAS FIRST ENGLISH TEACHER, GOVERNMENT MODEL SCHOOL, CALCUTTA.-In Bengal, infant marriage is countenanced by low caste Hindus. This abominable custom, I am happy to say, does not nowadays suit the taste of the upper ten of the Hindu community. 91. RAO BAHADUR MADHAV W. SHIRGAOnkar, Joint ADMINISTRATOR OF MIRAJ.-I condemn infant marriages, not because I think that they afterwards prove unhappy-which statement I will not accept unsupported by statistics-but because such marriages increase infant widows, and the issues of such unions are not such as they otherwise would be, if marriages take place in mature age. 92. COL. E. W. WEST, POLITICAL AGENT, KATHIAWAR.I know well the miseries of these infant marriages. I have seen often puny striplings, the fathers of still more puny and feeble offspring, and I have, on various occasions, tried to impress on my native friends, that the reason for the energy of the Teutonic races may be found in the practice which Tacitus remarked many centuries ago, "Sera juventum venus adeoque inexhausta pubertas." I have known many cases of old men marrying girls not yet emerged from childhood, and it needs but little knowledge of human nature to realise the misery, during the husband's life time, and of Hindu ways, to realize the misery, after his death, of the girl. to such cases in conversation with native friends, they have always been ready to acknowledge the wretchedness that such customs produce, while they invariably deplore their inability to deviate from custom. When I have referred 93. KESHAVLAL MADHAVDAS ESQ., (RUTLAM.)-Early Marriages are a novel institution, which is not observable except in the East. It makes the whole nation altogether weak and unfit for enterprise. 94. RAMANUJCHARI, M. A., B. L., VICE-PRINCIPAL MAHARAJA'S COLLEGE, VIZRANAGRAM.--The thing complained of, is the practice of the selling of girls by their parents or other near relatives, and it has become so rife in these parts of the country, that girls are disposed of in marriage to the highest bidders, like goods at an auction sale without reserve, every other consideration being subordinated to that of money. Girls are married, as a rule, before they attain their 8th or 9th year-an age when they are utterly incompetent to comprehend the character of the contract they enter into; unmarried maidens of ten or eleven form an exception, the circumstances giving rise to such an exception being the absence of suiters willing to pay the price demanded, coupled with a strong hope on the part of the guardians of girls to realize larger sums by the postponement of the marriage...... It is thus evident that maiden-owners are determined upon deriving a pecuniary advantage, present or prospective, as the case may be................. The evil custom of marrying young girls whose ages range from 6 months up to 12 years.........obtains among all classes of the people, especially among the Brahmins in Southern India. The connection existing between the disposal of maidens in marriage to the highest bidders, and slavery, has been strangely overlooked. The practice above alluded to, involves 1st the selling outright of a girl for a pecuniary consideration, 2nd absence of will on the part of the subject, the very elements which enter into the composition of slavery. As pecuniary consideration is generally permitted to over-ride every other, the highest bidder, though he may be subject to grievous mental or bodily defects, is sure to carry the day, in spite of the feeble voice of opposition, raised occasionally on the part of the infant victim. 94. SURGEON MAJOR D. N. PAREKH, CHIEF PHYSICIAN, GOKULDAS TEJPAL HOSPITAL BOMBAY.-I fully and most cordially and actively endorse your views. I am placed in a position where I can be a daily witness to the misery of the children of the poor and of their infant parents, if I might use that expression. I see every day the dire results of early marriages on the constitutions of women and children, who throng my Hospital .......... Of all females of the lower classes to be met with in India, the Hindu female is the gentlest, the meekest, the least complaining, and the most unmercifully trodden down creature, and therefore the most deserving of the sympathy of right thinking men. I consider that, in India, no woman outght to marry under the age of 15, and no man under the age of 20, looking at it in a health point of view. What is good for the individual's health is good for the health of the community, and indirectly beneficial to the State. There is a great deal of sickness and mortality and difficulty in the act of child-birth, due to imperfect consolidation of the bones of the pelvis at the tender ages at which women, in consequence of early marriages, give birth to children. The heads of the children of young mothers are also unduly pressed upon, and so either the children die prematurely, or grow feeble, both in body and mind, and turn out helpless idiots. There is a greater amount of sickness and mortality due to poverty of blood, caused by want of food, the necessary consequence of the struggle for existence; and the greater the number of children, the greater the tax on the physical constitution of the parent, and on the poor purse of the working parent. No sight is more pitiable than that of a young half-starved mother with one child at the breast sucking away her very life, and three or four others worrying away her life; and such a sight is by no means a rare one ; it is a very common one. No sight more grotesque, but by no means any the less pitiable, therefore, than that of a poor student struggling for university honours, who wanting his thoughts concentrated on his infinitesimal calculus finds them wandering away, and lighting on his baby's teething troubles, and his other children's school fees, or marriage ceremonies. And yet such a sight is not unfamiliar to those who move in Hindu society. 95. P. DESAI.-According to the custom now obtaining amongst us, Hindu parents are often compelled to get their daughters married, when they are scarcely six or seven years of age, to boys of whom they know little or nothing. Shortly after their marriage, they are taken to the homes of their boyhusbands. At about twelve or thirteen they become mothers |