marriages; every other consideration of suitableness, age, education, and a fair face, being sacrificed to this powerful incentive. On account of extreme divisions of caste, and on account of reluctance or rather impossibility of our marrying from another caste, girls for marriage are generally scarce, and hence follows their sale to the highest-bidder. But it is quite the contrary with the Amil community to which I belong. Here we have a regular sale of boys to the highest bidder who has a daughter or two to dispose of. The reason is that the rules of the Amil Panchayat do not prevent them from marrying their boys with girls from other Hindu classes of Sind...............................The Amils are thus free to import girls, but not export their own............The number of girls and boys for marriage being out of proportion, a sale of boys follows. ........ 103. LILARAM VATANMAL, SUB-JUDGE, KARACHI DISTRICT.—That the two vices you have so ably exposed do exist, even to the extent shown by you, is a fact that every educated Hindu of some experience will acknowledge inwardly, if not outwardly. 104. W. WORDSWORTH.-I consider infant marriage an irrational practice, and one which must seriously hamper any society that adopts it. I believe that this opinion is held by Hindus who have learned to exercise their reason freely, and that even among the followers of the old learning, there are some who hold it. I listened with keen interest, the other day, to Mr. Raghonath Row's lecture on this subject, and to Mr. Ranade's impressive appeal to his countrymen to accept the platform proposed by the lecturer. It seemed to me that his audience were, on the whole, agreed that infant and early marriages were undesirable, but that their agreement went no further..... How far Indian society has suffered and how far it has gained, if you will concede that it has gained any thing, from its peculiar marriage customs, is a poblem which no one is in a position to solve. I believe that those customs are inconsistent with the new life, into which India is daily being impelled, and that the new ideas of that life no less than its material circumstances and conditions, must tell inevitably against them* 105. HON'BLE MR. DYARAM JETHMUL.-It may be taken for granted that infant marriages are a monstrous evil. 106. HON'BLE MR. C. P. ILBERT, C.S.I.-That the social position of women is one of the surest tests of civilization, and that the institutions of infant marriage and enforced widowhood are incompatible with the position which women ought to occupy in a perfectly civilised society, these are propositions which command a ready assent. 107. RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD HOBHOUSE.-I quite concur in the importance which you attach to infant marriages, and believe them to be a serious obstacle to the improvement of Indian society. 108. HON. SIR RIVERS THOMPSON.-The subject, in both its aspects of restraint of infant marriages and of enforced widowhood, has been for some time under my consideratian officially, and I am happy to be able to give you the assurance that so far from anything like hostility or indifference to your efforts, the common opinion of every officer whom I have cnnsulted, is in strong support of your endeavours to accomplish what would be the greatest social reform ever effected in India. * In a minute recorded by Mr. Wordsworth as Chairman of the Rukhmabai Defence Committee, he wrote "I am quite willing to believe with Mr. Telang that, domestic virtue and conjugal felicity are not incompatible with infant marriages, and I join with him in insisting that our committee should not so enlarge its scope as to embrace any direct attack on that system, or even formally to pronounce any opinion about it. Personally, I hold strongly that no great social or political improvement can be looked for in Hindu society, so long as it adheres to that system. For one thing, it seems to me simply incompatible with any marked advance in female education, and I cannot hope that Hindu society will ever emerge from what I consider its present feeble civilisation, which must condemn it in the future as it has condemned it in the past, to be the servants of manlier and more energetic races, so long as Hindu mothers remain in their present bondage of ignorance and superstition CHAPTER II. CAUSES OF INFANT MARRIAGE. SECTION I. MADRAS PRESIDENCY. 1. C. RAMCHANDRA AIYAR, SUB-JUDGE, MADURA.-The Courts created by the British Government, so far back as 1805, without thoroughly investigating into the question when raised, and without acquainting themselves with the forms and ceremonies constituting infant marriage, but relying upon the statements of the old priests, whose prejudices in those days were deeper than the prejudices of the orthodox Brahmins of the present day, recognized in a betrothed infant girl the status of a widow. I feel sure that it can be shown, to the satisfaction of the Government, that the term 'widow' has through misapprehension, error, and ignorance, become perverted from its original signification, so as to apply even to a babe in the arms of her mother...... ........As Sub-Judge I have had experience of Ganjam, Vizagapatam, Cocanada, Bellary, Palghat, Calicat, Tellicherry, and I have attended innumerable marriages............The Palghat Brahmans, and the Brahmans of the East coast, do perform the tail, tying ceremony and Sapta pathi on the first day, and on the fourth night they make the infant couple sleep on one mat in a room, which is only a symbolic consummation, or a symbol of actual consummation, which is essential to the completion of a marriage. The same practice is observed even to this day in all the Brahman families of Travancore and Cochin, and in some of the Brahman communities of Tanjore, Madura, and South Arcot Districts. Among the Telegu Brahmans of Northern Circars, Masalipatam, and Bellary, on the 4th day of the infant marriage, the infant couple are made to sit on one mat, and they are made to exchange betel and nut and chew, which is only a symbol of consummation. I call it symbol, because the first thing that a husband and wife do on the date of actual consummation of marriage, as soon as they retire into the bed chamber, is to exchange betel. This practice is observed invariably on the 4th day of marriage by all classes of Brahmans..... This mock consummation proves beyond doubt that child marriage, which was not so common, is only a later graft on the ancient marriage after puberty. Apart from the unfounded nation that a girl attaining puberty before betrothal loses her caste, the difficulty of obtaining young boys suited to the girl as to age and position at a future time, as the girl grows as old as 12 or 13, engrosses the attention of the parents, and they begin to negotiate for the boys from the very moment of the birth of the girl. The boy's parents receive thousands of offers of the kind, with rich dowries, and they choose..... The next thing that encourages infant marriage, is the cursed astrology in which the uneducated women and the educated men alike confide............Every one believes that the country will get on as pre-ordained by Brahma................................No Brahman betrothment takes place, without an astrologer's opinion of the coincidance, in every respect, of the horoscopes of the infant boy and girl to be betrothed, and the chief thing that the astrologer is asked to ascertain is that the girl will not lose her husband, and become a widow. If the astrologer says that the horoscopes agree, the parents of the girl think that they have made the best selection imaginable................. Palmistry by which gipsies in England indulge in fleecing young girls by predicting their future, is made a criminal offence. Astrology has been breediny more mischief in this country. 2. C. SUBBARAYA AIYAR.-The restrictions which religion, as at present understood, or more properly, caste rules, impose upon the marriage institutions of the country, naturally tend to circumscribe within narrow limits the field for selection, and leave, the parents no option in the matter but to select, at the earliest opportunity, the best girls available for marriage to their boys. The narrower the field the keener the competition, and hence infant or rather early marriages are brought about. 3. T. PATTABHIRAM.-I do not deny that young men in India get themselves married earlier than those in the European countries, and so are the Mahomadans and Christians in this country. That is because of the climatic and other influences, and it cannot I think be saccessfully counteracted by any rules............Sir Comarasamy of Ceylon Mr. Mutha Krishna of Madura, Mr. Sabapathi Aiyah of Hydrabad and his brother Meenatchi Aiyah of Bangalore, are so many instances of enlightened men acting up to their convictions, and losing all chance of serving their community. When the circumstances of the state of society among the Brahmins in the Smriti and Puranic periods are taken into consideration, one cannot but come to the conclusion that, in the lawless state of the country at the time,......the patriarch considered it desirable to secure a guardian and protector to the girl before she bloomed into womanhood. While the future husband was certain of the virgin purity of his wife, the girl herself had the double protection of her father's and husband's families, against seduction or mistakes which will embitter and poison her wedded life. Subsequent to the Vedic period (a period when the female had enjoyed the privilege of giving herself away to any young man she chose, after her years of discretion), the patriarchs would seem to have introduced the rule of marrying girls before puberty, in view to keep the blood pure, and eliminate all impurities from the Brahman stock...............Weak as the Brahman class is in physique as compared with the other classes of the Hindus, the superiority of their intellect as a class is most prominent and noticeable. This I believe is mostly due to the old patriarchal rule, which kept their blood and stock pure and untainted........ |