XXII.
1.—“... girlhood’s helpless years ...”
Somewhat as to these ancient conditions may be gathered from the position in India at the present day. Read the following:—“The practice of early marriages by Hindoos I was, of course, informed of by reading before coming to India, but its mention in books was always coupled with the assertion that in India girls reach puberty at a much earlier age than in cold climates. Judge, therefore, of my surprise to find that so far from Hindoo girls being precocious in physical development, they are much behind in this respect; that a Hindoo girl of fifteen is about the equal of an English child of eleven, instead of the reverse, and that the statements made to the contrary by Englishmen who have no opportunity of becoming acquainted with Hindoo family life, were totally misleading. In the first place they were under the impression that marriage never takes place before puberty, and, secondly, they accepted the Hindoo view as to what constitutes puberty. You know that, unfortunately, they were misled as regards the first point. I hope to show you that in the second place the idea which they accepted as correct is a totally mistaken one.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on the subject of child-marriage; delivered at the Hall of the Prarthana Somaj, Bombay, on the 11th Oct., 1890).
2.—“... sexual wrong.”
“As regards the marriage of girls before even what is called puberty, I can hardly trust myself to speak, so strongly are my feelings those of all Western—may I not say of all civilised?—people in looking upon it as actually criminal. Ah! gentlemen, those of you who are conversant with such cases as I have seen, cases like those of Phulmoni Dossee, which has just now stirred your hearts to insist upon some change in the existing law, and others where a life-long decrepitude has followed, to which death itself were far preferable, do you not feel with me that penal servitude is not too hard a punishment for such brutality? I am glad to think that a very large section of Hindoo men think with me. I have been repeatedly spoken to on the subject, and members even of those castes which are most guilty in this matter, have expressed to me a wish that Government would interfere and put a stop to the practice.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D., op. cit.
A terrible evidence to the evil is borne by the following document:—
[From “The Times of India,” November 8th, 1890.]
To his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India.
May it please Your Excellency.—The undersigned ladies, practising medicine in India, respectfully crave your Excellency’s attention to the following facts and considerations:—
1. Your Excellency is aware that the present state of the Indian law permits marriages to be consummated not only before the wife is physically qualified for the duties of maternity, but before she is able to perform the duties of the conjugal relation, thus giving rise to numerous and great evils.
2. This marriage practice has become the cause of gross immoralities and cruelties, which, owing to existing legislation, come practically under the protection of the law. In some cases the law has permitted homicide, and protected men, who, under other circumstances, would have been criminally punished.
3. The institution of child-marriage rests upon public sentiment, vitiated by degenerate religious customs and misinterpretation of religious books. There are thousands among the better educated classes who would rejoice if Government would take the initiative, and make such a law as your memorialists plead for, and in the end the masses would be grateful for their deliverance from the galling yoke that has bound them to poverty, superstition, and the slavery of custom for centuries.
4. The present system of child-marriage, in addition to the physical and moral effects which the Indian Governments have deplored, produces sterility, and consequently becomes an excuse for the introduction of other child-wives into the family, thus becoming a justification for polygamy.
5. This system panders to sensuality, lowers the standard of health and morals, degrades the race, and tends to perpetuate itself and all its attendant evils to future generations.
6. The lamentable case of the child-wife, Phulmani Dassi, of Calcutta, which has excited the sympathy and the righteous indignation of the Indian public, is only one of thousands of cases that are continually happening, the final results being quite as horrible, but sometimes less immediate. The following instances have come under the personal observation of one or another of your Excellency’s petitioners:—
A. Aged 9. Day after marriage. Left femur dislocated, pelvis crushed out of shape, flesh hanging in shreds.
B. Aged 10. Unable to stand, bleeding profusely, flesh much lacerated.
C. Aged 9. So completely ravished as to be almost beyond surgical repair. Her husband had two other living wives, and spoke very fine English.
D. Aged 10. A very small child, and entirely undeveloped physically. This child was bleeding to death from the rectum. Her husband was a man of about 40 years of age, weighing not less than 11 stone. He had accomplished his desire in an unnatural way.
E. Aged about 9. Lower limbs completely paralysed.
F. Aged about 12. Laceration of the perineum extending through the sphincter ani.
G. Aged about 10. Very weak from loss of blood. Stated that great violence had been done her in an unnatural way.
H. Aged about 12. Pregnant, delivered by craniotomy with great difficulty, on account of the immature state of the pelvis and maternal passage.
I. Aged about 7. Living with husband. Died in great agony after three days.
K. Aged about 10. Condition most pitiable. After one day in hospital was demanded by her husband for his “lawful” use, he said.
L. Aged 11. From great violence done her person will be a cripple for life. No use of her lower extremities.
M. Aged about 10. Crawled to hospital on her hands and knees. Has never been able to stand erect since her marriage.
N. Aged 9. Dislocation of pubic arch, and unable to stand, or to put one foot before the other.
In view of the above facts, the undersigned lady doctors and medical practitioners appeal to your Excellency’s compassion to enact or introduce a measure by which the consummation of marriage will not be permitted before the wife has attained the full age of fourteen (14) years. The undersigned venture to trust that the terrible urgency of the matter will be accepted as an excuse for this interruption of your Excellency’s time and attention.
(Signed by 55 lady-physicians.)
The memorial as above was initiated by Mrs. Monelle Mansell, M.A., M.D., who has been in practice in India for seventeen years, and it received the signature of every other lady doctor there. The cases of abuse above specified are “only a few out of many hundreds—of cruel wrongs, deaths, and maimings for life received by helpless child-wives at the hands of brutal husbands, which have come under Dr. Monelle Mansell’s personal observation, or that of her associates.”
With regard to case K, and “lawful” use, compare what is said by Dr. Emma B. Ryder, who is also in medical practice in India, concerning the “Little Wives of India”:—“If I could take my readers with me on my round of visits for one week, and let them behold the condition of the little wives ... if you could see the suffering faces of the little girls, who are drawn nearly double with contractions caused by the brutality of their husbands, and who will never be able to stand erect; if you could see the paralysed limbs that will not again move in obedience to the will; if you could hear the plaintive wail of the little sufferers as, with their tiny hands clasped, they beg you ‘to make them die,’ and then turn and listen to the brutal remarks of the legal owner with regard to the condition of his property. If you could stand with me by the side of the little deformed dead body, and, turning from the sickening sight, could be shown the new victim to whom the brute was already betrothed, do you think it would require long arguments to convince you that there was a deadly wrong somewhere, and that someone was responsible for it? After one such scene a Hindoo husband said to me, ‘You look like feel bad’ (meaning sad); ‘doctors ought not to care what see. I don’t care what see, nothing trouble me, only when self sick; I not like to have pain self.’... A man may be a vile and loathsome creature, he may be blind, a lunatic, an idiot, a leper, or diseased in a worse form; he may be fifty, seventy, or a hundred years old, and may be married to a baby or a girl of five or ten, who positively loathes his presence, but if he claims her she must go, and the English law for the ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ compels her to remain in his power, or imprisons her if she refuses. There is no other form of slavery on the face of the earth that begins with the slavery as enforced upon these little girls of India.”—(“The Home-Maker,” New York, June, 1891, quoted in the Review of Reviews, Vol. IV., p. 38.)
And the Times of 11th November, 1889, reported from its Calcutta correspondent:—“Two shocking cases of wife-killing lately came before the courts—in both cases the result of child-marriage. In one a child aged ten was strangled by her husband. In the second case a child of ten years was ripped open with a wooden peg. Brutal sexual exasperation was the sole apparent reason in both instances. Compared with the terrible evils of child-marriage, widow cremation is of infinitely inferior magnitude. The public conscience is continually being affronted with these horrible atrocities, but, unfortunately, native public opinion generally seems to accept these revelations with complete apathy.”
For what slight legislative amendment has recently been effected in the grievances mentioned by Dr. Ryder, see Note XXIV., 4. The “Restitution of Conjugal Rights,” so justly condemned by her, does, indeed, appear to have had—by some inadvertence—a recognition in the Indian Courts which was not its lawful due. But for some fuller particulars on this matter, both as concerns India and England, see Note XXXVI., 6.