My mother India

by Dalip Singh Saund

This is what happened on October 16th, 1909, at an open-air gathering near Dundee, where Mr. Winston Churchill was to speak:

“ ... Standing in the road were some thirty or forty men, all wearing the yellow rosettes of official Liberal stewards, and as the car (containing four prominent suffragettes) slowed, they rushed furiously towards it, shouting and tearing up sods from the road and pelting the women with them. One man pulled out a knife and began to cut the tires, whilst the others feverishly pulled the loose pieces off with their fingers. The suffragettes tried to quiet them with a few words of explanation, but their only reply was to pull the hood of the motor over the women’s heads and then to beat it and batter it until it was broken in several places. Then they tore at the women’s clothes and tried to pull them out of the car, whilst the son of the gentleman in whose ground the meeting was being held drove up in another motor and threw a shower of pepper in the women’s eyes.... The only excuse for the stewards who took part in this extraordinary occurrence is that many of them were intoxicated.”[5]

And the most pitiful part of the business was that such conduct seemed to be regarded by its perpetrators as engaging pieces of gallantry.

While a recitation of these incidents might be continued indefinitely, one more will suffice to show with what contempt and dishonor the western world has treated its women. On August 2, 1909, a great Liberal fete was held at Canford Park, near Poole in Dorsetshire. There were sports and games and Mr. Churchill was to deliver an address on the budget. Annie Kenney with three companions attended the fete, and the story of what took place is best told in her own words. She says:

“As we entered the Park together we saw two very young girls being dragged about by a crowd of Liberal men, some of whom were old enough to be their fathers. They had thrown a pig net over them, and had pulled down their hair. We heard afterward that these girls came from a village near by, but the Liberals suspected them to be Suffragettes and ordered them out of the Park. ..., but they were crowded round us and the language they used is not fit for print.... They were calling out to each other to get hold of me and throw me into the pond which was very near ..., but as soon as my back was turned they started dragging me about in a most shameful way. One man who was wearing the Liberal colours pulled a knife out of his pocket, and to the delight of the other staunch Liberals, started cutting my coat. They cut it into shreds right from the neck downwards. Then they lifted up my coat and started to cut my frock and one of them lifted up my frock and cut my petticoat. This caused great excitement. A cry came from those Liberals, who are supposed to have high ideas in public life, to undress me. They took off my hat and pulled down my hair, but I turned round upon them and said that it would be their shame and not mine. They stopped then for a minute, and then two men, also wearing the Liberal colours, got hold of me and lifted me up and afterwards dragged me along, not giving me an opportunity to walk out in a decent way.”[6]

The heroism and rare genius of Mrs. E. Pankhurst and her associates in the suffragette movement will be acknowledged by their friends and foes alike. Through their sufferings they have bequeathed to women of the western world the priceless heritage of Freedom, and thus pushed the progress of the human race a long step forward. Mrs. Pankhurst possessed, undoubtedly, a firm character, a lofty mind, a generous heart, strong and vigorous good sense. We shall call the emancipator of English womanhood a great woman, using that word not as a cheap, unmeaning title but as conveying three essential elements of greatness, namely, unselfishness, honesty, and boldness. She who sacrificed everything for the voice of justice and submitted herself and her three young daughters to cruel indignities and hardships of jail life for the sake of her fellow creatures was an unselfish, an honest, a bold woman,—was a great woman—in the best sense of the word. And at this distant time as a proof of our honest affection and admiration for her goodness and virtue, we can afford to express a feeling of mingled sorrow and joy at her prolonged sufferings and final success.

In India, on the contrary, in the development of their wonderful civilization men and women have played an equal part. The two sexes have worked side by side in every branch of their spiritual endeavor, and women have attained the same eminence as men in higher learning. The Vedic hymns mention both men and women as divine revealers of Truth and as spiritual instructors of mankind. In fact, The Rig Veda, the earliest scriptural record of the world, contains hymns revealed by women; and the Hindu god, Indra, is described as being initiated into the knowledge of the Universal Spirit by the woman Aditi. Furthermore, the Upnishads, the philosophical portion of the Veda, frequently mention the names of women who discoursed on philosophical topics with the most learned men philosophers of the times. Women scholars were often appointed arbitrators and umpires in important philosophic debates, and the names of the two women philosophers, Gargi and Maitreyi, are familiar to all students of Hindu philosophy. In other words, the paths of intellectual culture were equally open to men and women, under exactly similar circumstances. In fact, the very spirit of such equality is inculcated in the minds of the people from both their law and their religion that made no distinction between the sexes in the award of honors for merit. The law-givers of India, taking their lessons from the Vedas, established the fundamental equality of man and woman by defining the relation of the sexes thus:

“Before the creation of this phenomenal universe, the first born Lord of all creatures divided his own self into two halves, so that one half should be male and the other half female.”

Not only in the direction of scholarly pursuits, but in the practical business affairs of the world also, the women of India have distinguished themselves eminently as legislators, ministers, commercial leaders, and military commanders. Men, women, and children throughout India are familiar with the story of Queen Chand Bibi, who defended Ahmedanagar during the long siege by the Grand Moghul; poets also have sung of her valor and administrative wisdom. Another instance of the recognition of the ability of women is the story of Nur Jahan (Light of the Universe), the beautiful queen of the Moghul Emperor, Jahangir, who guided the affairs of her husband’s vast territories in a highly efficient manner for a period of nearly ten years. Further, and well known to all students of history, is the story of Mumtaz-i-Mahal, Emperor Shah Jahan’s consort, who assisted him in his works of administration and in the construction of the famous buildings of his period. This woman, described as a person of unexampled dignity, delicacy, and charm, during her life-time was the “light of his eyes,” and after death the perpetual source of inspiration to the bereaved Emperor. On her death-bed, Mumtaz, the beloved companion of his life’s happy days and mother of his six children, asked of Shah Jahan that a memorial befitting a queen be placed over her grave. In compliance with this request, and as a token of his unceasing love for the deceased queen, the Emperor constructed on her grave the famous Taj Mahal—a monument which by its beauty has made immortal the love it commemorates. The most beautiful building in the world stands as a memorial to man’s love for his wife—an unconquerable love, unbroken and unsatisfied. Says Sir Edwin Arnold:

“He has immortalised—if he could not preserve alive for one brief day—his peerless wife.... Admiration, delight, astonishment blent in the absorbed thought with a feeling that human affection never struggled more ardently, passionately and triumphantly against the Oblivion of Death. There is one sustained, harmonious, majestic sorrowfulness of pride in it, from the verse on the entrance which says that ‘the pure of heart shall enter the Gardens of God’, to the small, delicate letters of sculptured Arabic upon the tombstone which tell, with a refined humility, that Mumtaz-i-Mahal, the ‘Exalted of the Palace’, lies here, and that ‘Allah alone is powerful.’”[7]