A MILL-HAND
Child-marriage is, of course, that one of all its features which has been most violently attacked. But it may be doubted whether those who have attacked it have always had a clear understanding of its significance. Real child-marriage—the wedding of children who have not yet reached puberty—is after all nothing more than an indefeasible betrothal. And in itself it is a logical and natural deduction from a theory which postulates the selection of the bridal pair by supernatural agency, working either through the divinations of an astrologer or through the parents’ careful affection. Any element of personal choice and free-will would be repugnant to the underlying thoughts and must to a large extent be subversive of the social and moral superstructure. Free-choice could be introduced generally only by a substitution for Brahman regulation of something quite other—as the warrior castes, for instance, extorted for themselves from a submissive hierarchy a different scale of moral values. Moreover, in practice child-marriage has some clear advantages. For it allows the wedded pair to be brought up together, as children only, in their parents’ houses, till in time they become habituated to each other’s company and affection, while gradually they come to know and learn their place in those large households to which their future lives belong. The Hindu married couple can live in no independent isolation like the European. Rather they will be but one unit of a great family household managed on behalf of all by its eldest members. The real marriage, the consummation of their growth to man and woman, comes much later, after many years perhaps, when the parents at last give their consent to the grown student and the healthy maiden who helps daily in the household tasks. Rather it is not the child-marriage that is so much to be deprecated as the marriage that succeeds, as in some castes it does, too quickly upon puberty. For, by an unhappy ignorance, puberty is in India only too often thought, as it was thought in the Europe of the Renaissance, to be maturity; and the marriage thus concluded is at once made real.
In fact, in both cases what is needed is a little more scientific knowledge and the embodiment of the knowledge in the Penal Code. Cases occur only too frequently of the martyrdom of young brides, not so much from cruelty, or even from uncontrolled passion, as from sheer ignorance of scientific fact. It has become a superstition, supported of course by the usual authority, that puberty means maturity, not merely for love—which would be sufficiently misleading—but even for child-bearing. Here it is that rational education must enter the field. In a country in which knowledge is luckily not accounted shameful, it is easy for education to explain that puberty is only the beginning of a new period, and that love’s first blossoms must not be followed by too early fruit.
In this respect the practice of Hindu marriage unhappily does show a fault of the most serious and terrible kind. If education has still much to do, the state of the law most certainly requires improvement. It is sometimes said that the Penal Law of India at present does not give adequate protection to girls who, for various reasons, are unmarried. But silence is usually kept about the far more serious fact that it provides practically no protection to the married girl. In her case the age of consent has actually been fixed at twelve; and no child of more than twelve can claim protection from the law against the brutality of the man to whom she has been married. Obviously the limit of age for the protection of girls should be the same in all cases, whether she be married or unmarried, whether she be the victim of the man to whom she has been joined beside the sacred fire or of one who owes her no special duty. It is the most obvious confusion of thought which fails to see that the offence, if it is one, is exactly the same, whether or not a mystical ritual has been first observed. The thug was no better than a common strangler because he first prayed to Bhavani before he murdered. The offence is the same in all cases; the punishment should, if anything, be more severe to the man who is peculiarly bound in duty and in honour to cherish the woman he has made his wife. The State is now prepared to protect against perversion a class of women who, on an outside estimate, do not exceed one-hundredth of the population and who ex hypothesi are of a position and character somewhat less than reputable. But the State denies its protection to the other ninety-nine women of each hundred, the mothers of the country, the honoured helpmates of its households.
The harshness is made the greater by vices which, though forbidden, have in practice become common. The sale of daughters is an offence against which the sacred writings of the Hindus strongly and consistently inveigh. Yet in only too many cases parents do little else than sell their girls in marriage to the highest bidder. The sums of money which they demand and which they use, not for the daughter’s benefit, but for their own, are so large that they are forced to accept a suitor of sufficient substance without regard to fitness or religious sanction. Of the higher classes many nowadays revolt against such conduct, which they recognize to be wicked and despicable. But in the lower castes it is still general. The inner motive of such actions is, of course, the ignorance, quite as much as the selfishness, of the father. Too ignorant to comprehend that a human soul is an end in itself and that a daughter is also a free human being, he looks on her with besotted eye as a mere instrument of his own betterment. Hand in hand with this evil, and dependent from it, is the terrible practice of giving young brides to elderly husbands. In no other country could the results be more disastrous or the girl-wife more unhappy. Vallabh, the Gujaráti poet, has expressed that wretchedness in a beautiful song, which has had some influence in abating this social evil. From it the following lines are quoted, addressed to the Goddess Mother:—
“Goddess mother, old is the husband thou hast given me,
Mother, accursed is this coming to life of mine. Alas, what more can I say?