Women of India

by Otto Rothfield

Yet fully to estimate the value of her life, it would be necessary also to watch the Indian woman in her performance of a mother’s functions. The strength of her desire for children, the warmth and selflessness of her affection, the extent of her care and teaching, her readiness or unwillingness herself to learn the needs of childhood, above all, the place in her heart that she affords her children—all these are factors which should be not merely weighed or analyzed but actually felt by a creature intuition. But only another woman could have such comprehension or attain such intuition. No man—even in regard to the women of his own country, where he is illuminated by the examples of his mother and his wife—could have the needed sympathy, the necessary similarity of feeling, to comprehend the woman’s emotions to the child she bears and over whose growth she watches. It would be impossible to attempt the task in a foreign country of women by whose side one has not grown from infancy.

Some points, however, which lend themselves to any observation, may be noted, all the more since they have not infrequently led to misunderstanding. It is the case undoubtedly that every Indian woman, whatever her rank or race, has a clamorous wish to bear children, above all a son, for her husband’s sake. “How many children have you?” is the first question every woman asks another. In order to get children they go on pilgrimages and tolerate austerities, they give alms to beggars and are deluded by impostors. A childless woman becomes only too readily the butt of scorn and even of her own self-reproach. Not to have borne a son is to the Indian woman to have missed her vocation and have failed in life. She has a certainty of belief—“She knows” she would say—that it is her function, even hers, to have children; and if she be fruitful, she counts herself blessed. From these data, it has often been inferred that Indian women in all classes have an overpowering desire for motherhood and are especially mastered by the maternal instinct. But that this inference is wholly just, may well be doubted.

In the upper classes at least it must be admitted that the woman wishes for children because of reasoned and intelligible motives, and that these motives are so strong as to overcome any instinctive passions. And a will moved by a mere calculation of reason may be as powerful as and even more effective than an act of will which, really responds to a deep and eternal, unreasoned, self-creating emotion. The Indian woman at any rate has every reason to desire to be a mother, above all the mother of a son. Hindu science and philosophy have never hidden from her that, regarded as a living being merely like any other animal, her primary function is to continue the race. And religion has impressed this teaching upon every mind by the legend that a man’s soul can be released from the torments which follow death only by the prayers and ritual of a living son. Moreover, she fears that barrenness may impose the presence of a second wife, a rival in that love to which, after all, she gives first place. Then, again, the end may prove to be subjection to another woman’s son, heir to his mother’s hatreds. Or at the best there is the pressure of religious faith—to think herself accursed, if she has no child, while even her husband may in time shrink from her as from a being judged by the doom of God. All these are motives which can be weighed by the intellect but which move desire and will-power. Yet their action does not in itself show that the instinct of maternity is strong beyond the usual.

It is true of course that little girls in India in their games are accustomed to play at being mothers and cook for imaginary children and put their dolls to bed, and in a word play as girls do all over the world. But so they play also at being wives and greeting their husbands and bowing to a mother-in-law. When it is considered how early they learn the secrets of life and how few their other games and amusements can be, it is hardly astonishing that motherhood should enter soon in their thoughts and pastimes. But the European child is at least as ready to play with dolls and as fond of mothering her pets with a mimicry to which her instincts call her. Where the European girl differs is that marriage enters little into her thoughts and games, love in any real sense hardly at all; whereas the Indian girl from childhood has her mind filled with glad anticipations, and responds to the name of marriage with a ready and not altogether unconscious emotion. Even from the example of the child, then, the inference would rather be that the instinct for love is quickly developed than that the maternal instinct is stronger than in other peoples.

There are considerations of many kinds which go to show that the desire for love is first in the Indian woman’s heart, at least in the higher and better nurtured classes. In England for instance it is really now the case—largely owing to the defects of a highly artificial education and partly from the evils produced by bad economic conditions—that there are quite a number of women who would desire to be mothers but who actually look upon marriage and love as a distasteful and unpleasant preliminary. Such a perversion of view, it can at once be said, is unknown in India—not only unknown indeed, but even inconceivable. Every woman may wish for a child, but she wishes first and above all for the blessing of a loving husband, and she desires the child mainly to satisfy and conciliate the man to whom she gives herself joyfully.

Again it is striking that the whole long record of Indian literature contains hardly one picture of a mother’s love, and is dumb even about the longing at her heart for a child. Erotic poetry is full and voluminous and the love of man and woman is sung in burning words in thousands of lyrics, while it is also depicted with a more objective grandeur in numerous epics. Hardly any European literature, at least since Alexandria, can vie with this literature of love in volume and intensity. But in the poetry of the West, mother’s love has had its honoured place. In the letters of India it is almost absent.

It is sometimes suggested in India, and it may perhaps be true, that in the castes which allow divorce, a mother’s affection for her child is a passion stronger than her love for her husband. It would indeed sometimes seem in those classes that she would more readily choose to sacrifice the father than the child. But it does not follow that the cause lies in the freedom of divorce, even though it be a factor which co-operates in the result. For in practice the Hindu castes which allow divorce are almost all of the lower class—in some cases not much above the savage, ignorant, of a slow sensibility, unstimulated by the arts and luxuries of civilization. Their passions have not yet much refined above the elemental. For that fine and ennobling love which is the fruit of advanced culture they have not yet developed the capacity. But the maternal instinct remains among them in all its primitive strength. And it has not to divide its sovereignty with the emotions of a later culture. Relatively its force is greater, because undivided.

But, it must be said, in no class does maternal affection arouse, as it should, that persistent and laborious effort to tend and educate, which is its worthiest criterion. The Indian mother is lavish with her caresses and endearments, as in other moods she may fly into fits of uncontrolled anger. But, except for the lengthy period of nursing, sometimes three and ordinarily two years, to which she is willing to devote herself, she shows only too little of that continuous and intelligent care which is expected from a mother. Largely no doubt this is due to ignorance. She has not—one might with justice say she is not allowed to have—the knowledge which is needed to be a good mother. She is unaware of the most elementary requirements of sanitation and health. Worse still, she has not been trained to know the importance of compelling good habits and regular discipline in early childhood. Again, though she is usually an affectionate, she is not often an inspiring, mother. She is probably at her best as she sees her children fed with the food she has cooked herself, giving to each the tit-bits that she can, looking lovingly to their comforts, herself waiting till all are done before she sits down to her own meal. This is the memory that lingers most closely in the Indian’s mind as the man grows older and leans on retrospect. To most European children the remembrance that is dearest is that of his mother stooping over his cot to kiss him good-night, radiant in beauty, clad in silks and laces, with the gleam of white shoulders and precious stones to set off the soft curves of her dear face, before she leaves for a dinner, a theatre, or a ball. He is proud of her looks, so transformed, and of her charm, proud that he belongs to a being so splendid and so wonderful. But to the Indian the picture that recurs is of ungrudging kindly service. And perhaps the prolonged nursing period, bad as in other respects it is—bad especially for the over-taxed mother—serves to draw closer the bond between her and the child, already conscious of its own existence. Certain it is that the Indian son, as he grows up, forbears ever to judge his mother. Of Indian women generally, or of the mothers of other men, he may complain for their ignorance and their disregard of matters which he has taught himself to consider necessary; he may even with some unfairness blame them for a want of steadfast purpose and regularity, which is by no means peculiar to their sex. But for his own mother he preserves a constant respect and loving solicitude.