"A wife in Baluchistan must not only carry water, prepare food, and attend to all ordinary household duties, but she must take the flocks out to graze, groom her husband's horse, and assist in the cultivation. So far is this principle carried out among the Jajars of Zhob, that it is considered incumbent on a married woman of this tribe to provide means by her own labor for clothing herself, her husband, and her children, and she receives no assistance, monetary or otherwise, for this purpose from her husband, but in addition to all this, the husband hopes that she may become the mother of girls who will fetch as high a price as their mother did before them. Hence it happens that among Afghans, polygamy is only limited by the purchasing power of a man; and a wife is looked on as a better investment than cattle, for in a country where drought and scarcity are continually present, the risk of loss of animals is great, whilst the offspring of a woman, if a girl, will assuredly fetch a high price." So far the census report.
Slavery, polygamy, and concubinage exist throughout the Kelat state and Baluchi area. Slavery is of a domestic character, but the slave is often in a degraded and ignorant condition, and in times of scarcity almost starved by his owner.
The female slaves often lead the lives of common prostitutes, especially among the Baluch tribes, where the state of the women generally seems very degraded.
Regarding polygamy, the average man is unable to afford more than one wife, but the higher classes often possess from thirty to sixty women, many of them from the Hazare tribes of Afghanistan, whose women and children, during the rebellion in the late Amir's reign, were sold over into Baluchistan and Afghanistan. In nearly every village of any size one sees the Hazare women, and the chief will talk of buying them as a farmer at home will speak of purchasing cattle.
Worse than all, one has daily illustrations of the truth that the sins of the fathers are visited on their families, in the degraded victims of inherited and acquired disease who come to the missionary doctor for relief, healing being impossible in many of the cases of these poor women. Pure selfishness characterizes the men in their relationship with their wives. All must not and cannot be told in illustration of this, but what happened a short time ago in our out-patient department of the Zenana Mission Hospital is an instance.
A young Brahui mother was brought in order to be relieved from suffering by an operation which would require her to remain in the hospital a fortnight. When this was proposed, the woman who brought her said at once, "If she does that her husband will send her away." The poor girl had to depart untreated, because the husband feared his bodily comforts might be less if she were not there to minister to them.
May those who see this dark picture of the effect of Islam on womanhood in the East, do all that is in them to bring the glorious light of the Gospel of Christ to their suffering sisters.