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THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
patience for new-fangled ideas; and, when pro voked, they sternly show women their place.
Deprecating the demand of modern woman, Dr. Bhagwan Das, in the speech quoted above, ex
ounded the Hindu cioctrine about marriage and fainily. “Marriage is not a picnic ; it is discipline which people must carry out. Sociсty would break up, if men and women forgot the sacredress of marriage, and talked of it in loose terms. In India, family is the unit of society; in the West, the individual. Our system is undoubtcally the best. Indian don't believe in individualism. Our ideal is humanism, familyism."
There we have the naked truth, told by a “modern Rishi”. The relation between man and woman is clearly defined. The Indian ideal of womanhood is depicted realistically; and it is a matter of categorical imperative. There must be discipline; laws laid down for the governance of a patriarchal society must be obcyed, even to-day in the midst of the twentieth century. Marriage is not a picnic, we are told. What does that mean? It means that marriage is not a companionship; that it is an indissoluble bond which deprives woman of all freedom, denies her the right to a: individual existence. A wife is not a human being. For her, there are only duties to be performed, not voluntarily, but under an inflexible discipline. The doctrine of discipline, which prohibits even freedom of thought, transforms the individual into an
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