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THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
and plcad for the much needed improvement. The following, for example, is quoted from a specch by the Maharani of Baroda, who certainly cannot be accuscd of any feminist extravagance, nor suspected of the insidious spirit of revolt against the Hindu culture.
“Far from allowing her that equality with man, which in modern society is her natural and inalienable right, the law as it stands in by far the grcatcr part of the country places her at a most unfair disadvantage. According to ihe Hindu Law, 1hc joint family comprises only the male members; a woman is not a co-partner, but a inere dependent, with no right of ownership in the joint property. Why do you allow yourselves to be menaced and led captive, as it were, lay laws which were made for a society which diffcrcil from
ur own as much as chall differs from cheese? Manu and thc rest of them made excellent laws for their own time, perhaps. But why shoull you take them as final pronouncements ? Are they the will of God ? Certainly not. They are statements of men's thought or their prejudice. Indeed, when I think of the laws they made against women, they seem to write like men who have been bitten by some serpent, so poisonous is thcir attitude. Their laws seem almost to breathe hatred for us. How can I help thinking so, when the law, from birth to Scath, makes a woman a subordinate, stifles her, so to say,
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