________________
THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
bring about social chaos. They misrepresent the idca of the frecdom of sex-relation. Their stock argument is that nature has made woman different from man ; so, there can be no equality between thom. Desai, for example, informed his audience: * You cannot alter the crcation of nature. A man will remain a mar, a woman a woman." As if anybody ever disputed this truisin. No woman wants physical transforination. The demand is not for manhood ; it is for human rights, for the abolition of man-made codes and conditions that do not allow women to develop as individual human beings; it is for the creation of such a social and domestic atmosphere as will enable women to act freely in the capacity of partners and companions of men.
Here is a clear statement of what the modern woman really strives for: “The women's move. ment has set to it the task of removing all sexinequality wherever it exists, so as to bring that happy day of consummation ncarer. All sex-liscrimination must go wherever it may exist, and as a logical conscquence of that, all cxploitation must ccase. That is the burden of the message of the Women's Conferencc."*
What is the happy day which has become the ideal of the modern Indian woman ? Let her
* (Presidential Address by Mrs. Brijlal Nehru to the annual mecting of the Delhi Women's Conference, Noveml:er 8, 1936.)
173
