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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
politician. It was Bhulabhai Desai who is known to be cynical about cquality in any walk of life. An eulogising nationalist newspaper reported him to have administered "some bitter pills” to the naughty women who allow theinsclves to be influcnced by modern ideas imported from the benighted West, and consequently turn away from the idcals sct before then by the wise men of the post, particularly the inmortal and infalliblo Manu.
Mr. Desai dcprecated the “false issue of antagonism between men and women"; then he asserted that this “false issue has been falsely borrowed by India” from foreign quarters. Presumably, the assertion is that Indian social conditions do not provide any reason for the issue to arise. Such an assertion implics that in Indian society women are in no way subordinated to men, that the relation is so cquitable and harmonious as to obviate the possibility of any antagonism. Disrcgarding all the facts about the realitics of women's life, in the present as well as in the past, the speaker declared that “man has always placed woman on a higher and better status". Now, that is a legend pure and siinple. Mr. Desai himself adınitted that. He directly went on to des. cribe the “higher and better status” which is supposed to be graciously granted to women by men, and with which the former should remain content. He exclaimed : “Don't fight a war of
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