Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India

Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of
India

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Title: Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India
Author: Alice B. Van Doren
Release Date: April 16, 2004 [EBook #12062]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Regina Thumboo College, Lucknow The First M.A. from
Isabella Thoburu]
Lighted to Lighten
The Hope of India
A Study of Conditions among Women in India
By ALICE B. VAN DOREN

1922

FOREWORD
The Central Committee sends out this book on Indian girlhood to meet
the young women of America with their high privilege of education,
that often unrealized and unacknowledged gift of Christ.
Miss Van Doren has given emphasis in the book to the privileged
young woman of India; she shows the possibilities, and yet you will see
in it something of the black shadow cast by that religion which holds
no place for the redemption of woman. If you could see it in its
hideousness which the author can only hint at, you would say as two
American college girls said after a tour through India, "We cannot
endure it. Don't take us to another temple. We never dreamed that
anything under the guise of religion could be so vile." And somehow
there has seemed to them since a note of insincerity in poetic phrasings
of Hindu writers who pass over entirely gross forms of idolatrous faith
to indulge in noble sentiments which suggest plagiarism. A
distinguished author said recently, "I can never read Tagore again after
seeing the women of India." From sacred temple slums of South India
to shambles of Kalighat it is revolting, sickening, shameful. It is
pleasanter to dwell on the beauties of Hinduism and ignore the
unprintable actualities, but if we are to help we must feel how terrible
and immediate the need is. No one can really meet that need but the
educated Indian Christian women whom God is preparing in this day
for service. They are the ones who are Lighted to Lighten. They are the
Hope of the future. Fifty years ago, after the Civil war, the light began
in the organization of Woman's Missionary Societies. Through all the
years women have gone, never very many, sometimes not very strong,
limited in various ways, but with one stern determination, at any cost
"to save some."
Now at the close of your war, young women of America, a new era is
beginning in which you are called to take your part. You will not be the
pioneers. The trail is blazed. It has been proven that Indian girls can be
educated, their minds are keen and eager, they are Christian, many of
them, in a sense which girls of America cannot comprehend. Their task
is infinitely greater than yours. If they fail, the redemption of Indian
womanhood will not be realized, and so we see them taking as the

college emblem, not the beautiful, decorated brass lamp of the palace,
but the common, little clay lamp of the poorest home and going out
with the flickering flame to lighten the deep darkness of their land.
College girls in America sometimes wear their degree as a decoration.
To these girls it is equipment, armor, weapons, for the tearing down of
strongholds. These girls must be leaders. They cannot escape the
challenge.
Until now the undertaking has seemed hopeless. What could a few
foreign women do among those millions? But the great, silent
revolution has begun Eastern women are seeking self-determination as
nations seek it. They are asserting rights to soul and mind and body.
They refuse to be chattels, and going out to release these millions come
these little groups of Christian college girls who are to furnish
leadership. Have we no part? Yes, as allies we are needed as never
before. Unless from the faculties of our colleges, as well as from our
student volunteers adequate aid is sent at once these little groups may
fail. This is your "moral equivalent of war." To go and help them in this
Day which is their Day of Decision requires vision, devotion, a
glorious giving of life which will count just in proportion as the need is
immediate, the battle in doubt, failure possible. Mission Boards must
go haltingly for lack of women and of funds until groups of women
from colleges in America hear