Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India | Page 5

declares her choice.
Happy years follow, and the birth of children. Then the scene changes
to exile and desertion. Through it all moves the heroine, sharing her
one garment with her unworthy lord, "thin and pale and travel-stained,
with hair covered in dust," yet never faltering until her husband, sane
and repentant, is restored to home and children and throne.
So the ancient folk-lore goes on, in epic and in drama, with the woman
ever the heroine of the tale. True it is that her virtues are limited;
obedience, chastity, and an unlimited capacity for suffering largely sum
them up. They would scarcely satisfy the ambitions of the new woman
of to-day; yet some among us might do well to pay them reverence.
Those were the high days of Indian womanhood. Then, as the centuries
passed, there came slow eclipse. Lawgivers like Manu[6] proclaimed
the essential impurity of a woman's heart; codes and customs began to
bind her with chains easy to forge and hard to break. Later followed the
catastrophe that completed the change. The Himalayan gateways
opened once more and through them swarmed a new race of invaders,
passing out of those barren plains of Central Asia that have been ever
the breeding grounds of nations and swooping upon India's treasures. In
one hand the green flag of the Prophet, in the other the sword, these
followers of Muhammad sealed for a millennium the end of woman's
high estate.

All was not lost without a mighty struggle.[7] From those days come
the tales of Rajput chivalry--tales that might have been sung by the
troubadours of France. Rajput maidens of noble blood scorned the
throne of Muslim conquerors. Litters supposed to carry captive women
poured out warriors armed to the teeth. Men and women in saffron
robes and bridal garments mounted the great funeral pyre, and when the
conquering Allah-ud-din entered the silent city of Chitore he found no
resistance and no captives, for no one living was left from the great
Sacrifice of Honorable Death.
After that came an end. Everywhere the Muhammadan conqueror
desired many wives; in a far and alien land his own womankind were
few. Again and again the ordinary Hindu householder, lacking the
desperate courage of the Rajput, stood by helpless, like the Armenian
of to-day, while his wife and daughter were carried off from before his
eyes, to increase the harem of his ruler. Small wonder that seclusion
became the order of the day--a woman would better spend her life
behind the purdah of her own home than be added to the zenana of her
conqueror. Later when the throes of conquest were over and Hindu
women once more ventured forth to a wedding or a festival, small
wonder that they copied the manners of their masters, and to escape
familiarity and insult became as like as possible to women of the
conquering race. Thus the use of the veil began.
At that beginning we do not wonder; what makes us marvel is that a
repressing custom became so strong that, even after a century and a half
of British rule, all over North India and among some conservative
families of the South seclusion and the veil still persist. Walk the
streets of a great commercial town like Calcutta, and you find it a city
of men. An occasional Parsee lady, now and then an Indian Christian,
here and there women of the cooly class whose lowly station has saved
their freedom--otherwise womankind seems not to exist.
The high hour of Indian womanhood had passed, not to return until
brought back by the power of Christ, in whose kingdom there is
"neither male nor female, but all are one." Yet as the afterglow flames
up with a transient glory after the swift sunset, so in the gathering

darkness of Muhammadan domination we see the brightness of two
remarkable women.
There was Nur Jahan, the "Light of the World," wife of the dissolute
Jahangir. Never forgetful, it would seem, of a childish adventure when
the little Nur Jahan in temper and pride set free his two pet doves,
twenty years later the Mughal Emperor won her from her soldier
husband by those same swift methods that David employed to gain the
wife of Uriah, the Hittite.
And when Nur Jahan became queen she was ruler indeed, "the one
overmastering influence in his life."[8] From that time on we see her,
restraining her husband from his self-indulgent habits, improving his
administration, crossing flooded rivers and leading attacks on elephants
to save him from captivity; "a beautiful queen, beautifully dressed,
clever beyond compare, contriving and scheming, plotting, planning,
shielding and saving, doing all things for the man hidden in the
pampered, drink-sodden carcass of the king; the man who, for her at
any rate, always had a heart."