Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India | Page 6

Think of Nur Jahan's descendants, hidden
in the zenanas of India. When their powers, age-repressed, are set free
by Christian education, what will it mean for the future of their nation?
[Illustration: MEENACHI OF MADURA The Average Girl, a Bride at
Twelve]
Then there came the lady of the Taj, Mumtaz Mahal, beloved of Shah
Jahan, the Master Builder. We know less of her history, less of the
secret of her charm, only that she died in giving birth to her thirteenth
child, and that for all those years of married life she had held her
husband's adoration. For twenty-two succeeding years he spent his
leisure in collecting precious things from every part of his world that
there might be lacking no adornment to the most exquisite tomb ever
raised. And when it was finished--rare commentary on the
contradiction of Mughal character--the architect was blinded that he
might never produce its like again.
All that was a part of yesterday--a story of rise and fall; of woman's
repression, with outbursts of greatness; of countless treasures of talent

and possibilities unrecognized and undeveloped, hidden behind the
doors of Indian zenanas. What of to-day?
TO-DAY: The Average Girl.
Meenachi of Madura, if she could become articulate, might tell us
something of the life of the average girl to-day. Being average, she
belongs neither to the exclusive streets of the Brahman, nor to the
hovels of the untouchable outcastes, but to the area of the great middle
class which is in India as everywhere the backbone of society.
Meenachi's father is a weaver of the far-famed Madura muslins with
their gold thread border. Her earliest childhood memory is the quiet
weavers' street where the afternoon sun glints under the tamarind trees
and, striking the long looms set in the open air, brings out the blue and
mauve, the deep crimson and purple and gold of the weaving.
There were rollicking babyhood days when Meenachi, clad only in the
olive of her satin skin with a silver fig leaf and a bead necklace for
adornment, wandered in and out the house and about the looms at will.
With added years came the burden of clothing, much resented by the
wearer, but accepted with philosophic submission, as harder things
would be later on. Toys are few and simple. The palmyra rattle is
exchanged for the stiff wooden doll, painted in gaudy colors, and the
collection of tiny vessels in which sand and stones and seeds provide
the equivalent of mud pies in repasts of imaginary rice and curry.
Household duties begin also. Meenachi at the age of six grasps her
small bundle of broom-grass and sweeps each morning her allotted
section of verandah. Soon she is helping to polish the brass cooking
pots and to follow her mother and older sisters, earthen waterpot on hip,
on their morning and evening pilgrimages to the river.
Being only an average girl, Meenachi will never go to school. There are
ninety and nine of these "average" unschooled girls to the one "above
the average" to whom education offers its outlet for the questing spirit.
She looks with curiosity at the books her brother brings home from
high school, but the strange, black marks which cover their pages mean
nothing to her. Not for her the release into broad spaces that comes
only through the written word. For, mark you, to the illiterate life

means only those circumscribed experiences that come within the range
of one's own sight and touch and hearing. "What I have seen, what I
have heard, what I have felt"--there experience ends. From personal
unhappiness there is no escape into the world current.
Meenachi is twelve and the freedom of the long street is hers no more.
Yellow chrysanthemums in her glossy hair, a special diet of milk and
curds and sweet cakes fried in ghee, and the outspoken congratulations
of relatives, male and female, mark her entrance into the estate of
womanhood. What the West hides, the East delights to reveal.
Now follows the swift sequel of marriage. The husband, of just the
right degree of relationship, has long been chosen. The family
exchequer is drained to the dregs to provide the heavy dowry, the
burdensome expenditure for wedding feast and jewels, and the
presentation of numerous wedding garments to equally numerous and
expectant relatives. Meenachi is carried away by the splendor of new
clothes and jewels and processions, and the general tamash of the
occasion. Has she not the handsomest bridegroom and the most
expensive _trousseau,_ of this marriage month? Is she not the envy of
all her former playmates? Only now and then comes a strange feeling
of loneliness when she thinks of leaving the dear, familiar roof the
narrow street with its tamarind trees and many colored looms. The
mother-in-law's house is a