A banker by profession, Salim Ansar has a passion for history and historic books. His personal library already boasts a treasure trove of over 7,000 rare and unique books. Every week, we shall take a leaf from one such book and treat you to a little taste of history. BOOK NAME: Unhappy India AUTHOR: Lajpat Rai PUBLISHER: Banna Publishing Company, Calcutta DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1928 The following excerpt has been taken from Pages: 27 — 30 “Speaking from a national point of view, no curse is greater than that of political subjection of another people. The marching hordes of a monarch are nothing in their ruinous effects on the country they overrun as compared with the gradual loss of a country's freedom by the complete subjugation of its people by a foreign army and its governance through the fear of bayonets. The invader comes, plundering, devastating, uprooting and sweeping everything before it like a hurricane. But he either goes away with his plunder or settles down in the country and identifies himself with the people. To the first type belonged invaders like Alexander, Mahmud of Ghazni, Timur, Chengiz Khan, Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali; to the second belonged men who led the Scythians and the Huns into India and settled down here and became a part and parcel of the Indian nation, or like Mahmud of Ghor and Babar laid the foundations of dynasties deep on the soil of India. THE HINDU WIDOW “Prohibition of widow remarriage is also one of those evil customs which cannot be justified. The lot of the Hindu widow is bad indeed, but the wild statements made about the morality of the Hindu widows can only be described as the products of an evil mind. In general Hindu widows lead a life of sacrifice and service. Their morality stands on a higher pedestal than Miss Mayo's mind can conceive of. In making her sweeping statements she has only shown her ignorance of the real condition and her readiness to generalize on very meager data. “Firstly, the prohibition against widow remarriage is not universal. The vast majority of Hindus marry their widows as a rule. This is the practice in all classes considered pastoral or military. This is also the practice among what are known as the low castes. "At the bottom of society, as understood by the average Hindu, we find a large group of castes and tribes practicing adult marriage and widow remarriage." The restrictions are generally confined to people of higher castes whose number can in no case exceed 30 per cent of the total Hindu population. “Simply absurd is Miss Mayo's statement that remarriage in orthodox Hinduism is impossible. Why, there is orthodoxy and orthodoxy. I know of many orthodox Hindus who have allowed the remarriage of their widowed girls or daughters-in-law. The statement on page 86 of Mother India that the remarriage of a Hindu widow wife is still held to be 'inconceivable' is nothing short of a lie. “Secondly, the rules prescribed for a widow's life are not the same in all provinces or among all castes. I have never seen a Hindu widow's head shaved anywhere in the N.W.F Province, or the Punjab, or the U.P., or Rajputana. “Thirdly, hard as her lot is in the matter of marriage, in other respects the Hindu widow's life is not as hard as has been made out by Miss Mayo. Professor Pratt, a New England gentleman from the United States takes a very judicious view of the matter when he says ‘the position and life of the Indian widow varies, of course, with the personality of the woman and with the family in which her lot is cast. From writers like Dubois one would judge that she is always an object of heartless persecution, a sad and unwilling drudge; while Sister Nivedita and her school would have one suppose that the Hindu widow is ever loved and fondly cared for, and that she becomes a nun given over for good works, which spring spontaneously from her sorrow-crowned character. Both views are doubtless true in their limited way, and neither should be accepted without modification from the other. Certainly the widow's lot is a sad one at best; and stern Hindu theory believes that it should be sad, that for the widow sadness is better than joy. And doubtless those widows who acquiesce in this judgment and give themselves up willingly to a life of utter self-abnegation and service shine at the end as gold purified by fire... The widow mother of the head of the house has a position not only of respect and affection, but of authority and power. Younger widows, of course, have no such authority, but they have nearly as much work, and if the service be not willing much of it must be performed none the less, and for the young woman who has no ambition to be a martyr or a nun the fate of widowhood in India is very hard indeed. “‘on the whole the Indian home is a very narrow and limited place, but it may be a very sweet and holy place as well; and it has produced a type of woman who knows how to love and how to suffer and be faithful and lose herself in those she loves: a type that has great limitations, but which is not without a certain lofty beauty- even though at the antipodes from that of the modern militant suffragette.’ “Fourthly, the Hindu widow, if she is a mother, is simply worshipped. ‘Perhaps nowhere in the world,’ says Mr. Pratt, ‘is there more profound reverence for the mother than in India.’ ‘The wife becomes regent.’ Says Sister Nivedita, ‘when a man dies during the minority of his son; and even if the latter be already of age, his ownership of an estate is by no means free and complete during the lifetime of his mother. The whole world would cry shame if he acted without her occasional advise, and indeed, the Indian woman's reputation for business capacity is so like the French that it is commonly said of encumbered property that it needs a widow's nursing.’” salimansar52@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/PagesFromHistoryBySalimAnsar
