furniture.[268] Even British rule has not been able to improve the condition of woman, for the British Government is bound by treaties not to interfere with social and religious customs; hence many pathetic cases are witnessed in the courts of unwilling girls handed over, in accordance with national custom, to the loathed husbands selected for them.  “The gods and justice always favor the men.”  “Many women put an end to their earthly sufferings by committing suicide.”

WIDOWS AND THEIR TORMENTORS

If anything can cast a ray of comfort into the wretched life of a Hindoo maiden or wife it is the thought that, after all, she is much better off than if she were a widow—­though, to be sure, she runs every risk of becoming one ere she is old enough to be considered marriageable in any country where women are regarded as human beings.  In considering the treatment of Hindoo widows we reach the climax of inhuman cruelty—­a cruelty far exceeding that practised by American Indians toward female prisoners, because more prolonged and involving mental as well as physical agonies.

In 1881 there were in British India alone 20,930,000 widows, 669,000 of whom were under nineteen, and 78,976 under nine years of age.[269] Now a widow’s life is naturally apt to be one of hardship because she has lost her protector and bread-winner; but in India the tragedy of her fate is deepened a thousandfold by the diabolical ill-treatment of which she is made the innocent victim.  A widow who has borne sons or who is aged is somewhat less despised than the child widow; on her falls the worst abuse and hatred of the community, though she be as innocent of any crime as an angel.  In the eyes of a Hindoo the mere fact of being a widow is a crime—­the crime of surviving her husband, though he may have been seventy and the wife seven.

All women love their soft glossy hair; and a Hindoo woman, says Ramabai Sarasvati (82), “thinks it worse than death to lose her hair”; yet “among the Brahmans of Deccan the heads of all widows must be shaved regularly every fortnight.”  “Shaved head” is a term of derision everywhere applied to the widows.  All their ornaments are taken from them and they are excluded from every ceremony of joy.  The name “rand” given to a widow “is the same that is borne by a Nautch girl or a harlot.”  One poor woman wrote to a missionary: 

“O great Lord, our name is written with drunkards, with lunatics, with imbeciles, with the very animals; as they are not responsible, we are not.  Criminals confined in jails for life are happier than we.”

Another of these widows wrote:[270] “While our husbands live we are their slaves, when they die we are still worse off.”  The husband’s funeral, she says, may last all day in a broiling sun, and while the others are refreshed, she alone is denied food and water.  After returning she is reviled by her own relatives.  Her mother says:  “Unhappy