INDIA. 



435 



ity for girls is not earlier in India than in Europe, 

 but later. One of the main pleas for child mar- 

 riage among high-caste Hindus is the necessity 

 of male offspring to conduct the funeral cere- 

 monies of the father of the household. This 

 object is of tener defeated than achieved by the 

 practice, for statistics show that it is a frequent 

 cause of sterility. The fatal consequences of 

 early marriage are apparent in the computations 

 made by a native statistician, T. N. Mukharji, a 

 high-caste Brahman, who shows from the census 

 tables that, while up to the age of ten, which is 

 the legal age of consent, the proportion of boys 

 to girls in India is 50'5 to 49'5 per cent., in the 

 next four years it is 55'7 boys to 43-3 girls. The 

 inference that 2,000,000 girls die from the ef- 

 fects of premature marriage is strengthened 

 by the comparative statistics of Bengal, where 

 child marriage is almost universal, and four 

 girls in every hundred die presumably from that 

 cause, and of other provinces where it is less 

 general. 



The system of infant marriage is the growth of 

 a thousand years. It originated in the need of 

 women for protection in troublous times, and re- 

 ceived later the sanction of a religious command. 

 The woman who dies before entering into the 

 connubial state is lost, for marriage is the one in- 

 dispensable ordinance necessary for her salvation 

 in the future world. A father commits a deadly 

 sin who does not provide his daughter with a 

 husband, and to evade the possibility of this 

 guilt he takes the earliest opportunity to fulfill 

 his duty without regard to her age or physical 

 maturity. For the husband also it is a religious 

 duty to marry early in order to raise up sons to 

 attend to his funeral rites. As the laws of mar- 

 riage were religious, so was their sanction until 

 British law stepped in to fix ten years as the age 

 for the wife at which the husband may legally 

 employ force to compel cohabitation, or may 

 bring a suit for the restitution of conjugal rites, 

 which is enforceable by imprisonment or by at- 

 tachment of the wife's property, or by both. 

 Pundits of high authority have drawn arguments 

 from the Vedic texts and from historical records 

 to prove that in ancient India the marriage of 

 women was optional, that the union of youths 

 and maidens mature enough to enter immediately 

 into the wedded state was the marriage contem- 

 plated in the sacred books, and such was the 

 usage as late as the tenth century of the Christian 

 era. The reformers appeal to British legislation 

 to alleviate the harsh conditions that weigh upon 

 Hindu widows, a large proportion of whom are 

 widowed in childhood without ever having seen 

 their husbands, at least by repealing the law that 

 works the forfeiture of their property if they re- 

 marry. The only limit to early marriages is the 

 difficulty of finding a husband and of providing 

 the wedding gifts. The average age among Hin- 

 dus of the higher castes is seven years. Sometimes 

 the husband is an infant like the bride, some- 

 times a polygamist in middle life, and sometimes 

 an aged Brahman of high rank who marries for 

 the sake of the presents, with no intention of see- 

 ing his bride again. If the marriage is meant to 

 be more than a ceremony, the girl is taken from 

 her father's house at an untimely age to be shat- 

 tered in health by giving birth to weakly children 

 before she has grown to womanhood. Unnatural 



and demoralizing as is the lot of a Hindu wife, 

 that of the widow is far worse. Child or woman, 

 she is isolated from social life, shunned and 

 banned and condemned to a squalid exist- 

 ence enlivened only by the meanest tasks of the 

 household. There are about 2,000,000 widows in 

 India. The act passed in 1856 permits remar- 

 riage, but a powerful caste opinion stands in the 

 way, and this is re-enforced by the British statute 

 sanctioning the forfeiture of all property derived 

 from the husband, even though he may have 

 willed his own accumulations to her with an 

 express license to marry again. The ecclesias- 

 tical and social ban placed upon the widow who 

 remarries, and the public penalty of excom- 

 munication and exclusion from the temple and 

 from the rights and privileges of his caste that 

 is visited by the priests upon the man who keeps 

 his daughter, in school and unmarried until she 

 is fifteen or sixteen years old are the obstacles in 

 the way of the reformers, and therefore it has 

 been proposed to prohibit by statute the depriva- 

 tion of the religious rights and caste privileges 

 of offenders against ecclesiastical laws that have 

 been modified by British statute. 



British Beluchistan. While Lord Lytton 

 was Viceroy a treaty was made with the Khan of 

 Khelat, and his frontier fort of Quetta was gar- 

 risoned with British troops. Afterward the poli- 

 tical agency of British Beluchistan was estab- 

 lished, and in 1887 the districts of Pishin, 

 Shorarud, Kach, Kawas, Harnai, Sibi, and Thai 

 Chotiali were placed under the administration of 

 a chief commissioner, Sir Robert Sandeman. 

 Although he is supposed to act as a mere adviser 

 of the Khan, the power given him by treaty to 

 arbitrate difficulties between the Khan and his 

 subject chiefs has been so construed as to make 

 the political agent almost supreme. The people 

 in this arid country extract scanty crops from 

 the valleys. Pasturage is scarce. The construc- 

 tion of military roads and of the Sindh-Pishin 

 railroad has given employment to the people of 

 the country as well as to Afghans and large gangs 

 of laborers from India. The latter have been 

 responsible for much of the crime that has pre- 

 vailed. The predatory hill tribes on the border 

 of Afghanistan have given the British trouble 

 from the beginning. The raids of the Kakars of 

 the Zhob valley led to an expedition against them 

 in 1888 and to the annexation of new territory. 

 The building of the railroad from the Punjab to 

 Pishin made necessary the annexation of the 

 Khetran valley. 



In 1889 Sir Frederick Roberts resolved on the 

 occupation of the Zhob valley, and in October 

 and November, 1890, the operation was carried 

 out by a large force commanded by Gen. White, 

 co-operating with another column advancing 

 from the Punjab. The valley, which extends in 

 an east and west direction behind the Suliman 

 range, commands the Draband, Gomul, and 

 Toohi passes leading from Afghanistan, and is 

 easily accessible from Quetta. The Kidderzais 

 offered resistance at one place only, relying on 

 the supposed inaccessibility of their country. 

 When the troops appeared among them the chiefs 

 made their submission, and the other tribes fol- 

 lowed their example. The place chosen for the 

 headquarters of the British resident is Apozai, 

 near the western entrance of the Draband pass. 



