20 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW 



Six millions have been enfranchised in India. The 

 leadership rests on about a quarter of a million who have 

 the necessary education. It is the uneducated Indians 

 that constitute the problem. I am anxious to see the 

 day when India shall take her proper place as one of the 

 great self-governing peoples of the world. The British 

 officials and the European commercial community have 

 put on record their desire actively to assist in making the 

 Montague Chelmsford Reforms a success, but many more 

 schools will have to be built and filled with Indian boys 

 and girls before India will be able to accept her fair 

 share of the responsibilities of the world, and carry her 

 part of the burden of modern civilization. 



Bad and crippling as this lack of education is among 

 the men of India, in order to see the most far-reaching 

 and cumulative evil effects of illiteracy it is necessary 

 to realize the meaning of illiteracy among the women 

 and girls of India. When we consider the inferior so- 

 cial status of women in India ; the purdah system which 

 shuts them off by themselves, keeps them prisoners for 

 life, often in insanitary, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated quar- 

 ters; the fact that women are by nature more conserva- 

 tive than men; and that in the early and most impres- 

 sionable days of life the children are under the care of 

 mothers, only one out of a hundred of whom can write 

 her own name ; we ask what chance has the Indian boy or 

 girl compared with the American boy or girl? The il- 

 literate Indian mother has her mind filled with supersti- 

 tion, myth, suspicion, and the consequent dread and 

 terror and darkness that cramp and dwarf life. The 

 mother can convey to her child only what she herself has 

 in her own mind. The woman of India has had it im- 

 pressed upon her that she is inferior to the man. She 



