218 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



equally understood the Government definition, and in fact 

 rendered himself liable to suspicion of bribery by his offer. 

 I do not say that there is absolutely no exchange of gifts, 

 only that it is disallowed in the official service. All that is 

 certainly a change for the better, that the balance may be 

 held even. Other things are not so easy to adjust or 

 abolish by rule, as the examples given in the last chapter 

 testify. 



Nevertheless, though progress is very slow in the East, 

 even there a new life is pulsating. The newly acquired taste 

 for travel has given rise to fresh sets of ideas in many minds, 

 but the pleasures of travel are not to be indulged in without 

 incurring a vast deal of trouble on the return. Endless 

 caste ceremonies for purification are quite indispensable 

 if the traveller wishes to be received back into his family 

 after being contaminated by mixing with low-caste and 

 casteless persons. 



Perhaps the Zenana mind is the most inaccessible of any 

 to new ideas — no thought of travel there — yet even there 

 ideas have penetrated. Those who in their ignorance have 

 said that there was no mind to reach spoke with little 

 knowledge. Indeed, there are minds, and of the subtlest, 

 in the Zenanas ; plots are hatched there to be carried out 

 elsewhere, and never any connection to be traced. Women 

 govern India. I have heard that said by educated Hindus, 

 and others who knew intimately more countries and more 

 races than their own. The strictness of purdah (screen or 

 curtain) makes no difference ; the ladies, the wives and 

 favourites, from the seclusion behind the purdah — which 

 they never leave, and where no male eye rests upon them 

 except that of their own lord and master — pull the strings 

 of governments and of dynasties. 



Not so long ago slavery — sometimes of a kind nowhere 

 surpassed in horror — existed in the Zenanas, though, 

 happily, owing to persistent personal effort, the face of things 



