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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER S DIARY
in the cradle ; and then says : thus and thus shali tliou live? Live? The word in their inouths mocks us ! For, how can a woman live, when she is deprived of any vestige of freedom from th: beginning? First, we must bow before our fathers, then, our husbands, then husbands' relatives. Does it strike you as a just state of affairs ? Would you tamcly sit down under a system of law that does not allow even to call your souls your own? Is that truc law or true religion ? I do not blame Manu, for, after all, it may be that he honestly did !:is best xccording to his lights. But those lights burn dim in the twenticth century India."*
Those are passionato pronouncements ; but they cannot be deprecated and dismissed as the ranting of wayward youth, corrupted by Western influence. There we have indisputable facts as against the fiction about the exalted position of women in Hindu Society. It goes without sav. ing that the speaker is not a revolutionary. She would not advocate complete subversion of the fcuclal-patriarchal relationship which places upon women the disabilities so very scathingly condemned by herself. Nevertheless, she is far more progressive than most of our nationalist leaders who hold that the last word of human wisdom was pronounced by the legendary law-givers of ancient
* Aldress to the students of the Poona Law College, April 5, 1936.
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