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THE IDEAL OF INDIAN WOMANHOOD
social units against another; of a group of the suppressed against the suppressor, rather against the conditions of their suppression),-those social und doracstic conditions which do not correspond with the relation of natural cquality of the Sexes.
So, it was quite irrelevant to cxclaim at a modern women's gathering, “Don't waige a war of revenge". But the speaker had a guilty Conscience, which was cvidenced by the following xhortation-"Dut say, ! an ! o;, a prveling nachine". He did not deny the fact that his social philosophy reduced wome! to toys and breeding machines. On the contrary, he told his audience to be satisfied with the “higher and nutter status ” ulich men had granici 10 women, to carry on “the greatest profession “, in which no man could comincie. What is that profession ? Tobcar children to be breeding machines! That, ten, is the “higher and better status"-the real content of the mystic idcal of Indian womanhood. Becaise, in the opinion of the protagonist of that reactionary ideal, those Indian women, who would not be satisfied with the “ greatest profession", were allured by “false idcals borrowed from the West”. But the profession is not a grant of men ; nor have any normal women the least <esire to abstain from it. In the frame-work of the patriarchal family—the type of family iclealised by the Indian opponents of social progress-women perform their natural profession not as free agents,
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