Chapter IX: University Education

“Travellers all in the land of the living,
In quest of the self it is best to be;
Comrades all in the getting and giving,
Prythee, tell us, what else are we?

Girls who go hopefully forth to the morrow,
In quest of the Women they wish to be,
Friends who look down on the fair, flying present,
Wistfully, lovingly--this are we.”
From the _“Lal Bagh” Chronicle_.

A firm and steady step on the lower rungs of the ladder is a fair promise of the ultimate ascent, and after a time incredibly short since the first beginnings of Western education for women in India, the girl graduate is found issuing from the portals of the University.

Pioneer in many senses, with a world of idealistic possibilities surrounding her career, the Indian woman has proved the quality of her mental capacity; she has successfully stood the most strenuous of tests, and is prepared to take her part as a leader of her sex and as a contributor to the Feminist Movement. The member of Congress sees in her a political factor; the papers which advocate social reform hail her as a new force which will influence circles far beyond the reach of their propaganda; the educator trusts that here at last is someone with the brain power and insight to indicate the true lines for the education of Indian women; the missionary ponders on her possibilities for the Indian Church and the Indian home--while India, the real India, the silent multitude of India’s women, knows little and cares less. This strange phenomenon seems no longer of their number; she has stepped away with her new and dazzling robes from the old tradition, from the memories of the twilight and its tales to a new and untried world. And yet in a true sense she is still one with them, one with them in instinct, in thought, in hereditary traits, and fitted, as no Western could ever be, to act as the mediator betwixt the old and the new. The possibilities of the Indian woman graduate have to a certain extent been proved in subsequent careers; on the other hand, the results of the whole system, as regards the average student, have not entirely justified the hopes built upon it. A brief examination of the actual facts and conditions will prove the best introduction to the problems which underlie them.

The five Universities of India--Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, and Lahore--the constitutions of which resemble that of the University of London, are open to any woman who can pass the qualifying entrance examination. Their subsequent studies must be conducted in a college duly recognized by Government and in affiliation with a University. These colleges vary as first and second grade according to the stage, Intermediate or Final B.A., to which they are able to take their students. Of the 175 colleges scattered over India 10 are specially women’s colleges, but women are also found studying in mixed colleges under mission boards or Government. Of Government institutions it may practically be said that no sex barrier exists, except where a separate provision is made, as in the case of the Bethune College, Calcutta, and the same is true to a less extent of the mission institutions. Thus women students are found in the Elphinstone College, Bombay, in the Presidency College, Madras, and in the Government College, Rangoon, studying side by side with men under the same conditions. The Wilson College, Bombay, is an important example of the mixed mission college. The ten women’s colleges in affiliation with one or other University[127] are as follows:--

Number
of
Students.[128]

The Bethune College, Calcutta (first grade) 40
The Diocesan College, Calcutta (first grade) 32
The Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow
(first grade) (A.M.M.) 20
The Sarah Tucker College, Palamcottah
(second grade) (C.M.S.) 6
The Maharani’s College, Mysore
The Maharajah’s College, Trevandrum
St Bede’s Convent College, Simla (first grade)
Auckland House School, Simla (second grade)
European Girls’ High School, Allahabad
(second grade)
Woodstock Girls’ School, Landour (second
grade)

Of these, the last four are mainly for Eurasian girls, and fall outside the scope of our inquiry. With the exception of the Bethune and the two institutions in Native States, they are all under Christian management. The word “college” is highly misleading. The English reader pictures an institution parallel to Girton or Somerville, with a full staff of women tutors, supplemented by University lectures, whereas these colleges consist in most cases of small groups of girls, sometimes only one or two, who remain after Matriculation in their old school, studying for the most part under the same mistresses, and with little or no sense of any transition in their career. If no girls are fitted to proceed to the higher stages, the college as such may lapse for the time being; thus only students in training as teachers are returned in the Panjāb report for 1910, in spite of the two “colleges at Simla,” whereas the Diocesan School appears officially for the first time in the Bengal report as a college with a most creditable number of students and an efficient staff. The one outstanding exception is the Isabella Thoburn College, where the college department is rigidly separated from the school, and where the collegiate atmosphere and sense of corporate life are dominant. A similar arrangement is being made in the new buildings of the Bethune College. Even in these two cases there is the linked High School under the same Principal, sharing in the interest of the staff. A women’s college in the English sense of the word does not exist.

Passing to the students, the differences of creed, as indicated in the Quinquennial Returns of 1907, are seen in the annexed table. (See page 197.)

This proportion is on the whole maintained to-day, with the addition of a few Buddhist girls studying in Rangoon, and an increased proportion of Parsis in Bombay. The actual numbers show a remarkably small fluctuation within the last decade, and have not justified the hopes of those who expected a continuation of the fourfold increase of the preceding decade. In 1891 there were 45, in 1901, 177 Arts students. Taking some figures from local returns, we find the following:--[129]

------------------+-------+-------+------
Arts Students. | 1901. | 1906. | 1910.
------------------+-------+-------+------
Bengal | 55 | 24 | 47
United Provinces | 49 | 38 | 45
Burma | 8 | 2 | 12
Bombay | 30 | 57 | 76
Madras | ? | ? | 37
------------------+-------+-------+------

+CLASSIFICATION OF COLLEGE STUDENTS BY RACE OR CREED+

+----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+
| |Eura- |Native |Hindu.|Moham-|Parsis.|Others.|Total.|
| |sian. |Chris- | |medan.| | | |
| | |tians. | | | | | |
+----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+
|Arts | | | | | | | |
| Colleges | 48 | 43 | 31 | 1 | 33 | 4 | 160 |
|Medicine | 40 | 19 | 4 | ... | 11 | 2 | 76 |
|Teaching | 34 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | 36 |
|Law | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1 | ... | 1 |
|Medical- | | | | | | | |
| School | 30 | 110 | 15 | 12 | 1 | ... | 168 |
+----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+
| | 152 | 174 | 50 | 13 | 46 | 6 | 441 |
+----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+

A marked increase is shown only in the Bombay Presidency due to the influence of the Parsis. The students are drawn from varying ranks of society. Of the Hindu students about a quarter are Brahmans. Some are drawn from the new professional classes, who highly value education for their women, and can afford to pay for it; others from the poorer members of the Brāhma-Samāj, who see in college education a prospect of a career for their daughters more in accordance with their enlightened ideas. Of the system of stipends it is difficult to form a judgment. Whereas in Britain a scholarship indicates special ability tested by competition, in India a Government or private stipend is in most cases available, at any rate in Bengal, for any girl who can pass the required average test. With luck she may possibly also secure another stipend to cover her board. The “average” girl is therefore apt to predominate far more largely than in the early stages of college education in Britain or America. There is also a lack of the element of hereditary culture, which has a very definite contribution to make in Indian life, and which may be the inheritance of the daughter as well as of the son. But where it is impossible to secure a genuinely competitive system and the only alternative is the closing of the college career to the really brilliant girl of the poorer classes, the question is a difficult one. In Calcutta, practically all the Bethune students belong to the Brāhma-Samāj; in Bombay, where the line of separation between the Prārthanā Samāj and orthodoxy is very indefinite, and _parda_ almost non-existent, orthodox Hindu students are to be found. It must be remembered, however, that these are essentially pioneers, and that the custom of early marriage or secluded widowhood still practically prevents any marked Hindu element amongst women students. In 1903 two Brahman ladies passed the Madras B.A. from the Maharani’s College, Mysore, being the first of their caste there to do this.

The Parsi woman student needs no comment. Independent, bright, and alert, she holds her own in the mixed colleges of Bombay with the utmost equanimity, and has an unparalleled zest for examinations. In 1886, the first women students entered Wilson College, Ratanbai Ardeshir Vakil and her sister Meherbai, daughters of a leading Parsi solicitor. Several years before, the University had given women the right to go up for examination, but only one had made use of the permission. Ratanbai specialized in French, and was elected a Fellow in 1890. From then, till her early death in 1895, she taught French in the college, and warm testimony to her influence in the college and at home is borne by the Principal. “One could see how the education and culture of women, instead of creating a cleft in the life of the family, as is so often erroneously imagined by those who oppose the cause of female education in India, proves a means of strengthening its unity and elevating its whole character.”[130] Her sister, Meherbai Vakil, is a much-respected medical woman in Bombay, and is typical of a growing number of Parsi students who have entered professional life with great credit. The brilliant career of Miss Cornelia Sorabji, a Christian Parsi, who holds the post of Legal Adviser to the Bengal Government for women in _parda_, is too well known to need emphasis. Two of her sisters are Head-mistresses of important Indian schools.

The Indian Christian woman student figures largely in the returns, and the pioneers of the movement were drawn from their ranks. This is the natural result of the educational policy pursued by the various missionary societies, and of the later age of marriage among Christians. Some of them are mentally very well fitted for their studies; there are others again who are largely subsidized by public or private funds, and possess ability to pass the average standard, but not sufficient mental power to gain full benefit from their training. Here, for instance, are two girls, daughters of an Indian clergyman, both passing well, and taking employment, one as a Mistress in a Government school, the other as an Inspectress in the Provincial Service; contrast with them a trembling, shrinking girl from a Native State who has received a scholarship from her State because she has matriculated and because she is one of an impoverished family of twelve, a particularly urgent case! Throughout her career the fear of failure and poverty intensifies the strain already possibly too great for a delicate constitution, and a girl who might have made an excellent Primary teacher is sacrificed on the altar of so-called higher education. And yet, as has already been indicated, the system affords the needed opportunity for the clever girl, and possesses this justification. The Christian students are mostly to be found in the Isabella Thoburn College, in Madras, and a few in Calcutta, chiefly at the Diocesan School and College. Since the latter was founded, about fifteen years ago, five B.A.’s have passed out and several F.A.’s.[131] New college buildings have recently been added with boarding accommodation for forty-five resident students. It is managed by the Community of St John Baptist, known generally as the Clewer Sisterhood. Miss Chunder Mukki Bose, M.A.,[132] to whose guidance the Bethune College has owed much of its prestige, and the late Lilavati Singh, M.A., Vice-Principal of the Isabella Thoburn College, stand out as the most prominent Indian Christian graduates, while the dramatic episode of Mrs Nvimabala Shome’s graduation as B.A. at the same time as her husband in Calcutta, gave an object-lesson in matrimonial equality. She subsequently took her M.A. in England, and devoted much of her life to the organization of one of the mission High schools in Calcutta. Indian Christian graduates are to be found all over India undertaking responsible work with great credit.

The Mohammedan girl graduates cannot be discussed as a class, for even if we go back to the “glory of women,” the Sheikha Shuhda of the Middle Ages, who lectured at Bagdad on literature and rhetoric, they are only found here and there as isolated figures. One Mohammedan girl of a well known Bombay family passed first among girl candidates in the Bombay Presidency in 1910, and is now studying at Wilson College.

It will thus be seen that the women students of India are a very heterogeneous body, representing almost every shade of religious opinion, and varying possibly in their mental capacity to a greater extent than the women of other lands.

+UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY+

-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+
Engi-|Agri- | | | | L | |
neer-|cul- | | | | a | |
ing. |ture. |Science. | | Arts. | w.| Medicine. |
-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+
M.D. M.S. M.D. M.S.
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
^ ^ ^
| | |
| | |
M.B. B.S. |
+----------+ |
| | |
| | |
M.A. | | L.M.S.
+---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
B.Sc. | B.A. | | 2nd Exam.| | |
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
|Inter- | | | | | | |
|mediate.| | | | | |2nd L.M.S.|
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
| | | Inter- | | Preli- | | |
| | | mediate.| | minary. | |1st L.M.S.|
+--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | |Previous.| | | | |
+--------+<--+---------+ +----------+ +----------+
| | | |
| | | |
| |------------------>| |
+---------+ +----------+
Matriculation (age 16).
-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+--------------------------+

+NOTES.+--The course in the other universities is somewhat similar.

Calcutta offers a degree as Bachelor of Teaching.

The degree of L.M. and S. is abolished in Calcutta and the Panjāb, but retained in the meantime in Bombay and in Madras after a six years’ course.

Matriculation age in Madras and the Panjāb is fifteen.

_Quinquennial Review of Progress of Education in India_,
vol. ii. p. 65.

The question of the curriculum and of the nature of the studies required for the degree examinations has a very definite relation to the numerical problem stated above. Are these of a nature to attract increasing numbers? Are they sufficiently in accord with the Indian ideal of womanhood or with the aspirations of the reformers? The facts are worth analysis. From the first, the courses for men and women have been identical; no temporary expedient of a women’s examination such as the Cambridge Higher Local, and the St Andrews L.L.A., has been adopted by any of the Indian Universities; women must cover the same ground as men or none at all. The various courses in Bombay are indicated in the accompanying diagram. The range of subjects is somewhat similar to that of the University of London; for the B.A. examination, the average candidate presents himself in English, Philosophy, or History, and one Classical or Modern language. There is a corresponding scientific course, English remaining compulsory throughout. The Intermediate examination covers a wider range of subjects. The details differ in different Universities, but the standard on the whole is similar. Calcutta alone requires a compulsory essay in the vernacular for the B.A., and the emphasis laid on Sanskrit and Arabic is not the same as that laid on Latin and Greek in the Western Universities. The Panjāb University has a separate Oriental Course, for which as yet no woman has entered. The M.A. is given on the results of further examination, and, in some Universities, after a fresh course of study. The proportion of students who go through the whole course is small: for every seventeen who pass the Intermediate, only five become Bachelors of Arts, and only one a Master.[133] I have been unable to procure separate figures for women, but apparently the proportion is even less, and there are very few women who have obtained the degree of M.A. The examination system of the Universities has been subjected to severe criticism, both by enlightened Indians and by Europeans, the chief indictments being embodied in Lord Curzon’s Universities’ Commission Report of 1904, and we find tentative reforms in the subsequent Act. The “yattering” graduate who knows nothing and can decide nothing, but who can repeat yard after yard from any prescribed text-book, is the byword of those who wish to taunt India, and there is a germ of truth in the reproach. The effort to impart the highest Western culture through Indian teachers who have only partially assimilated it themselves, must prove to some extent unsatisfactory. Since the Public Service Commission in 1886, Indians have been admitted to the Educational Service in much larger numbers: for example, the Presidency College in Calcutta had in 1880 a complete staff of English professors and Oriental specialists; in 1911, only eight are English and twenty-three Indian, though in the meantime the number of pupils has increased from 350 to 700.[134] It is possible that here real efficiency has been sacrificed from the commendable motives of economy and a desire to utilize the Indians in their own Universities. To command a supply of the best men from home would involve a heavy financial strain, and yet, unless the Oriental, who can live on a smaller salary, has spent some years in Europe, he is hardly fitted to guide a University where the curriculum largely consists of Western subjects. It is interesting to find Mr Gokhale emphasizing the need of studying in a foreign University as a preliminary to professional work in India.[135] It is the presence of a fully equipped English staff (who are there for other reasons than the mere acquisition of a “living” wage) which forms the attractive force of a Mission college to the ambitious young Indian. The whole question is an exceedingly difficult one, and has been fully discussed recently by both Mr Chailley and Sir Valentine Chirol; it is raised here only in so far as it affects the women who study in mixed colleges. It should also be noted that there is no English lady on the staff of Bethune College, the only Government college for women. The feminine counterpart of the typical graduate indicated above is apparently his decided superior, for the Indian feminine virtues of modesty and reticence come to her aid, and she does not air her acquired knowledge. Still her knowledge is only acquired, not yet assimilated, and there is a lamentable lack of books in her study. The library at Bethune College is not utilized to the same extent as one in a corresponding English institution. Actual personal contact with some of the Indian students is a pathetic experience, as we are forced to realise how little real grit there is behind their text-book knowledge. They have gained no broad outlook on life: a tired brain has struggled through so many hours a day of lecture work and book work, and no energy is left for thought! Climatic and constitutional conditions account, to a certain extent, for this result; lack of hereditary culture to a still greater degree; but it is fostered largely by the conditions under which the girls have studied, and by the failure of Anglo-Saxon women to give them of their best. Where the women study apart in the additional classes of their former High schools they certainly receive individual attention, which results in creditable passes, and this is possibly the chief merit of a system which has little to be said for it from other points of view. The complete staff of the Isabella Thoburn College, the well-utilized library, and the reputation which its graduates have won throughout India, are facts which should be noted in this connexion. The Diocesan College is establishing a similar tradition.

There is another side to University life than the purely intellectual, namely, the human and personal. This, with all its varied manifestations in the common pursuit of sport or of music, in the discussion of social problems and of mental difficulties, or still more in the gentle art of doing nothing, lends the charm to college days and is perhaps the more dominant factor in after life. The influence of certain personalities, men or women, who can be trusted, who can look at life’s problems from the same point of view as their students, and are able to throw light on their difficulties with the ripeness of experience and to lead them to a new moral or religious outlook, is often in the long run more powerful than that of the actual literature studied. If the University or college fails as a school of character it has failed of its _raison d’être_. Precisely on this ground has the strongest indictment recently been made against the Indian system. “There has been no more deplorable feature in the recent political agitation than the active part taken in it by Indian schoolboys and students.”[136] A University course inevitably shakes the foundations of their thought, and in many cases has resulted in a revolt from all former moral or religious standards of conduct without providing a new basis for life. Under a stricter _régime_, with liberal grants and every possible encouragement of private hostels where religious instruction is possible, an effort is being made to combat this lack in the training of character. The case of women students presents certain parallel features, and also difficulties peculiarly its own.

The larger proportion of women students in Bombay in attendance at the mixed classes are living in their own homes; a few from the country are in residence at the Students’ Hostel of the Missionary Settlement for University Women,[137] where, though the majority are Christian, students of other faiths can be received under special arrangements. A Jain lady was at one time in residence there. This hostel is in close proximity to both the Wilson and the Grant Medical Colleges, and supplies a real need, but its residents so far have not been very numerous.

The women students of Bombay as a whole have no corporate life of their own; they may attend some of the joint debating societies and kindred meetings, but do not as a rule take part. Their common rooms offer rather a geographical _pied-à-terre_ than a means of social unity. As regards athletics, badminton is pursued in a somewhat spasmodic way in one college, and by invitation to the Principal’s house in another, but the question of exercise in relation to non-resident students is always a moot point in a tropical climate. Some attempt to develop social life is made by the women graduates from British or Colonial Universities who are in charge of the students’ hostel; they visit the common rooms of two of the colleges, and occasionally organize debates or kindred functions at the hostel, to which the residents may invite other students. The writer was present at one such debate on the question of educating men and women on similar lines, and the opinions expressed by some of the Indian girls are embodied in much of the foregoing. This influence is also of a religious nature, being in connexion with the Students’ Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and indirectly counts for much. It is, however, an extraneous one, and therefore many of the students, especially in the Government colleges, are beyond its reach. With their actual lecturers they can have, in the nature of the case, little or no personal contact, and the real need seems to be the introduction of women on the staff of these colleges, together with the tutorial system, which has proved itself so useful in mixed non-residential universities in Britain. The case is very strongly put by Mr Covernton, who was till recently Principal of the Elphinstone College.

“It is becoming a problem how to provide accommodation and adequate supervision for these girls. It is ridiculous to expect that young unmarried graduates, fresh from Oxford and Cambridge, can mould the minds and characters of Parsi, much less of Brahman girls; while the training of Eurasian girls is still more difficult. Moreover, the close association of male and female involved in a mixed education is so totally opposed to the traditions of the East, as well as so fraught with possibilities of evil, that in my opinion the system is rather a barrier than an encouragement to female education.--A special lecturer and tutor of female students should be appointed to the Elphinstone College. She should be a British graduate, and a member of the Indian Educational Service. Her subject should preferably be English, because it is very easy to get women well-qualified to teach that subject. She would take complete charge of the girls’ studies in that subject, and would in addition supervise their general reading, their games, and most important of all their manners and conduct.”[138] As regards conduct the general bearing and influence of these girls in the mixed colleges has been most creditable in very trying circumstances, but there is certainly a need to relax the evident tension of the position, which is little in accordance with Oriental ideas.

The condition of the women students in Madras who attend the mixed colleges is somewhat similar. There is an excellent hostel managed by the Students’ Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, where students of all faiths can reside, and former pupils of the mission schools can still remain in connexion with them. I understand that the same strain exists here, with the consequent lack of energy for any corporate life. An English woman graduate writes from Madras of the great need in South India of a first grade women’s college.

In Calcutta conditions are entirely different; there is a good hostel in connexion with the Bethune College, and the Christian girls who attend it are resident in their former schools. There are only a few non-residential students, but as the colleges attended by the Arts students are very small, the system assimilates to the tutorial, and there is ample opportunity for contact between student and lecturer. In the Bethune College, however, where the majority of teachers are men, the conflict with Oriental ideas arises again, and one is not surprised, apart from other reasons, at the absence of Moslem or orthodox Hindu girls. Here again it seems unfortunate that there is no corporate life or unity amongst the women students as a whole, or even in the Bethune hostel itself. In the latter it would depend entirely on Indian initiative, and though one would expect it to assume a different form from the customary Saxon one, its entire absence can only be accounted for by unfavourable conditions.

The corporate life of the Isabella Thoburn College has already been emphasized; a glance at the students’ _Lal Bagh Chronicle_ is enough to convince the reader of its reality, and of its characteristically Indian nature.

The case of the Indian woman medical student must be considered apart from the life of the Arts colleges. As a rule few women, except an occasional Parsi, pass from the one to the other, and there is little contact. It is unnecessary here to emphasize the need for every possible encouragement for Indian women to take up the practice of medicine. The sorrows and sufferings of Indian women behind the _parda_, who would rather face death than admit a male practitioner, are well known. If to some the statements made by missionary writers seem exaggerated, they have only to turn to the petition presented to the Viceroy in 1890 by the medical women practising in India to find evidence of the saddest facts. Indian medical students are divided broadly into two classes, those who study in one of the four Government colleges affiliated to one or other of the chief Universities, and those who study in the medical schools for a very much lower qualification.[139] Of the first class again some are genuine University students going up for the degrees indicated on page 204, while others are content merely with the college diploma which qualifies for practice in India. The medical schools, of which there are twenty-seven in different parts of India, are “intended primarily for the instruction of candidates for employment in Government Service as hospital assistants, but many of their pupils also go into private practice.”[140] They confer the title of sub-assistant-surgeon. A few women students are to be found in the former class: in 1907 it included thirty-four Indian women in all, and there has not been any marked increase in recent years. An even smaller number of these take the highest qualification. All that has been said of the strained life of the women Arts students applies even more strongly to the medicals. It is a very hard and difficult life, and there is little in the environment to lessen the burden. The statistics of the medical schools on the other hand show a larger figure, 138 in 1907, with a considerable increase in recent years. It is in these schools that the administrators of the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund,[141] which has done so much for the medical treatment of women, place most students, though some are also to be found studying in the Universities. Three of these schools are specially women’s schools--the North India Medical School for Christian Women at Ludhiana, the female branch of the Agra Medical School, and one centre in the Bombay Presidency with some half-dozen pupils. The work of the former, as it illustrates by contrast the serious problem of the mixed medical schools and colleges, is worthy of special notice. This school, which is under the management of a private committee, including members of the Indian Medical Service, was originally founded in 1894 through the agency of seven missionary societies working in the United Provinces and the Panjāb. Its aim was to secure “that the young Christian women who pass through a medical course, and then go out to Government or Native State or Mission Hospital work, should be so safeguarded and trained that they shall be worthy representatives of the religion they profess.”[142] The dangers of the joint-system of instruction in all subjects, with unlimited association in hospitals and museums, is apparent in every centre, with its consequent effect in some cases of bringing “female education and emancipation into discredit.” A letter of application to the Ludhiana School throws some light on prevalent conditions:--

“I require a Female Hospital Assistant for my Hospital, and am very anxious to get one who has been trained under Medical Women. As your School is the only one in India of this sort, would you be kind enough to let me have one? This is not a Mission Hospital but one for _parda_ Moslem women only, under the Dufferin Fund, and it is essential that the Assistant be respectable. (This I find rather difficult to get amongst the class trained under males.) It is perhaps against your rules to supply Dufferin Fund Hospitals, but I hope you will stretch a point and oblige me by letting me have one, as I have had a great deal of trouble for the past year with Assistants.”

The students of the Ludhiana School flock from all parts of India for the benefit of this tuition under qualified medical women. There are at present some twenty-seven Indian Christian students and five Eurasians, taking the four years’ course, while some thirty others are training as “compounders.” The linked women’s hospital,[143] with a record of 1300 in-patients and 26,000 new out-patients in 1910, affords the necessary opportunity for practice. The staff is drawn from India, Britain, and America, and consists of eight fully qualified medical women. The record of the school is one of slow and steady progress in efficiency and numbers, and the latest stage is the proposed affiliation to the Panjāb University, the negotiations for which are progressing favourably. Under these conditions the school would be able as a college to send students up for the M.B., B.S. examination, and the Government students would be transferred to it from Lahore. The hostel life of the students is under careful superintendence, and arrangements are being made for the accommodation of non-Christian students. The contrast between the life here and that of women medical students in Bombay or Calcutta is marked; and if it be argued that the highest professional ability cannot be obtained with so limited a hospital roll, there is surely need for modifying in some way the conditions at these centres. Two Government hostels for women medical students exist in Calcutta in close proximity to the two hospitals;[144] the question, however, concerns not only hostel life but professional training under circumstances which will not injure character. The complete separation in the London and Edinburgh Schools of Medicine for Women affords a striking contrast. A certain number of Indian students, perhaps one or two a term, come over for a full or supplementary course in British colleges, as this qualification secures a better post on return.

To sum up, the problem respecting Indian women students, in both Arts and Medicine, arises, apparently, from the need of a numerical increase, from the lack of conditions so adapted to Oriental ideas that the highest courses shall be open without difficulty to women of all ranks, and from the lack of a curriculum calculated to raise the standard of the intellectual work done. Moreover, mental training must be combined with such opportunities for the development of character as shall ensure to Indian women the leaders they require.

These needs interact, and affect one another; the numerical problem depends, as we have seen, on certain conditions of Indian society, and also on the attractive force of the education offered and its appeal to Indian ideas, as well as on the possibility of pursuing it under conditions which shall not be too utterly opposed to the tradition of the country. With the increase in the numbers receiving Secondary education there has not been a corresponding increase in the college courses. Mr Covernton, in the quotation given above, further emphasizes this, and points to the real need of Bombay, for which the appointment of a woman tutor would only be a temporary expedient. “If the conditions of University education were in accord with Oriental ideas of women’s functions, the number would go up by leaps and bounds. I am confident that the time is ripe for the creation in Bombay of a women’s college managed by a staff of Oxford or Cambridge women graduates.”[145] The spontaneous movement amongst Indian gentlemen to organize high-class schools, where, if desired, _parda_ can be kept, points to further possibilities. At present, if a Mohammedan or Hindu girl of high-caste, who had been educated in some such school, or privately, desired to take a University course, there would be no opportunity for her doing so. A Mohammedan lady, whose daughter was being educated in one of the mission schools in Bombay, told the writer she could not think of letting her attend any college in that city, though she was anxious for her to have University education. The only possible course was an English college, such as Cheltenham. The migration to England of Indian women Arts’ students has, so far, not been extensive; about a dozen have studied at Cambridge, Oxford, and Cheltenham; a larger number may have gone to America. The missionary societies which struck out a bold policy for attracting men by their great Christian colleges have not made any corresponding move to meet the new situation in women’s education. The one or two women’s colleges which exist are created so predominantly for Christian girls that they attract only isolated pupils of other faiths, and these not of the most influential classes.[146] It seems strange that in Great Britain the highest education for women should be to a certain extent apart, with the necessary contact carefully chaperoned, whereas in India, with a very different tradition of womanhood, one girl may sit alone in a class of over a hundred students. It may be argued that the best way to overcome this tradition is to ignore it, and that it should not be yielded to in any way, least of all in the case of Higher education, where the students have presumably risen above it. Some English women of experience in India take this bold attitude. On the other hand it is of the highest importance in any transitional stage to secure leaders from every stratum of the population; and if education be the only safe lever for the uplift of women in India, it seems a strategic mistake practically to close its highest stages to those whose families hold by a certain type of decorum which prohibits co-education.

By adaptation of the curriculum is not meant in any sense the lowering of the intellectual standard nor the introduction of the element of domestic economy and so-called “feminine subjects” which are necessary at a lower stage, but rather a re-arrangement of studies which shall ensure more individual research and a fuller comprehension of the material studied. The revision of the curriculum is at present under consideration in at least one of the Universities, and is a matter for experts. The action of the University of Cambridge in permitting women candidates to go up for Honours courses only, and the success which has attended women candidates for the Triposes, suggest the advantage of specialized studies in the case of women. Mrs Satthianadhan’s opinion of the effect of University education on women is illuminating. “It will make women more methodical, more orderly in their arrangements, more precise, and better able to weigh causes and results.”[147] A three years’ specialized course would tend in many ways to develop these qualities, and would possibly produce the new and more thorough type of teaching which is so greatly needed in the schools. The intellectual strain which is so marked a feature at present might in this way be lessened without detrimental effect upon real intellectual development.

Towards the end of last century, it seemed as if the goal of the women’s educational movement in Great Britain might be reached by the formation of a Women’s University with federal colleges. Various reasons have led rather to their taking a parallel place in the existing Universities, though still under somewhat anomalous conditions, so far as Oxford and Cambridge are concerned. The American solution is a different one. Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and others have their separate degrees and completely separated life. It is possible that the solution of the Indian problem will rather follow these latter lines, and there are indications of this ideal, somewhat nebulously outlined, in the writings of leading Indian women. Such a Women’s University with affiliated colleges in the different large centres might establish a new era and a new tradition in the education of women. A competent staff of Indian women graduates, whose presence would secure the students from deorientalizing influences, and of English women graduates competent to teach on specialized lines, would raise the educational standard. The complete separation of such colleges from the High schools would render a corporate life possible, and give to the Indian girl graduates the opportunity of carrying on their studies in congenial and stimulating surroundings. “To them, too, college life might bring that joyous spring-time of youth, friendship, and unfettered delight of study and leisure which have hitherto been withheld from them.”[148] The Maharani of Baroda notes in her recent book[149] the tendency of women’s education in Europe to take a too exclusively literary form, and the consequent overcrowding of certain professions. While there is no danger that the teaching profession will be overcrowded in India for decades to come, the warning is not without its value. Such a University might have affiliated with it colleges of Indian Domestic Science and Economy, but the theory for this has yet to be worked out.

It may seem to some readers, especially to those rightly imbued with the Eastern principle of _festina lente_, that the day for women’s colleges in India has not yet come, and that all available strength should be concentrated on Secondary education; and yet, on the other hand, the crux of the whole educational problem may be found here. Miss Emily Davies, who by universal consent stands as the chief pioneer of the movement in Britain, realized from the first that the reform in girls’ education must begin at the top. The same principle is seen in the history of Cheltenham Ladies College (founded 1853), and the early efforts of Miss Beale to face the same problem of the need of teachers, which is felt in every Indian school to-day. “Her efforts show how hard it was to found a school before the reformation of the higher education had given the necessary stimulus from above. It was a case of making bricks without straw.”[150] The proximity of certain dates is suggestive. In 1869, the “Girton Pioneers” first met at Hitchin to read for the examinations of the University of Cambridge. In 1872, the Girls’ Public Day School Company was founded, and in 1879 the Oxford Women’s Halls were opened. The two movements are of necessity contemporaneous, and cannot be viewed as successive stages towards the same end.

The beginning exists in India; much excellent pioneer work has been done, and it now remains to raise the whole movement to a status from which its future development on Indian and womanly lines would be assured.