he females
actually outnumber the males. Why are the Indian figures so different?
Pro-Hindu enthusiasts may glorify the Hindu social system, and wish to
deny the social inferiority of the female sex; average Anglo-Indians may
be suspected of being unsympathetic in their statements; but the Census
figures stand, and demand an explanation. Where are these 37 girls and
women out of every 1000--over five million altogether? Common humanity
demands an answer of India, for we seem to hear a bitter cry of India's
womanhood. As infants, less cared for; as girls, less educated; married
too early; ignorantly tended in their hour; as married ladies, shut out
of the world; always more victimised by ignorance and superstition--in
life's race, India's women carry a heavy handicap, and 37 out of every
1000 actually succumb.

In the matter of the social elevation of their sex, it appears to the
writer that Anglo-Indian ladies fall far short of what they might do. A
fair number do interest themselves in their Indian sisters through the
lady missionaries and lady doctors, but first-hand knowledge of the
lives of Indian women is very rare indeed. Our late revered Queen's
interest in India and in the womanhood of India is well known, but her
feeling about the duty of Anglo-Indian ladies I have never seen
recorded. Speaking at Balmoral to an Indian Christian lady, a member of
one of the royal families of India--the only lady perhaps who ever
conversed in Hindustani with Queen Victoria--she expressed her regret
that more Anglo-Indian ladies did not get up the native language,
sufficiently at least to let them visit their Indian sisters. Than
Christian sisterly sympathy thus expressed, what better link also could
there be between two communities which many things seem to be forcing
apart?

[Sidenote: Suttee and female infanticide.]

It would be unjust to depreciate the influence of mother and wife among
Hindus, and we freely acknowledge that, after custom, the mainstay of
the zenana system is concern for the purity of the female members of the
household. Saying that, we must now also note that modern ideas of the
just rights of the female sex have made little progress in India. Some
progress there has been, judging by the standard already applied; for
although in 1901 there were only 963 females to every 1000 males, in the
year 1891 there were only 958, and in the year 1881 still fewer, namely,
954. But it seems as if in India we had justi