Hostel, Bombay]
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.
Patients]
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.