A Possibility of Freedom

"For a woman," says an old Hindu maxim, "there is no god on earth other than her man." The most extreme form of this belief was the custom dictating that the widow fling herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Enlightened British rule put a legal end to the practice of suttee (widow suicide), but the widow's lot has remained a poor one. Under Hindu laws, widows are not permitted to wear jewelry, bright clothing, makeup. They cannot attend wedding or birthday celebrations. Under strict laws of inheritance dating back 3,000 years, a Hindu's property is strictly entailed, passing from father to son over the generations and bypassing the women entirely. If a Hindu widow's son or grandson proves ungenerous, she has no recourse but to beg on the streets. In the rare case when a man willed to his widow some small piece of private, uninherited property, she was allowed to spend it only for "legal necessities," i.e., a holy pilgrimage or a funeral for her husband.

In 1937 the Hindus themselves passed a law permitting a widow to live on in her late husband's house, though not to sell it. In 1949 Prime Minister Nehru sponsored a bill calling for vast and sweeping reforms of the whole Hindu social code, but the bill was too sweeping to get by. Since then Nehru has been picking away at his reforms piecemeal. Last year he eased the lot of India's wives in a reformed marriage act. Last week he introduced a Hindu inheritance act designed to give wives, widows and daughters the right to inherit family property and to dispose of it in any way they like.

The new bill, cried Hindu diehards, marks "the end of India's family system and the beginning of female rule," to which, from his seat, Nehru harrumphed: "Thinking fit for an anthropological museum." Smiling broadly at the 20 women M.P.s in India's lower House of the People, Nehru declared, "The new womanhood of India, which is growing up with all its petty faults and superficialities, is something which gives me hope for the future. I believe that if any great advances are coming to India, they will come largely through the women of India."

After 40 hours of bitter debate, the new bill passed the House unanimously. "What we now have." said Nehru's own parliamentary secretary, Mrs. Lakshmi N. Menon, speaking as a woman, "is a possibility of freedom."

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