ABSTRACT
In this chapter I propose to give some of Mahatma Gandhi’s most distinctive utterances with regard to the rights of women in India. I f there is a disproportion in what follows with regard to the evils which have come to India in the towns through the results of immorality, the reason for this is that Mahatma Gandhi more than anyone else in modern times has been the one heroic and chivalrous personality who, like Josephine Butler in England, has dwelt fearlessly and directly with this painful and difficult subject. It must not be thought that this social evil is more widespread in India than in other countries. Probably it is far less wide in actual extent because the main population of India, numbering 90 per cent, in all, is a village population where this social evil has hardly yet penetrated. The towns of India, numbering only 10 per cent, of the population, have, it is true, this form of immorality accentuated; but modern India through its greatest leaders is determined to deal directly with it; and the social life of India itself, if the present moral enthusiasm continues, is likely io witness a great advance in social and moral hygiene. Neverthe less, the actual condition of such great modern cities as Calcutta and Bombay is a blot on civilization in this respect, and the evil there has gone so deep that it will require the greatest courage and spiritual strength to deal with it effectively.
