Kandukuri Veeresalingam: Women's Education [February 1875]

Kandukuri Veeresalingam (1848–1919) was a champion of women’s reform who strongly argued against child marriage and bride price and advocated widow remarriage and liberation for women. One of his strongest arguments is in favour of education for women. This essay, titled “Stri Vidya” in Telugu, discusses the need to educate women. According to him, there are instances of women getting educated in the past as well, especially women from socially respectable families. The author invokes examples from history and the contemporary times of educated women to argue for the importance of education for women. Education, according to him, will not only make women wise like men but also help them in making better homes and bringing up children better. He argues that the educated will automatically be wise and coexistent, while the uneducated women will be less intelligent than men, like men from marginalised communities are less intelligent than men from privileged communities. He dismisses the argument that education will lead to moral corruption of women. He strongly argues that education will in fact make women mature and moral as adultery is found mostly among the uneducated people but not the educated people. He states that education is not only for employment and earning of money but for knowledge and intelligence.