IDEALS OF EDUCATION.
At a public meeting held at the Congress pavilion in Dec. 1908, at Madras, under the auspices of the Pachaiyappa’s College Historical Association, the Hon. Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya delivered an address on the above subject. Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who next spoke, said:
She was painfully touched with the condition of girls in this country. Women, as they did in other advanced countries, formed a most potent factor in the political evolution of a country. She deplored the fact that while men were educated and were keeping abreast with the advance of the world, imbibing new thought and new sentiments, women were lagging behind and were incapacitated to be true companions of their husbands, so that they might have their own voice heard in the family as well as in the community. How could a well-built edifice with beautiful apartments appear beautiful if almost the very foundation was shaking. In the building of a Nation, the development of a signal sense of patriotism among them was the most cardinal virtue they had to cherish if their country should form a potent factor in the comity of the nations of the world. Selfishness and self-seeking was the bane of the community.
If they would sincerely ameliorate their fallen condition, the first thing they had to do was to root out self-seeking. Each individual had to merge himself in the community, the community in the collective whole of the country. Not till then, all this clamour could subside. If each one was prompted by that high sense of duty to the country and should feel that he is an Indian and not a Brahmin or a Mahomedan, individually, that would be the right step they would have taken in the right path. Unless and until they raise the fallen condition of women in this country and make their voice heard, India’s salvation was only a distant dream.