• 10 WOMEN AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE
fault. -It is the; whole of our educational system that is
rotten. Again it is not this custom or that which needs
condemnation, it is the inertia which refuses to move even
in the face of an admitted evil that needs to be removed.
And lastly, the condemnation is true only of the middle
class, the town-dwellers, i.e. barely 15 per cent of the vast
millions of India. The masses living in the villages have no
child marriage and no prohibition against widow re-
marriage. It is true that they have other evils which impede
their growth. Inertia is common to both. What is, however,
necessary is to overhaul the educational system and to devise
one in terms of the masses. No system will be even passable
that does not lay stress on adult education equally with
that of children. Moreover, no system will touch even the
fringe of the question that does not give the vernaculars
their natural place of supremacy. This work can only be
done through the existing educated class such as it is.
Before, therefore, reform on a large scale takes place, the
mentality of the educated class has to undergo transfer-
mation. And may I suggest to Dr. Muthulakshmi that the
few educated women we have in India will have to descend
from their Western heights and come down to India's
plains ? Men are undoubtedly to blame for their neglect,
nay their ill use of women, and they have to do adequate
penance ; but those women who have shed superstition and
have become conscious of the wrong have to do the con-
structive work of reform. These questions of liberation of
women, liberation of India, removal of untouchability,
amelioration of the economic condition of the masses and
the like resolve themselves into penetration into the vil-
lages, and reconstruction or rather reformation of village
life. :••• ••-
'Young India, 23-5-'29