136 WOMEN AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE
bidis are sold every month in the town of Chittagong (population
of the town 36,030 and of the district 1,611,422) ! I
"5. Should not all municipalities and local boards try their
utmost to suppress drinking and brothels and should not these
bodies exert their utmost to maintain a propaganda to eradicate
these social evils ? "
This letter was handed to me at Chittagong and has
been in my jacket awaiting attention at the first oppor-
tunity. The reader is aware how the attempt to wean the
fallen sisters from their error has apparently resulted in
giving a passport to vice. Prostitution, I knew, was a tre-
mendous and a growing evil. The tendency to see virtue
in vice, and excuse evil in the sacred name of art or some
other false sentiment has clothed this debasing indulgence
with a kind of subtle respectability which is responsible
for the moral leprosy which he who runs may see. But
I was unprepared for the terrible state the correspondent
declares to exist. I fear that he has not exaggerated the
evil. For, during my tour, I have had corroboration from
various sources. Great as the evil is in this age of unbelief
or a mere mechanical belief in God and an age of multi-
plicity of comforts and luxuries, almost reminding one of
the degradation to which Rome had descended when she
was apparently at the zenith of her power, it is not easy
to prescribe a remedy. It cannot be remedied by law.
London is seething with the vice. Paris is notorious for
its vice which has almost become a fashion. If law would
have prevented it,, these highly organized nations would
have cured their capitals of the vice. No amount of writing
on the part of reformers like myself can deal with the
evil in any appreciable form. The political domination of
England is bad enough. The cultural is infinitely worse. For
whilst we resent and therefore endeavour to resist the
political domination, we hug the cultural, not realizing in
bur infatuation that when the cultural domination is com-
plete the political will defy resistance. Let me not be
misunderstood. I do not wish to imply that before the
British rule prostitution was unknown in India. But I do
say that it was not so rampant as now. It was confined