AFTER MOTHER INDIA

licly to open, examine, and ventilate the subject ol
child marriage, for the education of public opinion,

To this end, as we have seen, it appointed an Age ol
Consent Committee, under the chairmanship of Sii
Moropant Joshi, to take evidence all over British India.
When this fact became public property, the Simla
correspondent of Mrs. Besant's paper, New India, re-
marked:

It may be mentioned that rarely has an an-
nouncement of the Government found such a
ready echo in the columns of the world press as
this announcement of Mr. Crerar. The reason is
that the publication of Mother India has directed
the western world's attention to the social ills in
India.1

Yet the elected members of the Legislative Assembly
refused the necessary appropriation for this committee
to carry out its work of investigation. Here is the
Manchester Guardian's report :

The Standing Finance Committee of the Legis-
lative Assembly has rejected entirely the^ appli-
cation of one lakh of rupees for the expenses of
the Committee to investigate the question of £h^>
age of consent in India on the ground that the
explanation of Mr. Haig, Secretary Home Depart-
ment, is unsatisfactory on the point why members
of the Central Legislature should be excluded
from membership of the Committee.2

As the London Times observed when the personnel

1 Quoted in the Bombay Daily Mail, May i6th, 1928.

2 September 4th, 1928.

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