The High Caste Hindu Woman

The High Caste Hindu Woman by Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati

What is right is that the ‘silence of a thousand years’ was broken with the writing of this book, The High-Caste Hindu Woman in 1888. Originally written in Marathi, it was translated into English and sold in America. Profits from it were used to help destitute women in India. Before the book was published very few in America were aware of what conditions for women were like in India – though the knowledge was of course available in England.

THE silence of a thousand years has been broken, and the reader of this unpretending little volume catches the first utterances of the unfamiliar voice. Throbbing with woe, they are revealed in the following pages to intelligent, educated, happy American women.
God grant that these women, whom He has blessed above all women upon the earth, may not flippantly turn away, as they are wont to do from some overpious tale, and without reading, condemn! To begin this story of The High-caste Hindu Woman, and not to read it through attentively to the last word of the agonized appeal, is to invoke upon oneself the divine displeasure meted out to those who disregard the cry of “him that had none to help him”. These lines are written with deep emotion; the blinding tears which fall upon the page are the saddest tears my eyes have ever wept.