WOMEN OF INDIA-8.

SRI SARADA DEVI

(Delivered at the Shakespeare Club House, in Pasadena, California, on January 18, 1900)

 For Recap -Read Part-1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6 and 7.

THE LECTURE :- Part-8.

I belong to an Order very much like what you have in the Mendicant Friars of the Catholic Church; that is to say, we have to go about without very much in the way of dress and beg from door to door, live thereby, preach to people when they want it, sleep where we can get a place — that way we have to follow.

And the rule is that the members of this Order have to call every woman "mother"; to every woman and little girl we have to say "mother"; that is the custom.
Coming to the West, that old habit remained and I would say to ladies, "Yes, mother", and they are horrified.

I could not understand why they should be horrified.

Later on, I discovered the reason: because that would mean that they are old.

The ideal of womanhood in India is motherhood — that marvellous, unselfish, all-suffering, ever-forgiving mother.

The wife walks behind-the shadow.

She must imitate the life of the mother; that is her duty.

But the mother is the ideal of love; she rules the family, she possesses the family.

It is the father in India who thrashes the child and spanks when there is something done by the child, and always the mother puts herself between the father and the child.

You see it is just the opposite here.

It has become the mother's business to spank the children in this country, and poor father comes in between.

You see, ideals are different.

I do not mean this as any criticism.

It is all good — this what you do; but our way is what we have been taught for ages.

You never hear of a mother cursing the child; she is forgiving, always forgiving.

Instead of "Our Father in Heaven", we say "Mother" all the time; that idea and that word are ever associated in the Hindu mind with Infinite Love, the mother's love being the nearest approach to God's love in this mortal world of ours.

"Mother, O Mother, be merciful; I am wicked! Many children have been wicked, but there never was a wicked mother" — so says the great saint Râmprasâd.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued