THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

After that the new female teacher gave a speech about the need to send
both boys girls to school, and to let them study up to class 10.
She pointed out the inequities in people's at t f tudes regarding the free
movement of girls compared to boys.
Sharada gave a particularly imaginative speech. She made everyone
get up to introdr~ce themselves, a brave move as some of the women were
painfully shy. She then spoke of how badly men treated their wives,
demonstrating a typical conversation with the I-' form (the low-grade
personal pronoun also used when addressing little children and animals).
Some women from Tellok arrived late, slipping apologetically onto some
spare benches, and she argued that they were late because they had had
to cook and do all the housework. If a wife died, she said, everyone
treated the man very sympathetically, but if a husband died, the woman
was placed in a terrible position, although she should really be allowed
to marry again or secure help from her daughters.
Other speakers brought up attitudes to daughters: ten years before,
a daughter had been regarded as a wizard's curse, according to one, and
to that day, if a woman bore only girls, it was sufficient excuse for a
man to marry again, In her speech Kamala brought up the question of why
women were not allowed to plough. The headmaster asked what the oid
organizations of the pancgvat system had achieved. He said the position
of women was the fault of Hindl~ culture (sa-skri t i ko dos. ) . Tamara and
I were rather embarrassingly brought up as an example of how things can
work in another cl~iture - she had her PhD, I did not. I was impressed
by how much people seemed to be iistening more carefully to what was
said than at meetings of old, and by the appiause which broke out when
people agreed with something a speaker said.