LONDON: Miss Pamela Hankson, who recently returned from the United States where she addressed a large number of organisations on the social aspects of life in India, has contributed a lengthy article on some American misconceptions regarding India.

American comment, she writes, concentrates mainly on the Indian political angle and thus largely ignores India’s most urgent problems and — particularly strangely in that most feminist country — the problem of treatment of Indian women which is India’s greatest living problem.

The belief that sex and caste distinctions are largely passing is stimulated by the presence in America, only naturally, of those Indians who have abjured such customs. Little is known of Government attempts at reform and fierce internal opposition to these, from Suttee abolition to various child marriage acts. And while America has her own immense racial, social and economic problems, as each country has problems, to one school of American opinion the millennium is to be achieved in India by one-stroke removal of British power.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2020