At the last census only eight per thousand women could read and write; and in the whole of India only about half a million girls, or four out of every 100 of a school-going age,--even on the basis of a four years' course, are receiving any kind of education.
Of such as do go to school nine out of ten only go to primary schools.
Mr.Gokhale himself has abandoned the idea of making primary education compulsory for girls as well as for boys.

Female education is just one of the questions upon which Indian opinion must be left to ripen, Government giving, in proportion as it ripens, such assistance as can be legitimately expected.

It has long engaged the attention of enlightened Indians, and in some communities, especially amongst the Aryas of the Punjab, some headway is being made.

The Parsees, of course, as in all educational and philanthropic developments, have always been in the van.

With the growth of Western education the Indian woman of the higher classes cannot indefinitely lag behind, and, if only to make their daughters more eligible for marriage, the most conservative Indian parents will be compelled to educate them, as some have already done, so that they shall not be separated from their male partners by an unfathomable gulf of intellectual inferiority.