Women of India

We have great pleasure in presenting to the discerning readers this symposium on the women of India by Swami Vivekananda.

On January 18, 1900 Swamiji spoke at the Shakespeare Club Home, in Pasadena, California. Some members of the audience wanted to know about the position of women in India, and Swamiji gladly responded with the lecture marked in this book as 'Women of India II'. We published this speech in a booklet headed 'Women of India'. This booklet has undergone the several impressions.

In this edition a few more lectures and interviews on the same subject are added. Swamiji spoke on the same subject in Cambridge on 17 December 1894 and we have presented this lecture as 'Women of India I' in this book. Swamiji also referred to the stature and glory of Indian women on a number of other occasions and we have presented those passages also in six more sub-sections.

Swamiji was very positive that India can shine with her pristine glory only when the women of our land are given good education to enable to handle modern problems, without discarding our precious heritage. Empowerment of women is a pressing necessity but it bristles with many thorny problems. The best solution to this dilemma is to imbibe the principles masterfully presented by Swamiji in these pages.

The ideas contained in this nosegay are highly relevant to us today and put into sincere practice will enable India to successfully lead the comity of nation once again.