Besant, Annie Wood: Wake up, India: a plea for social reform (Adyar, India , Krotona [i.e. Los Angeles], 1913)

CHILD-MARRIAGE AND ITS RESULTS

The meeting of October 17th was presided over
by the Hon. Dewan Bahadur Justice T. Sadasiva
Aiyar, Judge of the High Court, Madras ; the learned
Judge said :

Ladies and Gentlemen :

I have been a social Reformer from when I came
to Madras to appear for my degree Examination.
That was very long ago, when I was only seventeen
years old. I at once fell under the influence of that
great and genuinely religious man, the late Dewan
Bahadur R. Raghunatha Rao. There were some
intellectual giants in those days among Madrasis,
like Raghunatha Rao, Chentsal Rao of the Revenue
Board, Ranganatha Sastri of the Small Cause Court,
and others who took great interest in Social Reform.

The lecturer will very fully go into the question of
the evils of child-marriage viewed from the physio-
logical, educational, national, worldly and religious
standpoints, and from the standpoint of rational
morality also, and will very completely establish that
its evils have become so far-reaching that it should be