3 Review(s)

About The Book : It has been well said that no Western should attempt to make any general statement about inscrutable India; the most he can venture to say is, that "in certain places certain things which he saw may possibly have been what he thought they really were." The present volume is therefore based upon appearances which may or may not have represented reality, upon conversations with Government officials, missionaries and Indian friends, who kindly gave of their leisure to a stranger, and upon the study of Government Reports. Where any generalization has been made, the writer trusts it will be taken with the reservations which a very brief residence in the East renders needful. About The Author : Minna Galbraith Cowan OBE (1878–1951) was a British political activist. Cowan was born on 1 May 1878 in Paisley, Renfrewshire to Williamina Galbraith and Hugh Cowan, a sheriff. She was educated in Hendon and Glasgow, going on to study at Girton College, Cambridge, before completing a social science diploma at the University of Edinburgh. She sat on numerous committees, and in 1914 visited India to study the conditions of women there, writing The Education of the Women of India to relay her conclusions. During World War I, Cowan served in the Women's Royal Naval Service, while also sitting on Edinburgh School Board. In 1919, she became the first convener of the city's new education authority, in which role she introduced limited free school meals and play centres to occupy children out of school hours, and reduced the maximum class sizes to fifty pupils. Four years later, she moved to the city's higher education committee, with responsibility for secondary schools, and in 1930 to its overarching education committee.