READING COMREHENSION PASSAGE (CLASS 11 AND 12)UNLIT LAMPS OF INDIA

SOLVED WORKSHEET 10 

UNLIT LAMPS OF INDIA

SOURCE – SAROJINI’S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

Mrs. Sarojini Naidu replying to the address of the people of Guntur in the A.E.L.M. College hall in July 1915 said-

1. I can hardly tell you how deeply honoured I am today by the heart felt and truly fraternal, welcome you have accorded to me. I have learnt to feel that this generous and spontaneous welcome that awaits me wherever I go is not at all a personal tribute but stands as a symbol of what the woman-hood of India represents when the men of India give them the same chances as I have had. Go to Bengal and there you see the women with their great spiritual ideals are like water in their ponds. Go to Bombay or to any other part of India, do you think there is a single house where it does survive in the riche’s vitality, all those living ideals that make the names of the woman of our country and literature so immortal. There is not a single home in the length and the breadth of India, no matter rich or poor where womanhood is not as great today as in the day of Sita and Savitri, greater perhaps in potential powers because we have gathered a great deal world experience of high civilization and growing responsibility. 

2. The whole world- spirit is richer by so many centuries of experience. It is your duty which you have not recognized to fulfill the task of giving the women those very opportunities which you, yourselves had, which are necessary for their equipment to fully realize all these hidden virtues that lie within their souls. The power of Rome has been quenched. That is because the underlying conditions animating their ideals and their civilizations were not of the spiritual. All their greatness died and became merely historic memories things that we try to reconstruct from a broken stone in a foreign museum.

3. But believe me when I saw that those who kept alive that fire, are not the men who go to earn money, the men who become a little blurred as it were in the clearness of vision of mere existence but rather it is their spiritual entity that they kept at home, that spiritual comradeship that stands at home and tends the family fire.

4. And therefore, it is to them that you must give the opportunity of equipping themselves capable of realizing their higher ideals and then it will certainly be never said that our woman are backward. They are backward because they have not the lamps to light , not to flame to kindle because you will not give them what is called the daily oil the opportunity that brings the flame to the lamp. There are many little books with beautiful titles. But I do not know of any that is more symbolic than the “seven lamps of Architecture of Ruskin” But have seven hundred thousand Lamps in the architecture unlighted because you have refused to give them the things that kindle the flame. If the ‘seven lamps of Architecture’ illumine the whole civilization of the west, friends think of the dazzling illumination that shall light the whole world with a conflagration and radiance that cannot be quenched when the 7,00,000 lamps in our national structure are lit for the glory of lamp of clay. But there are thousands of lamps of gold hidden away for want of opportunity.

5. Instead of thanking you for this I should reproach you for being content with lamps of clay when there are lamps of gold. Let me beseech you not to be content with such small ideals as are represented by any successes that I may have achieved. India will not be great with her ancient greatness. It is only in your hands to give the illumination and it is only by that illumination that we can wake up our sleeping mother.

BASED ON THE PASSAGE ABOVE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS :

1. How does Sarojini Naidu compare Indian woman with Sita and Savitri?
2. In para2 she says’ It is your duty’ whose duty she refers to?
3. ‘The power of Rome has been quenched.’ Why does she say so?
4. How does Sarojini Naidu visualize woman at home?
5. What does she plead all men to do?
6. What is the final message she give to the audience?

ANSWERS

1. Sarojini Naidu says that all Indian woman are as great as Sita and Savitri. She says that greater perhaps in potential powers because we have gathered a great deal of world experience of high civilization and growing responsibility.

2. She says that it is the duty of men who should give equal opportunities to woman to realize their potential talents and grow in life contributing to our country.

3. She considers Rome to be a male dominated society and she refers to the fall of Roman Empire and it exist only in history.

4. She visualizes woman as a spiritual entity of every man, that spiritual comradeship that stands at home and tends the family fire.

5. She pleads all men to give the right opportunity to woman in every Indian household to realize their ideals and insists men to encourage and support women to live up to their full potentials.

6. She says that Instead of thanking them rather she must reproach them or being content with lamps of clay when there are lamps of gold.