"No clean clothes are provided for use in the confinement, and no hot water. Fresh cow-dung or goats' droppings, or hot ashes, however, often serve as heating agents when the patient's body begins to turn cold."
The striking tone of "Mother India" and especially in the selection above is that childbirth is seen as something deserving few valuable resources. Raising a child takes an incredible amount of energy, and seeing that the infant mortality rate is so high in some Indian societies, it makes sense that people would not be investing many "expensive" resources into in child bearing. A child, anyhow, should be strong and strong enough to serve their fathers. As the introduction goes, "Men must have sons to serve their souls." The question remains: Why are dung and ashes, literally the refuse of the society, used in childbirth? Are Hindu mothers demanding to be taken to India's modern hospitals to give birth? The answer is no. The author of the passage tells the reader that few women could be "induced to use a hospital, were it at their very door."
Hindu traditions say that a woman in childbirth is unclean. There can only be one explanation for this - a loss of energy is occurring from the mother. All of the energy and resources inputted into the mother over the past nine months have been transformed into another living being, and for this the mother is very tired. By the time the mother has completed giving birth, she is utterly depleted of energy. For a healthy person to get too close to the mother will mean that his or her energy may be at risk. The Dhai are the lowest class, and so they serve as the midwives because no one cares if the unclean and unhealthy energies afflict them. It makes sense that the Dhai are often old women because they are less likely to become jealous of the mothers.
The entire issue becomes more clear when one considers the fact that having a child in an agricultural or hunte...