There was not a universal favourable attitude conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. Rebel women defied such prohibition. A Muslim girl in north India defied her family and secretly learnt to read and write Urdu. Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very orthodox family, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later she published her autobiography in Bengali language. A few Bengali women like Kailash Bashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women. In the 1860s, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai of Maharashtra wrote about the miserable lives of upper caste women. Women writing in Tamil expressed their gratitute to books. The attitude in general was to keep women imprismed at home, ignorant, forced to do hard domestic work and subject to unfair treatment. In Punjab, folk literature exorted women to be obedient wives (Ram Chaddha’s Istri Dharm Vichar.) The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with the same message. In Bengal,– an entire are in Central Calcutta – the Battala – was devoted to printing popular books. They were cheap editions of religions texts, scriptures as well as scandalous literature.Women’s education was not encouraged by the majority as Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain reported in her address to Bengal Women’s Educated Conference.