General Features of Socio-Culture Reform Movement

• Enlightened vision, process of reawakening, sometimes, but not with full justification, defined as the ‘Renaissance’,

Impact of British Rule

• British Rule widely different from what India.
• Early invaders, either absorbed by its superior culture or interacted positively but British conquest was different.

1. Social Conditions Ripe for Reform
• Religious and Social Ills
• Religious superstitions and social obscurantism, Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their position, monopoly of scriptural knowledge.
• There was nothing that religious ideology could not persuade people to do.
• Depressing Position of Women
• Most distressing was the position of women - kill female infants at birth, Child marriage, practice of polygamy prevailed & old men took very young girls as wives, Sati (Rammohan Roy described as a “murder according to every shastra”)
• The Caste Problem
• Modern times it became a major obstacle in the growth of a united national feeling and the spread of democracy
2. Opposition to Western Culture
3. New Awareness among Enlightened Indians

Social and Ideological Bases of Reform

Middle Class Base

• Newly emerging middle class and the educated growing awareness of contemporary developments in the West.
• Transformation from medieval to modern times by movements like the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and democratic revolution or reform

The Intellectual Criteria

• Evaluated truth in any religion by the criteria of logic, reason or science.
• Evident in putting forward an alternative to prevalent social practices.
• Akshay Kumar Dutta - medical opinion to support his views against child marriage.
• Raja Rammohan Roy - defended the basic and universal principles of all religions—such as the monotheism of the Vedas and unitarianism of Christianity, Attacking polytheism of Hinduism and trinitarianism of Christianity.
• Religious reformation was an important but not the exclusive concern of these movements.
• evolution of an alternative cultural-ideological system and the regeneration of traditional institutions were two concerns of these movements.
• Reconstruct traditional knowledge, the use and development of vernacular languages, creation of an alternative system of education, defence of religion, efforts to regenerate Indian art and literature, the emphasis on Indian dress and food, attempts to revitalise the Indian systems of medicine and to research the pre-colonial technology for its potential.

Two Streams

1. Reformist movements - Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Aligarh Movement, and the revivalist movements like Arya Samaj and the Deoband movemen
2. Reformist as well as the revivalist movement.

• Only difference between, lay in the degree.

Direction of Social Reform

• Newly educated middle class influenced the field of social reform in a major way.
• social reform movements were linked to the religious reforms primarily because nearly all social ills like untouchability and gender-based inequity derived legitimacy from religion in one way or the other.
• Later, social reform movement gradually dissociated itself from religion and adopted a secular approach.
• Early narrow social base, upper and middle classes and upper castes. Later, penetrated the lower strata.
• Organisations - Social Conference, Servants of India Society & Christian missionaries.
• Individual - Jyotiba Phule, Gopalhari Deshmukh, K.T. Telang, B.M. Malabari, D.K. Karve, Sri Narayana Guru, E.V. Ramaswami Naicker and B.R. Ambedkar.
• Indian languages to propagate, used a variety of Media—novels, dramas, poetry, short stories, the press and, in the 1930s and later on, the cinema—to spread their opinions.
• Fight for the betterment of status of women in society & fight to remove disabilities arising out of untouchability.

Fight for Betterment of Position of Women

• Women from low status inferior adjuncts to men. Education was generally denied.
• Supressed by purdah, early marriage, ban on widow-marriage, sati, etc.
• Divorce has no equality, Polygamy was prevalent among Hindus as well as Muslims.
• Glorification as wives and mothers, Only in which society recognised.
• Social reform movements, the freedom struggle, movements led by enlightened women. Later, free India’s Constitution have done much.
• Reformers basically appealed to the doctrines of individualism and equality, and argued, to bolster their appeal, that true religion did not sanction an inferior status to women.
• Raised their voice against - polygamy, purdah, child marriage, restrictions on widow marriage, and worked relentlessly to establish educational facilities for women, to persuade the government to enact favourable legislations for women and in general to propagate the uselessness of medieval, feudal attitudes which required to be given up.

Steps taken to Ameliorate Women’s Position

1. Abolition of Sati - reformers led by Raja Rammohan Roy. The regulation of 1829.
2. Preventing Female Infanticide - common practice among upper class Bengalis and Rajputs. Bengal regulations of 1795 and 1804 declared infanticide illegal and equivalent to murder. Act passed in 1870 made it compulsory for parents to register the birth of all babies and provided for verification of female children for some years after birth.
3. Widow Remarriage - Brahmo Samaj & mainly due to the efforts of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-91). Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act, 1856. Vidyasagar cited Vedic texts to prove that the Hindu religion sanctioned widow remarriage.
4. Jagannath Shankar Seth & Bhau Daji - active promoters of girls’ schools in Maharashtra
5. Vishnu Shastri Pandit - Widow Remarriage Association in the 1850s.
6. Karsondas Mulji - Satya Prakash in Gujarati in 1852 to advocate widow remarriage.
7. D.K. Karve - became the secretary of the Widow Remarriage Association. Karve himself married a widow in 1893. widows’ home in Poona with facilities for vocational training.
8. Advocated by B.M.Malabari, Narmad (Narmadashankar Labhshankar Dave), Justice Govind Mahadeo Ranade and K. Natarajan among others - Right of widows to remarriage.
9. Controlling Child Marriage - Native Marriage Act (or Civil Marriage Act), 1872
• Not applicable to Hindus, Muslims and other recognised faiths.
• Consent Act (1891) - Marriage age 12.
• Sarda Act (1930) - Marriage age 18 and 14 for boys and girls.
• Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act, 1978 - Marriage age 21 and 18 for boys and girls.
10. Education of Women
• Christian missionaries set up Calcutta Female Juvenile Society in 1819.
• Bethune School by J.E.D. Bethune, powerful movement for women’s education that arose in the 1840s and 1850s.
• Charles Wood’s - Women’s Medical Service in 1914.
• Indian Women’s University by Professor D.K. Karve in 1916.
• Lady Hardinge Medical College was opened in Delhi.
• All India Women’s Conference (established in 1927)
• Sarojini Naidu - president of the Indian National Congress (1925). Later governor of the United Provinces (1947-49)

Women’s Organisation

• 1910, Sarla Devi, first organisation set up by a woman.
• Ramabai Ranade founded the Ladies Social Conference (Bharat Mahila Parishad).
• Pandita Ramabai Saraswati founded the Arya Mahila Samaj to serve the cause of women.
• Medical education for women which started in Lady Dufferin College.
• In 1925, National Council of Women in India, national branch of the International Council of Women.
• Mehribai Tata - Vital role in formation and advancement.
• Cornelia Sarabji, India’s first lady barrister, Tarabai Premchand, wife of a wealthy banker.
• Shaffi Tyabji, a member of one of Mumbai’s leading Muslim families.
• Maharani Sucharu Devi, daughter of Keshab Chandra Sen.
• All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) by Margaret Cousins in 1927, Include Maharani Chimnabai Gaekwad, Rani Sahiba of Sangli, Sarojini Naidu, Kamla Devi Chattopadhyaya and Lady Dorab Tata - egalitarian approach.
• Social justice, integrity, equal rights and opportunities.
• secure for every human being, the essentials of life, not determined by accident of birth or sex but by planned social distribution.
• Sarda Act (1929), Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act (1937), Factory Act (1947), Hindu Marriage and Divorce Act (1954), Special Marriage Act (1954), Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act (1956), Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (1956), the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women Act (1958), Maternity Benefits Act (1961), Dowry Prohibition Act (1961) and Equal Remuneration Act (1958, 1976).

Struggle Against Caste-Based Exploitation

• Later Vedic four-fold division, further subdivided into numerous sub-castes.
• chaturvarnashrama - caste that determined who could get education or ownership of landed property, the kind of profession one should pursue, whom one could dine with or marry, etc.

Factors that Helped to Mitigate Caste-based Discrimination

• British rule, perhaps without intention, created certain conditions that undermined caste consciousness to an extent.
• The social reform movements also strove to undermine caste-based exploitation.
• The national movement took inspiration from the principles of liberty and equality against the forces which tended to divide the society.
• With increasing opportunities of education and general awakening, there were stirrings among the lower castes themselves.
• The Constitution of free India has made equality and non-discrimination on basis of caste imperative.