REFORM AND REVIVIAL

Socio-Religious Reform Movements and the Woman Question in Modern India

QUESTIONS

1. Was Revivalism rather than Reform the dominant theme of socio-religious reform
movements by the end of the 19th century? (2005)
2. Is it correct to say that the Brahmo Samaj represented the ‘reformist’ trend, and the
Arya Samaj represented the ‘revivalist’ trend? (2006)
3. How far is the tradition modernization model an adequate explanation for the
convergence of socio-religious reform movements during the 19th century? (2007)
4. Analyze the reformist and revivalist trends in the 19 th century socio-religious reform
movements. (2008)
5. To what extent did the social and religious movements of the 19 th century address the
issues of gender and caste inequality? (2009)
6. In the 19th century, the woman question became a part of the discourse of progress
and modernity. Comment. (2010)
7. To what extent did the social and religious movements of the 19 th century address the
issues of gender inequality? (2011)

THE DEBATE ON GENDER

The Women’s Question as a Part of the Discourse on Progress and Modernity

Debates around the status of Hindu women began in the early 19 th century in Bengal. Though
the English East India Company was reluctant to interfere in matters relating to religious
belief, it came under increasing pressure from the evangelicals, who argued that the state was
morally obliged to legislate against the more cruel and inhuman practices of Hinduism such
as Sati.

At the same time, Ania Loomba argues, the British feel that Sati, when performed willingly,
was the ultimate expression of wifely devotion. The ambivalence over how precisely to place
Sati legally – as punishable homicide or scripturally sanctioned suicide – plus the state’s
reluctance to intervene in religious affairs led to a legislative compromise in 1813 whereby
widows were permitted to perform Sati of their own volition, but unwilling Sati was
punishable by law.

Between 1814 and 1829, the colonial state took several halting steps backwards and forwards
on the matter of Sati before finally abolishing it in 1829. Throughout this period, indigenous
proponents of the abolition of Sati as well as its opponents had presented their views in the
public sphere, mainly through three newspapers – Samachar Darpan, Sambad Kaumudi and
Samachar Chandrika. Their arguments were both shaped by the colonial state’s legalistic
outlook to the matter of Sati, and contributed to a redefinition of ‘tradition’, in a specifically
modern, colonial way, as Lata Mani has argued.

The arguments within the middle and upper class Bengali Hindus, who constituted the
bhadralok, focussed on establishing the scriptural sanction of their respective views. This was
a response to colonial legalism – the state would not legislate against Sati if it found scriptural
sanction for the practice. Furthermore, the only scriptures the state was willing to recognize
were the brahmanical scriptures. This privileging of upper case scriptures at the expense of
custom and the orthodoxies sanctioned by traditional ‘dharma sabhas’ has been referred to by
D.D.Kosambi as the ‘brahmanizing tendency’ of the colonial state.

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Lata Mani has noted that the debates around Sati were not concerned primarily with the
position of women as individuals with rights, nor with the cruelty of the custom. The debates
sought to establish the scriptural position of Sati. Thus, the so-called ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’
reformers, represented by Raja Rammohun Roy, argued that there was no mention of Sati in
the Manusmriti, the most authoritative ‘Hindu’ scripture, and that instead this text prescribed
‘ascetic widowhood’. Roy argued that Sati had never been performed willingly, that it was a
ploy of greedy relatives to gain ownership of the widow’s wealth and property, and that
because Sati was performed with an eye to accrue material rewards, it yielded little spiritual
merit. On the other hand, the proponents of Sati argued that there was, in fact scriptural
sanction for Sati, and that it was also a time-honoured tradition.

It is worth noting that when Sati was finally banned, Rammohun Roy thanked Lord Bentinck
(then, Governor-General of India) for ridding the pristine Vedic creed of a corruption and of
the sin of cruelty to women. Bentinck himself viewed the legislation as a step in the direction
of return to a glorious Hindu past, and a success for the ‘civilizing mission’ of the British.

Lata Mani added that women became the site for re-articulation of tradition – for while
Rammohun had been called progressive, his argument for the abolition of Sati was that it was
a return to authentic ‘Hinduism’. However, tradition was now equated with the brahmanical
scriptures, which it had not been before. This was the impact of the modernizing discourse of
colonialism that associated religion with an authoritative book, on the lines of Christianity.

Why were women the site for contesting definitions of ‘tradition’? As Tanika Sarkar has
argued, women were repositories of the social status of the upper castes. Their virtue and
purity, demonstrated through acts such as Sati, the abstinence from widow re-marriage and
the garbhadhan ritual (whereby a man consummated his relationship with his child bride 16
days after menarche), set them apart from the lower castes. Indeed, as Uma Chakravarti has
shown, women’s virtue was actively controlled by the Peshwa state in Maharashtra; Maratha
widows were compelled to be chaste and to live ascetic lives, for the political legitimacy of
the Peshwas rested significantly upon the chastity and virtue of its women.

Nor was the orthodox, patriarchal view of women as representatives of a community’s virtue
challenged by Rammohun Roy – for in his many tracts on Sati he simply claimed that a
woman’s virtue did not need protection through acts such as Sati, for women were inherently
virtuous. It was only through the coercion of men that women were compelled to corrupt their
virtue.

Tanika Sarkar has also noted that though the prohibition of Sati and the legalization of widow
re-marriage mid-century changed the legal status of what the orthodox brahmanical tradition
considered heresies, they never really acquired moral sanction. Indeed, Ashis Nandy has
noted that between 1815 and 1818, the number of incidences of Sati in Bengal almost trebles.
While instances of Sati then declined, the number never fell below its 1815 mark. This,
Nandy remarked, was because Sati had now become a distinct marker of one’s social status
and also of one’s allegiances with either the British and the liberals, or with the orthodox
within the Sati debate. Sati was thus performed not only by Brahmanas and Kayasthas as an
affirmation of their status, but also by lower caste groups with aspirations of upward mobility
in the caste scale.

Given that many assumptions about women’s status and what they represented were not
questioned by reformers like Rammohun Roy, Kumkum Sangari has argued that these
reformers simply rearticulated the existing Brahmanical patriarchal code. While Sati was
banned, there had been no arguments for the rights of women as individuals, nor of the
banning of Sati on the grounds of its cruelty.

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Thus, in 19th century India, the woman question was not primarily a part of the discourse on
progress and modernity, though, as noted above, the Evangelicals certainly considered
practices like Sati barbarous, and pressured the colonial state to ban them as part of its
benevolent, civilizing mission. Instead, as historians like Kumkum Sangari, Lata Mani and
Tanika Sarkar have shown, women became the grounds for the re-articulation of ‘tradition’.
They continued to represent the honour and cultural authenticity of the Brahmanical
community, for both the orthodoxy as well as the progressives.

ADDITIONAL ARGUMENTS

LATA MANI: One must be careful while applying concepts like ‘Western/Progressive’ and
‘Orthodox/Traditional’ to the 19th century, for much of the tradition that reformers like
Rammohun Roy questioned and that the orthodoxy defended was a specifically ‘colonial’
form of tradition.

SUMIT SARKAR: Roy’s radical writings such as ‘Tohfat Muwabhiddin’ deploy reasoned
argument; later, Roy seeks to legitimize his creed by referring to Vedic scriptures

LATA MANI: 3 branches to the debate on Sati –

1. Official Discourse
Prompted by discussions on whether Sati could safely be prohibited through legislation, for
interference in religion may provoke anger. Those in favour of abolishing Sati stressed its
material aspects – attempt by greedy relatives to get their hands on a widow’s property. Those
who opposed it emphasized the scriptural sanction of Sati, and the dangers of interfering with
religious matters. For the British, women were ‘helpless victims’ of ruthless relatives and
priests, or they were ‘heroines’ who ascended their husband’s funeral pyre willingly.
2. Indigenous Progressive Discourse
Rammohun Roy: The scriptures do not authorize burning of widows alive. The Manusmriti
speaks of ‘ascetic widowhood’. Sati was not spiritually meritorious as it was performed out of
a desire for sensuous rewards. No widow ever committed Sati willingly.
Sati was not necessary to preserve a widow’s virtue since women were innately more virtuous
than men; it was the latter, who through physical force, coerced women into non-virtuous
behaviour.
3. Indigenous Conservative Discourse
Sati was undertaken willingly by devout widows. Criminalizing Sati was based on an
erroneous reading of the scriptures. Also, the importance of custom should be acknowledged.
Sati was a time-honoured practice.

TANIKA SARKAR: With special reference to the Age of Consent Debates, Sarkar argues
that all the issues of women’s reform in the 19 th century raised the question of whether
women were primarily bearers of cultural authenticity (of the upper castes) or were they
individuals with rights.

REFORM AND REVIVAL: SOCIO-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

CONCEPTS:
 KENNETH W. JONES: Finds two kinds of movements, differing on the ‘point of
origin’, i.e. whether or not they emerged from within the colonial milieu
 These came to be classified as the Transitional and Acculturative Movements
 TRANSITIONAL MOVEMENTS had their origins in the pre-colonial world and
arose from indigenous forms of socio-religious dissent, with little or no influence
from the colonial milieu, either because it was not yet established or because it had
failed to affect the individuals in a particular movement. The clearest determinant was
the absence of anglicized leaders among its leaders and a lack of concern with

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 adjusting its concepts and programmes to the colonial world. E.g. The Deoband
Movement, the Nirankari Movement, The Faraizis.
 ACCULTURATIVE MOVEMETNS originated within the colonial milieu and were
led by individuals who were products of cultural interaction. They sought an
accommodation to the fact of British supremacy, to the colonial milieu that such
supremacy had created, and to the personal position of its members within the
colonial world. The basis of such movements and their aims rested on the indigenous
heritage of social and religious protests, and were therefore not bereft of the influence
of the general high culture of South Asia. E.g. The Brahmo Samaj, the Arya Samaj,
the Aligarh Movement.
 Within these rubrics, one finds the classification of ‘reformist’ and ‘revivalist’
groups, whose difference lies in their aims to reform society or to bring back society
to an earlier stage of the religion in question
 VASUDHA DALMIA critiques the classifications of ‘reformist’ and ‘revivalist’
 In 19th century India, a number of socio-religious movements develop, in response to
the western discourses of modernity. Some of these movements are deliberately
‘traditionalist’ in their orientation, and have subsequently been classified as
‘revivalist’ movements. Others, stressing the need for progressive change have been
seen as ‘modernizing’, ‘reformist’ movements.
 Yet, all of the socio-religious movements of the 19 th century harked back to a mystic
‘glorious’ past for the legitimacy of their creed. They were all therefore claiming
antiquity.
 Furthermore, they were all influenced by modernization, despite the self conscious
tranditionalism of some. This can be seen in the case of the self-proclaimed upholders
of the ‘sanatanadharma’, the Dharma Sabhas of the 1830s, who were often quite
critical of colonial reform regarding the status of women, widows in particular, and
the laws of ‘Hindu’ marriage.
 However, these sabhas, though emulating traditional models in some respects, were
no longer dominated by upper-caste ‘Hindus’, but included middle caste Hindus as
well.
 These sabhas often organized themselves along British modules, with a President and
formal voting procedures. This reflects, John Zavos has argued, the influence upon
these sanatanist organizations of ‘discourse of organization’, one of the discoures of
modernity as understood by the British
 Rejecting the revivalist/reformist polarity, Dalmia proposed the classification of the
socio-religious movements of the 19th century as either TRADITIONALIST or
REFORMIST.
 TRADITIONALISTS, while recommending ameliorative caste reform, preserved to a
large extent the varnashramadharma structure.
 REFORMISTS, on the other hand, recommended crucial changes in this structure,
such as the rejection of the principle of heredity in determining caste status.
 While many of the traditional rituals of ‘Hinduism’, as well as the central place in
Puranic worship of the temple were accepted ad preserved by the Traditional
Movements, many Puranic rituals were either outright rejected by he Reformist
Movements or significantly altered by them. They also challenged the central place of
the temple in worship.
 Therefore, while the Traditionalist movements preserved the regionally specific
caste-sampradaya ‘orthodoxies’ which were later clubbed under the banner of
‘Hinduism’, these orthodoxies were challenged by the reformist movements.

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