Women, Caste and Reforms

"After 1813, the British policy of non-interference in Indian society and culture changed. This happened mainly due to the emergence of new ideas of rationalism, humanism and liberalism in the nineteenth century."

1.0Introduction

Two hundred years ago things were very different. Most children were married off at an early age. Both Hindu and Muslim men could marry more than one wife. In some parts of the country, widows were praised if they chose death by burning themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands. Women who died in this manner, whether willingly or otherwise, were called "sati", meaning virtuous women. Women's rights to property were also restricted. Besides, most women had virtually no access to education. In many parts of the country people believed that if a woman was educated, she would become a widow.

Differences between men and women were not the only ones in society. In most regions, people were divided along lines of caste. Brahmans and Kshatriyas considered themselves as "upper castes". Others, such as traders and moneylenders (often referred to as Vaishyas) were placed after them. Then came peasants and artisans such as weavers and potters (referred to as Shudras). At the lowest rung were those who laboured to keep cities and villages clean or worked at jobs that upper castes considered "polluting", that is, it could lead to the loss of caste status. The upper castes also treated many of these groups at the bottom as "untouchable". They were not allowed to enter temples, draw water from the wells used by the upper castes, or bathe in ponds where upper castes bathed. They were seen as inferior human beings. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of these norms and perceptions slowly changed.

2.0Working Towards Change

From the early nineteenth century, we find debates and discussions about social customs and practices taking on a new character. One important reason for this was the development of new forms of communication. For the first time, books, newspapers, magazines, leaflets and pamphlets were printed. Ordinary people could read these, and many of them could also write and express their ideas in their own languages. All kinds of issues - social, political, economic and religious could now be debated and discussed by men (and sometimes by women as well) in the new cities. The discussions could reach out to a wider public and could become linked to movements for social change.

These debates were often initiated by Indian reformers and reform groups. One such reformer was Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-1833). He founded a reform association known as the Brahmo Sabha (later known as the Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta. People such as Rammohun Roy are described as reformers because they felt that changes were necessary in society, and unjust practices needed to be done away with. They thought that the best way to ensure such changes was by persuading people to give up old practices and adopt a new way of life.

Rammohun Roy was keen to spread the knowledge of Western education in the country and bring about greater freedom and equality for women. He wrote about the way women were forced to bear the burden of domestic work, confined to the home and the kitchen, and not allowed to move out and become educated.

Rammohun Roy

3.0Changing the lives of widows

Rammohun Roy was particularly moved by the problems widows faced in their lives. He began a campaign against the practice of sati. Rammohun Roy was well versed in Sanskrit, Persian and several other Indian and European languages. He tried to show through his writings that the practice of widow burning had no sanction in ancient texts. By the early nineteenth century, many British officials had also begun to criticise Indian traditions and customs. They were therefore more than willing to listen to Rammohan who was reputed to be a learned man. In 1829, sati was banned. The strategy adopted by Rammohan was used by later reformers as well. Whenever they wished to challenge a practice that seemed harmful, they tried to find a verse or sentence in the ancient sacred texts that supported their point of view. They then suggested that the practice as it existed at present was against early tradition.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati

For instance, one of the most famous reformers, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, used the ancient texts to suggest that widows could remarry. His suggestion was adopted by British officials, and a law was passed in 1856 permitting widow remarriage. Those who were against the remarriage of widows opposed Vidyasagar, and even boycotted him. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the movement in favour of widow remarriage spread to other parts of the country. In the Telugu-speaking areas of the Madras Presidency, Veerasalingam Pantulu formed an association for widow remarriage. Around the same time young intellectuals and reformers in Bombay pledged themselves to working for the same cause. In the north, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, who founded the reform association called Arya Samaj, also supported widow remarriage.

Yet, the number of widows who remarried remained low. Those who married were not easily accepted in society and conservative groups continued to oppose the new law.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

Girls begin going to school

Vidyasagar in Calcutta and many other reformers in Bombay set up schools for girls. When the first schools were opened in the mid-nineteenth century, many people were afraid of them. They feared that schools would take girls away from home, prevent them from doing their domestic duties. Moreover, girls had to travel through public places to reach school. Many people felt that this would have a corrupting influence on them. They felt that girls should stay away from public spaces. Therefore, throughout the nineteenth century, most educated women were taught at home by liberal fathers or husbands. Sometimes women taught themselves.

In the latter part of the century, schools for girls were established by the Arya Samaj in Punjab, and Jyotirao Phule in Maharashtra. In aristocratic Muslim households in North India, women learnt to read the Koran in Arabic. They were taught by women who came home to teach. Some reformers such as Mumtaz Ali reinterpreted verses from the Koran to argue for women's education. The first Urdu novels began to be written from the late nineteenth century. Amongst other things, these were meant to encourage women to read about religion and domestic management in a language they could understand.

4.0Women write about women

From the early twentieth century, Muslim women like the Begums of Bhopal played a notable role in promoting education among women. They founded a primary school for girls at Aligarh. Another remarkable woman, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started schools for Muslim girls in Patna and Calcutta. She was a fearless critic of conservative ideas, arguing that religious leaders of every faith accorded an inferior place to women.

By the 1880s, Indian women began to enter universities. Some of them trained to be doctors, some became teachers. Many women began to write and publish their critical views on the place of women in society. Tarabai Shinde, a woman educated at home at Poona, published a book, criticising the social differences between men and women.

Pandita Ramabai Stripurushtulna, (A Comparison between Women and Men),

Pandita Ramabai, a great scholar of Sanskrit, felt that Hinduism was oppressive towards women and wrote a book about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women. She founded a widow's home at Poona to provide shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands' relatives. Here women were trained so that they could support themselves economically. Needless to say, all this more than alarmed the orthodox. For instance, many Hindu nationalists felt that Hindu women were adopting Western ways and that this would corrupt Hindu culture and erode family values. Orthodox Muslims were also worried about the impact of these changes.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women themselves were actively working for reform. They wrote books, edited magazines, founded schools and training centres and set up women's associations. From the early twentieth century, they formed political pressure groups to push through laws for female suffrage (the right to vote) and better health care and education for women. Some of them joined various kinds of nationalist and socialist movements from the 1920s. In the twentieth century, leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose lent their support to demands for greater equality and freedom for women. Nationalist leaders promised that there would be full suffrage for all men and women after Independence. However, till then they asked women to concentrate on the anti-British struggles.

Law against child marriage

With the growth of women's organisations and writings on these issues, the momentum for reform gained strength. People challenged another established custom - that of child marriage. There were a number of Indian legislators in the Central Legislative Assembly who fought to make a law preventing child marriage. In 1929, the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed without the kind of bitter debates and struggles that earlier laws had seen. According to the Act, no man below the age of 18 and woman below the age of 16 could marry. Subsequently these limits were raised to 21 for men and 18 for women.

5.0Caste and Social Reform

Rammohun Roy translated an old Buddhist text that was critical of caste. The Prarthana Samaj adhered to the tradition of Bhakti that believed in spiritual equality of all castes. In Bombay, the Paramhans Mandali was founded in 1840 to work for the abolition of caste system. Many of these reformers and members of reform associations were people of upper castes. Often, in secret meetings, these reformers would violate caste taboos on food and touch, in an effort to get rid of the hold of caste prejudice in their lives. There were also others who questioned the injustices of the caste social order. During the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries began setting up schools for tribal groups and "lower"- caste children. These children were thus equipped with some resources to make their way into a changing world.

A coolie ship, nineteenth century

At the same time, the poor began leaving their villages to look for jobs that were opening up in the cities. There was work in the factories that were coming up, and jobs in municipalities. Think of the new demands of labour this created. Drains had to be dug, roads laid, buildings constructed, and cities cleaned. This required coolies, diggers, carriers, bricklayers, sewage cleaners, sweepers, palanquin bearers, rickshaw pullers.

Where did this labour come from?

The poor from the villages and small towns, many of them from low castes, began moving to the cities where there was a new demand for labour. Some also went to work in plantations in Assam, Mauritius, Trinidad and Indonesia. Work in the new locations was often very hard. But the poor, the people from low castes, saw this as an opportunity to get away from the oppressive hold that upper- caste landowners exercised over their lives and the daily humiliation they suffered.

There were other jobs too. The army, for instance, offered opportunities. A number of Mahar people, who were regarded as untouchable, found jobs in the Mahar Regiment. The father of B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalit movement, taught at an army school.

6.0Demands for equality and justice

• Gradually, by the second half of the nineteenth century, people from within the non-Brahman castes began organising movements against caste discrimination and demanded social equality and justice.
• The Satnami movement in Central India was founded by Ghasidas who worked among the leatherworkers and organised a movement to improve their social status. In eastern Bengal, Haridas Thakur's Matua sect worked among Chandala cultivators.
• Haridas questioned Brahmanical texts that supported the caste system. In what is present-day Kerala, a guru from Ezhava caste, Shri Narayana Guru, proclaimed the ideals of unity for his people. He argued against treating people unequally on the basis of caste differences. According to him, all humankind belonged to the same caste.
• One of his famous statements was: "oru jati, oru matam, oru daivam manushyanu" (one caste, one religion, one god for humankind).
• All these sects were founded by leaders who came from non-Brahman castes and worked amongst them. They tried to change those habits and practices which provoked the contempt of dominant castes. They tried to create a sense of self-esteem among the subordinate castes.

7.0Gulamgiri

• One of the most vocal amongst the "low-caste" leaders was Jyotirao Phule. Born in 1827, he studied in schools set up by Christian missionaries. On growing up he developed his own ideas about the injustices of caste society.
• He set out to attack the Brahmans' claim that they were superior to others, since they were Aryans. Phule argued that the Aryans were foreigners, who came from outside the subcontinent, and defeated and subjugated the true children of the country - those who had lived here from before the coming of the Aryans.
• As the Aryans established their dominance, they began looking at the defeated population as inferior, as low- caste people. According to Phule, the "upper" castes had no right to their land and power: in reality, the land belonged to indigenous people, the so-called low castes. Phule claimed that before Aryan rule there existed a golden age when warrior -peasants tilled the land and ruled the Maratha countryside in just and fair ways. He proposed that Shudras (labouring castes) and Ati Shudras (untouchables) should unite to challenge caste discrimination.
• The Satyashodhak Samaj, an association Phule founded, propagated caste equality. In 1873, Phule wrote a book named Gulamgiri, meaning slavery. Some ten years before this, the American Civil War had been fought, leading to the end of slavery in America.
• Phule dedicated his book to all those Americans who had fought to free slaves, thus establishing a link between the conditions of the "lower" castes in India and the black slaves in America.
• As this example shows, Phule extended his criticism of the caste system to argue against all forms of inequality. He was concerned about the plight of "upper"-caste women, the miseries of the labourer, and the humiliation of the "low" castes. This movement for caste reform was continued in the twentieth century by other great Dalit leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar in western India and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in the south.

8.0Who could enter temples?

• Ambedkar was born into a Mahar family. As a child he experienced what caste prejudice meant in everyday life. In school he was forced to sit outside the classroom on the ground, and was not allowed to drink water from taps that upper-caste children used. After finishing school, he got a fellowship to go to the US for higher studies. On his return to India in 1919, he wrote extensively about "upper"- caste power in contemporary society.
• In 1927, Ambedkar started a temple entry movement, in which his Mahar caste followers participated. Brahman priests were outraged

E.V. Ramaswamy

Naicker (Periyar) when the Dalits used water from the temple tank. Ambedkar led three such movements for temple entry between 1927 and 1935.

• His aim was to make everyone see the power of caste prejudices within society.

9.0The Non-Brahman Movement

• In the early twentieth century, the non-Brahman movement started. The initiative came from those non-Brahman castes that had acquired access to education, wealth and influence. They argued that Brahmans were heirs of Aryan invaders from the north who had conquered southern lands from the original inhabitants of the region - the indigenous Dravidian races. They also challenged Brahmanical claims to power.
• E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, or Periyar, as he was called, came from a middle-class family. Interestingly, he had been an ascetic in his early life and had studied Sanskrit scriptures carefully. Later, he became a member of the Congress, only to leave it in disgust when he found that at a feast organised by nationalists, seating arrangements followed caste distinctions that is, the lower castes were made to sit at a distance from the upper castes. Convinced that untouchables had to fight for their dignity, Periyar founded the Self Respect Movement. He argued that untouchables were the true upholders of an original Tamil and Dravidian culture which had been subjugated by Brahmans.
• He felt that all religious authorities saw social divisions and inequality as God-given. Untouchables had to free themselves, therefore, from all religions in order to achieve social equality.
• Periyar was an outspoken critic of Hindu scriptures, especially the Codes of Manu, the ancient lawgiver, and the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana. He said that these texts had been used to establish the authority of Brahmans over lower castes and the domination of men over women.
• These assertions did not go unchallenged. The forceful speeches, writings and movements of lower- caste leaders did lead to rethinking and some self- criticism among upper-caste nationalist leaders. But orthodox Hindu society also reacted by founding Sanatan Dharma Sabhas and the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal in the north, and associations like the Brahman Sabha in Bengal.
• The object of these associations was to uphold caste distinctions as a cornerstone of Hinduism and show how this was sanctified by scriptures. Debates and struggles over caste continued beyond the colonial period and are still going on in our own times.

10.0Organising for Reform

The Brahmo Samaj

The Brahmo Samaj, formed in 1830, prohibited all forms of idolatry and sacrifice, believed in the Upanishads, and forbade its members from criticising other religious practices. It critically drew upon the ideals of religions - especially of Hinduism and Christianity - looking at their negative and positive dimensions.

Derozio and Young Bengal

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a teacher at Hindu College, Calcutta, in the 1820s, promoted radical ideas and encouraged his pupils to question all authority. Referred to as the Young Bengal Movement, his students attacked tradition and custom, demanded education for women and campaigned for the freedom of thought and expression.

The Ramakrishna Mission and Swami Vivekananda

Named after Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda's guru, the Ramakrishna Mission stressed the ideal of salvation through social service and selfless action.

• Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), whose original name was Narendra Nath Dutta combined the simple teachings of Sri Ramakrishna with his well-founded modern outlook and spread them all over the world.
• After hearing him in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, the New York Herald reported, "We feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation". Indeed, Swami Vivekananda was the first Indian in modern times, who re-established the spiritual pre-eminence of the Vedanta philosophy on a global scale. But his mission was not simply to talk of religion. He was extremely pained at the poverty and the misery of his countrymen.

Jyotirao Phule

• He believed that any reform could become successful only by uplifting the condition of the masses. Therefore, his clarion call to the people of India was to rise above the narrow confines of their 'religion of the kitchen' and come together in the service of the nation. By sending out this call, he made a signal contribution to the nascent nationalism of India. His sense of nationalism was, however, not narrow in its conception.
• He was convinced that many of the problems facing the mankind could only be overcome if the nations of the world come together on an equal footing. Therefore, his exhortation to the youth was to unite on the basis of a common spiritual heritage. In this exhortation he became truly 'the symbol of a new spirit and a source of strength for the future'.

The Prarthana Samaj

Established in 1867 at Bombay, the Prarthana Samaj sought to remove caste restrictions, abolish child marriage, encourage the education of women, and end the ban on widow remarriage. Its religious meetings drew upon Hindu, Buddhist and Christian texts.

The Veda Samaj

The Veda Samaj established in Madras (Chennai) in 1864, the Veda Samaj was inspired by the Brahmo Samaj. It worked to abolish caste distinctions and promote widow remarriage and women's education. Its members believed in one God. They condemned the superstitions and rituals of orthodox Hinduism.

The Aligarh Movement

The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, founded by Sayyid Ahmed Khan in 1875 at Aligarh, later became the Aligarh Muslim University. The institution offered modern education, including Western science, to Muslims. The Aligarh Movement, as it was known, had an enormous impact in the area of educational reform.

Sayyid Ahmed Khan

The Singh Sabha Movement

• Reform organisations of the Sikhs, the first Singh Sabhas were formed at Amritsar in 1873 and at Lahore in 1879.
• The Sabhas sought to rid Sikhism of superstitions, caste distinctions and practices seen by them as non-Sikh.
• They promoted education among the Sikhs, often combining modern instruction with Sikh teachings.

11.0Glossary

1. Sati - Virtuous women who chose death by burning themselves of the funeral pyre of their husbands.
2. Vaishyas - Traders and moneylenders are considered as Vaishyas.
3. Shudras - Peasants and artisans such as weavers and potters are referred to as this class.
4. Conservatives - Those who want to maintain old traditions and customs and oppose new changes.
5. Stripurushtulna - A book published by Tarabai Shinde; it means a comparison between women and men.

12.0Mind Map

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