Spectrum Summary: General Features of Socio-Religious Reform Movements | History for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Factors Leading to the Desire for Reform

• The early nineteenth century saw the emergence of a modern outlook among some sections of Indian society which questioned prevailing social and religious practices.
• These new ideas and the reform movements that grew from them became integral to public life across the subcontinent and influenced social and cultural patterns profoundly.

Impact of British Rule

• British political power brought India into continuous contact with modern Western ideas, administration, legal systems and education, creating conditions for new social and intellectual debates.
• Colonial rule exposed the weaknesses of some traditional institutions and practices, prompting a search for reform; this influence was both direct (through law and education) and indirect (through economic and cultural change).

Social Conditions Ripe for Reform

• Religious superstition and social obscurantism: Large parts of society were governed by ritualism, magical beliefs and customary practices that reformers regarded as irrational and harmful.
• Depressing position of women: Practices such as female infanticide, child marriage, polygamy and sati placed women in a vulnerable position; Raja Rammohan Roy described sati as a "murder according to every shastra".
• Caste system: A rigid hierarchy based on ritual status limited social mobility, sanctioned discrimination and checked individual initiative.
• Reaction to Western culture: Encounter with Western education and ideas produced both resistance and attempts to rejuvenate tradition - leading to movements that sought to reconcile reason and Indian religion and culture.

New Awareness among Enlightened Indians

• The shock of political defeat and exposure to modern Western culture produced a new self-awareness among educated Indians.
• Factors such as the spread of English education, growth of nationalist sentiment, emergence of new economic interests, circulation of modern ideas and greater awareness of global developments strengthened the resolve for social and religious reform.

Social and Ideological Foundations of Reform

Middle-Class Base

• There was a significant contrast between the broadly middle-class ideals derived from a growing awareness of contemporary developments in the West, and a predominantly non-middle class social base. 
• The intelligentsia of nineteenth-century India's roots lay in government service or the professions of law, education, journalism, or medicine—with which was often combined some connection with the land in the form of the intermediate tenures.

Intellectual Criteria

• Raja Rammohan Roy emphasised causality and demonstrability as criteria of truth and argued for reform on the basis of reasoned interpretation of religion.
• Akshay Kumar Dutt argued that rationalism should be the guiding principle and that natural and social phenomena could be analysed mechanically.
• Swami Vivekananda held that religion must justify itself using the same methods of investigation as the sciences.
• Reformers sought two linked goals: the evolution of an alternative cultural-ideological system and the regeneration of traditional institutions. This led to efforts to reconstruct traditional knowledge, develop vernacular languages, create alternative educational systems, defend religion from external critique, revitalise art and literature, emphasise indigenous dress and food, revive Indian systems of medicine, and research pre-colonial technologies for their modern potential.

Two Streams

• The socio‑religious reform movements of the nineteenth century may be broadly classified into two streams: reformist movements (for example, the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Aligarh Movement) and revivalist movements (for example, the Arya Samaj, the Deoband movement).
• The principal difference between movements was the degree to which they relied on tradition versus reason and conscience-some sought to reinterpret religion in a modern spirit; others sought to revive a purified form of tradition.

Direction of Social Reform

• The newly educated middle class was inspired by humanistic ideals such as social equality and the equal worth of all individuals; these ideals influenced the agenda and direction of social reform.
• Social reform and religious reform were closely linked because many social practices (untouchability, restrictions on women, etc.) derived sanction from religious customs and interpretations.
• Organisations such as the Social Conference, the Servants of India Society, and Christian missionary institutions worked alongside reform-minded individuals including Jyotiba Phule, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, K.T. Telang, B.M. Malabari, D.K. Karve, Sri Narayana Guru, E.V. Ramaswami Naicker and B.R. Ambedkar.

Fight for Betterment of Position of Women

• The improvement of the status of women in the society was considered to be vital, and social reformers worked towards this since a radical change in the domestic sphere— where initial socialization of the individual takes place and where a crucial role is played by women— was the need of the hour.

Steps Taken to Improve Women's Position Under British Rule

Due to the tireless efforts of reformers, the government adopted various administrative measures to enhance the condition of women.

Abolition of Sati

• Led by the sustained campaign of enlightened Indian reformers with figures such as Raja Rammohan Roy, the practice of sati was declared illegal and punishable by criminal courts as culpable homicide.
• The legal measure known as Regulation XVII, A.D. 1829 (applicable initially to the Bengal Presidency) prohibited the practice of sati.

Preventing Female Infanticide

• The practice of killing female infants immediately after their birth was a common practice among upper-class Bengalis and Rajputs who considered females to be an economic burden.
• The Bengal regulations of 1795 and 1804 declared infanticide illegal and equivalent to murder.
• An Act passed in 1870 made it compulsory for parents to register the birth of all babies.

Widow Remarriage

• The issue of widow remarriage was popularised by the Brahmo Samaj and reformers such as Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91); these campaigns contributed to the passage of the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act, 1856.
• Other promoters of women's education and widow remarriage included Jagannath Shankar Seth, Bhau Daji, Vishnu Shastri Pandit (founder of the Widow Remarriage Association in the 1850s), and Karsondas Mulji (who started the Gujarati periodical Satya Prakash in 1852).
• Regional leaders such as D.K. Karve (who later married a widow in 1893) and Veerasalingam Pantulu also worked for widow remarriage.
• Advocates included B.M. Malabari, Narmad (Narmadashankar Labhshankar Dave), Justice Govind Mahadeo Ranade, and K. Natarajan.

Controlling Child Marriage

• The Native Marriage Act of 1872 aimed to prohibit child marriage but had limited impact as it was not applicable to Hindus, Muslims, and other faiths.
• The Age of Consent Act (1891), promoted by reformer B.M. Malabari, forbade the marriage of girls below 12, influenced by the case of Rukhmabai Raut.
• Rukhmabai’s case, where she refused to live with her husband married at 11, brought attention to child marriage and women’s rights.
• The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, or Sarda Act, increased marriage ages to 18 for boys and 14 for girls.
• In independent India, the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act, 1978 raised marriage ages for girls to 18 and for boys to 21.

Education of Women

• The Calcutta Female Juvenile Society (set up by Christian missionaries in 1819) was among the earliest institutional efforts for women’s education.
• The Bethune School, established by J.E.D. Bethune in 1849, was an important milestone in the movement for female education.

J.E.D Bethune

• Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was associated with no less than 35 girls’ schools in Bengal and is considered one of the pioneers of women's education.
• Charles Wood's Despatch (1854) emphasised female education as part of a general educational policy.
• The Women’s Medical Service (established 1914) trained nurses and midwives, and institutions like the Indian Women’s University (founded by D.K. Karve in 1916) and Lady Hardinge Medical College (opened in Delhi in 1916) expanded professional education for women.
• Health facilities for women (such as the Dufferin Hospitals from the 1880s) improved medical care and opened careers in medicine to women.
• Sarojini Naidu rose from reform activism to national prominence, becoming President of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and later Governor of the United Provinces (1947–49).

Women’s Organisations

• In 1910, Sarla Devi Chaudhurani convened the first meeting of the Bharat Stree Mahamandal in Allahabad; its objectives included promoting women’s education, abolition of purdah, and improvement of women’s socio‑economic and political status.
• Sarla Devi believed that the man working for women’s upliftment lived ‘under the shade of Manu’.

Sarla Devi Chaudhurani

• Ramabai Ranade founded the Ladies Social Conference (Bharat Mahila Parishad) in 1904 at Bombay under the aegis of the National Social Conference.

Ramabai Ranade

• Pandita Ramabai Saraswati founded the Arya Mahila Samaj to serve the cause of women. She pleaded for improvement in the educational syllabus of Indian women before the English Education Commission which was referred to Queen Victoria. This resulted in medical education for women which started in Lady Dufferin College.
  Pandita Ramabai Saraswati
• Ramabai Ranade later established a branch of the Arya Mahila Samaj in Bombay.
• In 1925, the National Council of Women in India (the national arm of the International Council of Women) was formed with active participation from women such as Meherbai Tata, Cornelia Sorabji (India’s first woman lawyer), Tarabai Premchand, Shaffi Tyabji and Maharani Sucharu Devi.
• The All India Women’s Conference (AlWCf founded by Margaret Cousins in 1927, was perhaps the first women’s organization with an egalitarian approach. Its first conference was held at Ferguson College, Pune. Its objectives were to work for a society based on principles of social justice, integrity, equal rights, and opportunities; and to secure for every human being, the essentials of life, not determined by the accident of birth or sex but by planned social distribution.
• Several important laws impacting women’s rights were passed, including the 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

The worst-hit by the discriminatory institution of caste were the 'untouchables' or the scheduled castes/Dalits

➢ Factors that Helped to Mitigate Caste-based Discrimination

• Colonial institutions-though not designed for social reform-created conditions (for example, modern administration, law, and employment opportunities) that weakened caste exclusivism to an extent.
• Social reform movements worked to undermine caste-based exploitation by advocating equality and removal of discriminatory practices.
• National movement ideals of liberty and equality provided ideological support against divisive caste practices; Mahatma Gandhi founded the All India Harijan Sangh in 1932 to work for the uplift of Harijans.
• Growing educational and economic opportunities enabled stirrings of assertiveness among lower castes.
• The Government of India Act, 1935 provided for special representation of depressed classes, acknowledging their political claims.
• Sri Narayana Guru in Kerala coined the slogan "one religion, one caste, one God for mankind" and his disciple Sahodaran Ayyappan proposed a more radical phrase "no religion, no caste, no God for mankind" in some contexts - both slogans sought to challenge caste exclusivism.
• Dr B.R. Ambedkar led direct action such as the Mahad Satyagraha (March 1927) to assert Dalit rights to public water and to challenge discriminatory customs. He established the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha in 1924 to highlight Dalit grievances; its motto was: "Educate, Agitate and Organise".
• The Constitution of independent India made equality and non‑discrimination on the basis of caste a fundamental principle.

Abolishment of Untouchability

The Constitution abolishes untouchability and declares any disability arising from it as unlawful. It prohibits restrictions on access to public places such as wells, tanks, bathing ghats, hotels, cinemas, and clubs.

Promotion of Social Justice

One of the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution stresses the State's responsibility to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting a social order based on justice - social, economic and political - in all national institutions. This constitutional commitment underpinned affirmative measures, legal safeguards and policies aimed at achieving a more equitable society.