Women Caste and Reform
What social ideas did the following people support?
Rammohun Roy – Ban on Sati
Dayanand Saraswati – Widow Remarriage
Veerasalingam Pantulu – Widow Remarriage
Jyotirao Phule – Caste Equality
Pandita Ramabai – Equality and Freedom for Women
Periyar – Equality for Untouchables
Mumtaz Ali – Women’s Education
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar – Widow Remarriage
Satnami Movement was founded by ____________________________.
The most-important Satnami group was founded in 1820 in the Chattisgarh region of middle India by Ghasidas, a farm servant and member of the Chamar caste. His Satnam Panth (“Path of the True Name”) succeeded in providing a religious and social identity for large numbers of Chattisgarhi Chamars.
Why did Phule dedicate his book Gulamgiri to the American movement to free slaves?
Answer: 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. This comparison also had the expression of hope that one day, like the end of slavery in America, there would be an end to all sorts of caste discriminations in Indian Society.
What steps did Raja Ram Mohan Roy take to eradicate sati?
Answer: 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 Europeon 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 Rammohun who was reputed to be a learned man. In 1829, sati was banned.
Give examples of two women who worked for the development of women in the end of 18th century?
Tarabai Shinde, a woman educated at home at Poona, published a book, Stripurushtulna, (A Comparison between Women and Men), criticizing the social differences between men and women.
Pandita Ramabai, a great scholar of Sanskrit, felt that Hinduism was oppressive towards women, and wrote a book (The high caste Hindu woman) about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women. She founded a widows’ home at Poona to provide shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands’ relatives. She founded Mukti Mission for the development of women and taught them life skills and job training. Here women were trained so that they could support themselves economically.
How did Jyotirao Phule criticised caste inequality in society?
Jyotirao developed his own ideas about the injustices of caste society. He did not accept 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 lowcaste 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.
He started an association called The Satyashodhak Samaj to spread caste equality.
He wrote a book named Gulamgiri in 1873 and compared low castes to Black slaves of America who led the civil war.
Give an account of the movement that spread in different parts of the country in favour of widow remarriage. Did the movement get success?
Answer: 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.
The movement did not get much success. The number of widows who actually remarried remained low. Those who married were not easily accepted in society and conservative groups continued to oppose the new law.
Movements were organised by people from within the lower castes against caste discrimination’. Explain.
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 Guru 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. He said One Caste, One Religion and One God for Humankind. He established a school for students from the lower social strata and provided them with free education regardless of caste. He also built temples in different parts of Kerala for the lower caste.
How did women involve themselves in their upliftment?
Answer: 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, Stripurushtulna, criticizing the social differences between men and women.
Pandita Ramabai founded a widows’ home at Poona to provide shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands’ relatives. 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.
Who was E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker? What did he do to improve the condition of untouchables?
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.
He also criticized many Hindu Scriptures as the Brahmins use them to promote caste inequality.
Why were Jyotirao Phule and Ramaswamy Naicker critical of the national movement? Did their criticism help the national struggle in any way?
Answer: Both Jyotirao Phule and Ramaswamy Naicker were critical of the national movement. Phule believed that mostly the upper caste leaders were involved in the nationalist movement against the British. He believed that once the British would leave, the people of upper caste would again use their power and authority oppress and subjugate the people belonging to lower castes. This would result in division amongst the people.
Naicker had joined Congress early in his years. He gradually realised that even Congress was not free from the evil practice of casteism. When a feast was organised by the nationalists within the party, different seating arrangements were made for the people of upper and lower castes. This made Naicker to believe that the lower castes have to fight their own battle.
Their criticisms did help in the nationalist movement. The forceful speeches, writings and movements of lowercaste leaders did lead to rethinking and some selfcriticism among upper-caste nationalist leaders.
In the British period, what new opportunities opened up for people who came from castes that were regarded as “low”?
Answer: Many new opportunities opened up for people who came from castes that were regarded as “low” during British period.
- There was work in the factories that were coming up, and jobs in municipalities.
- Expansion of cities in created new demands of labour. 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.
- Some also went to work in plantations in Assam, Mauritius, Trinidad and Indonesia.
- The army, for instance, offered opportunities. A number of Mahar people, who were regarded as untouchable, found jobs in the Mahar Regiment.
Swami Vivekananda
Vivekananda, born to Vishwanath Datta and Bhuveneshwari Devi in Calcutta January 12, 1863, was an extraordinary man. His childhood name was Narendranath Dutta.
From early childhood, Narendra was a very bright student; his memory and reading capabilities were exceptional; Narendra was a voracious reader.
A brilliant student, he was interested in a wide range of subjects such as philosophy, Biology, Art, Culture, Music, Social studies, etc. He was especially interested in philosophy and religious texts; he keenly read the works of western philosophers and thinkers such as Kant, Hegal, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Spinoza, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, etc. He was also well-versed with all philosophical and religious texts of Hinduism, be it Upanishads, Vedas, or Ramayana and Mahabharata.
All these readings made him a very inquisitive person. His quest for truth and knowledge took him to Swami Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and Narendranath transformed into Vivekananda.
Social Reforms:
Though Vivekananda had not initiated any particular social reform, his speeches and writings were full of messages against all kinds of social and religious evils.
- His main focus was on removing the weakness of India’s youth of the time, both physical and mental. And to gain strength, he suggested physical exercise or attaining knowledge. For him, strength is life, and weakness is death; for all the problems of India, whether social or political, the solution is self-respect in India’s culture and philosophy.
- He was against religious dogmas and superstitions; he continuously argued against prevailing social evils in his speeches and lectures. He was more confident about women’s ability to change the fortune of India; he proclaimed that with the help of 50 women, he could transform India into a modern, forward-looking nation.
- However, his real contribution to India was to revive the true meaning of Hinduism; he propagated the real philosophy and culture of India to the world at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893; through his lectures and speeches all over the world proved that Hindu religion is no inferior to anyone; at
- He inculcated, in the youth of the country, a sense of pride and worth so that they could face the world with confidence.
- He was fiercely against any social evil perpetuated by religious logic and dogmas. He believed that the Hindu belief in untouchability must change if the nation is to progress.
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