Social Reform Movements in 19th-century India

What the official syllabus says

GPSC Main Examination, Paper IV: General Studies-I, (A) History.

• Social reform movement in India and Gujarat in the 19th century.

This page covers India. Gujarat's reformers are on Gujarat: 19th-century Social Reform.

Topics in detail

Know each movement's founder, year, region, main ideas and achievements, and be able to compare them. Analytical questions ask about the movements' limits as well as their success.

Background

• Western education, the press and Christian missionaries
• Rationalism and the rediscovery of India's past (Orientalist scholarship)
• Issues: sati, female infanticide, child marriage, the ban on widow remarriage, purdah, caste discrimination, untouchability

Reform movements among Hindus

• Raja Rammohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj (1828); abolition of sati (1829, Lord William Bentinck)
• Debendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen; the Native Marriage Act (1872)
• Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act (1856)
• Derozio and the Young Bengal movement
• Prarthana Samaj (1867): Atmaram Pandurang, M. G. Ranade, R. G. Bhandarkar
• Arya Samaj (1875): Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Satyarth Prakash, shuddhi, DAV schools
• Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda; the Ramakrishna Mission (1897)
• Theosophical Society (founded 1875; at Adyar from 1882) and Annie Besant

Movements against caste

• Jyotiba Phule and the Satyashodhak Samaj (1873); Savitribai Phule and girls' schools
• Sree Narayana Guru in Kerala
• Early Dalit assertion and the background to the 20th-century movements

Reform among other communities

• Muslims: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement; the Deoband school (1866); the Ahmadiyya movement
• Parsis: the Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabha (1851)
• Sikhs: the Singh Sabha movement (1873)

Women and law

• Pandita Ramabai and women's education
• Behramji Malabari and the Age of Consent Act (1891)
• Legal reform and its limits in practice

Assessment

• Contribution to the national awakening
• Limitations: urban, upper-caste and elite base; revivalist versus reformist strands

Organisations at a glance

Laws of the reform era

• Bengal Sati Regulation (1829)
• Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act (1856)
• Female Infanticide Prevention Act (1870)
• Native Marriage Act (1872)
• Age of Consent Act (1891)

Overlaps

• Prelims General Studies: religious and social reform movements in India and Gujarat in the 19th century.