Social reform in the nineteenth century

The nineteenth century saw Indian reformers challenge customs such as sati, child marriage, and the ban on widow remarriage, and campaign for women's education. The most famous early reformer was Raja Rammohan Roy, who founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 and argued, from within Hindu scripture as well as from reason, against sati, the burning of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre, and against idolatry and caste rigidity. His campaign helped persuade Lord William Bentinck to ban sati by Regulation XVII in 1829, though the practice continued in some places and enforcement was uneven.

The next generation carried reform further. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a Sanskrit scholar and head of Sanskrit College in Calcutta, campaigned for widow remarriage, which was legalised by the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856, and for girls' education, opening schools and writing textbooks. In western India, Jyotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule opened a school for girls at Pune in 1848, one of the first in the country, and challenged caste privilege directly.

Reform was not a single movement, and reformers often opposed each other. Orthodox Hindus formed the Dharma Sabha at Calcutta in 1830 to defend custom against Rammohan Roy's campaign, while the Young Bengal group around Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a teacher at Hindu College in the late 1820s, questioned all religious authority in the name of reason. Vidyasagar's campaign for widow remarriage faced fierce orthodox opposition even though he argued from Sanskrit scripture, and Phule challenged caste privilege itself rather than seeking reform within its rules. These disagreements show that reform was an argument among Indians, not a programme handed down from above.

The reformers matter because they show Indians debating their own society, not merely reacting to British rule. They used printing, schools, and associations, the new tools of the age, and they put women's education and caste equality on the agenda long before independence. Their limits are also clear: reform reached the educated middle classes first, and many customs changed slowly in villages far from the reformers' cities.