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Source 2was a fearless critic of conservative ideas, arguingthat religious leaders of every faith accorded an inferiorplace to women.By the 1880s, Indian women began to enteruniversities. Some of them trained to be doctors, somebecame teachers. Many women began to write andpublish their critical views on the place of women insociety. Tarabai Shinde, a woman educated athome at Poona, published a book, Stripurushtulna,(A Comparison between Women and Men), criticisingthe social differences between men and women.Pandita Ramabai, a greatscholar of Sanskrit, felt thatHinduism was oppressive towardswomen, and wrote a book aboutthe miserable lives of upper-casteHindu women. She founded awidows’ home at Poona to provideshelter to widows who had beentreated badly by their husbands’relatives. Here women weretrained so that they could supportthemselves economically.Needless to say, all this moreFig. 7than alarmed the orthodox. ForPandita Ramabaiinstance, many Hindu nationalistsfelt that Hindu women were adopting Western ways andthat this would corrupt Hindu culture and erode familyvalues. Orthodox Muslims were also worried aboutthe impact of these changes.As you can see, by the end of the nineteenth century,women themselves were actively working for reform.They wrote books, edited magazines, founded schoolsand training centres, and set up women’s associations.From the early twentieth century, they formed politicalpressure groups to push through laws for female suffrage(the right to vote) and better health care and educationfor women. Some of them joined various kinds ofnationalist and socialist movements from the 1920s.In the twentieth century, leaders such asJawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose lent theirsupport to demands for greater equality and freedomfor women. Nationalist leaders promised that therewould be full suffrage for all men and women afterIndependence. However, till then they asked womento concentrate on the anti-British struggles.Once a woman’shusband has died.In her book,Stripurushtulna,Tarabai Shinde wrote:Isn’t a woman’s lifeas dear to her as yoursis to you? It’s as ifwomen are meant tobe made of somethingdifferent from menaltogether, made fromdust from earth orrock or rusted ironwhereas you and yourlives are made fromthe purest gold. You’re asking me whatI mean. I mean once awoman’s husband hasdied, what’s in storefor her? The barbercomes to shave allthe curls and hairoff her head, just tocool your eyes. Sheis shut out fromgoing to weddings,receptions and otherauspicious occasionsthat married womengo to. And why allthese restrictions?Because her husbandhas died. She isunlucky: ill fate iswrittenonherforehead. Her face isnot to be seen, it’s abad omen.Tarabai Shinde, StripurushtulnaWOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM2022-2399

Law against child marriageWith the growth of women’s organisationsand writings on these issues, the momentumfor reform gained strength. People challengedanother established custom – that of childmarriage. There were a number of Indianlegislators in the Central Legislative Assemblywho fought to make a law preventing childmarriage. In 1929 the Child MarriageRestraint Act was passed without the kind ofbitter debates and struggles that earlier lawshad seen. According to the Act no man belowthe age of 18 and woman below the age of16 could marry. Subsequently these limitswere raised to 21 for men and 18 for women.Fig. 8 – Bride at the age of eightThis is a picture of a child bride at the beginning ofthe twentieth century. Did you know that even todayover 20 per cent of girls in India are married belowthe age of 18?Caste and Social ReformSome of the social reformers we have been discussingalso criticised caste inequalities. Rammohun Roytranslated an old Buddhist text that was critical ofcaste. The Prarthana Samaj adhered to the tradition ofBhakti that believed in spiritual equality of all castes.In Bombay, the Paramhans Mandali was founded in1840 to work for the abolition of caste. Many of thesereformers and members of reform associations werepeople of upper castes. Often, in secret meetings, thesereformers would violate caste taboos on food and touch,in an effort to get rid of the hold of caste prejudice intheir lives.There were also others who questioned the injusticesof the caste social order. During the course of thenineteenth century, Christian missionaries begansetting up schools for tribal groups and “lower”-castechildren. These children were thus equipped with someresources to make their way into a changing world.At the same time, the poor began leaving theirvillages to look for jobs that were opening up in thecities. There was work in the factories that were comingup, and jobs in municipalities. You have read about100OUR PASTS–III2022-23

the expansion of cities inChapter 6. Think of the newdemands of labour thiscreated. Drains had to bedug, roads laid, buildingsconstructed, and citiescleaned. This required coolies,diggers, carriers, bricklayers,sewage cleaners, sweepers,palanquin bearers, rickshawpullers. Where did this labourcome from? The poor fromthe villages and small towns,many of them from low castes,began moving to the cities where there was a newdemand for labour. Some also went to work in plantationsin Assam, Mauritius, Trinidad and Indonesia. Work inthe new locations was often very hard. But the poor,the people from low castes, saw this as an opportunityto get away from the oppressive hold that upper-castelandowners exercised over their lives and the dailyhumiliation they suffered.Fig. 9 – A coolie ship,nineteenth centuryThis coolie ship – named JohnAllen – carried many Indianlabourers to Mauritius wherethey did a variety of forms of hardlabour. Most of these labourerswere from low castes.Who could produce shoes?Leatherworkers have been traditionally held incontempt since they work with dead animalswhich are seen as dirty and polluting. During theFirst World War, however, there was a hugedemand for shoes for the armies. Caste prejudiceagainst leather work meant that only thetraditional leather workers and shoemakers wereready to supply army shoes. So they could askfor high prices and gain impressive profits.Fig. 10 – Madigas making shoes, nineteenth-centuryAndhra PradeshMadigas were an important untouchable caste ofpresent-day Andhra Pradesh. They were experts atcleaning hides, tanning them for use, and sewingsandals.There were other jobs too. The army, for instance,offered opportunities. A number of Mahar people, whowere regarded as untouchable, found jobs in the MaharRegiment. The father of B.R. Ambedkar, the leader ofthe Dalit movement, taught at an army school.WOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM2022-23101

No place insidethe classroomIntheBombayPresidency, as late as1829, untouchables werenot allowed into evengovernment schools.When some of thempressed hard for thatright, they were allowedto sit on the verandaoutside the classroomand listen to the lessons,without “polluting” theroom where upper-casteboys were taught.Dublas laboured for upper-caste landowners, cultivating theirfields, and working at a variety of odd jobs at the landlord’s house. Activity1. Imagine that you areone of the studentssitting in the schoolveranda and listeningto the lessons. Whatkind of questionswould be rising inyour mind?2. Some people thoughtthis situation wasbetter than the totallack of education foruntouchable people.Would you agree withthis view?Fig. 12 – Shri Narayana Guru102OUR PASTSFig. 11 – Dublas of Gujarat carrying mangoes to the market.–Demands for equality and justiceGradually, by the second half of the nineteenth century,people from within the Non-Brahman castes beganorganising movements against caste discrimination, anddemanded social equality and justice.The Satnami movement in Central India was foundedby Ghasidas who worked among the leatherworkers andorganised a movement to improve their social status.In eastern Bengal, Haridas Thakur’s Matua sect workedamong Chandala cultivators. Haridas questionedBrahmanical 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 forhis people. He argued against treating people unequallyon the basis of caste differences. According to him, allhumankind belonged to the same caste. One of hisfamous statements was: “oru jati,orumatam,orudaivammanushyanu” (one caste, onereligion, one god for humankind).All these sects were foundedby leaders who came from NonBrahman castes and workedamongst them. They tried tochange those habits and practiceswhich provoked the contempt ofdominant castes. They tried tocreate a sense of self-esteemamong the subordinate castes.III2022-23

GulamgiriOne of the most vocal amongst the “low-caste” leaderswas Jyotirao Phule. Born in 1827, he studied in schoolsset up by Christian missionaries. On growing up hedeveloped his own ideas about the injustices of castesociety. He set out to attack the Brahmans’ claim thatthey were superior to others, since they were Aryans.Phule argued that the Aryans were foreigners, whocame from outside the subcontinent, and defeated andsubjugated the true children of the country – those whohad lived here from before the coming of the Aryans.As the Aryans established their dominance, they beganlooking at the defeated population as inferior, as lowcaste people. According to Phule, the “upper” casteshad no right to their land and power: in reality, theland belonged to indigenous people, the so-calledlow castes.Phule claimed that before Aryan rule there existed agolden age when warrior-peasants tilled the land andruled the Maratha countryside in just and fair ways.He proposed that Shudras (labouring castes) andAti Shudras (untouchables) should unite to challengecaste discrimination. The Satyashodhak Samaj, anassociation Phule founded, propagated caste equality.Fig. 13 – Jyotirao PhuleSource 3“Me here and you over there”Phule was also critical of the anti-colonial nationalism that waspreached by upper-caste leaders. He wrote:The Brahmans have hidden away the sword of theirreligion which has cut the throat of the peoples’ prosperityand now go about posing as great patriots of their country.They give this advice to . our Shudra, Muslim andParsi youth that unless we put away all quarrelling amongstourselves about the divisions between high and low in ourcountry and come together, our . country will never makeany progress . It will be unity to serve their purposes,and then it will be me here and you over there again.Jyotiba Phule, The Cultivator’s Whipcord ActivityCarefully readSource 3. What doyou think JyotiraoPhule meant by“me here and youover there again”?In 1873, Phule wrote a book named Gulamgiri,meaning slavery. Some ten years before this, theAmerican Civil War had been fought, leading to the endof slavery in America. Phule dedicated his book to allWOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM2022-23103

Source 4“We are alsohuman beings”In 1927, Ambedkar said:We now want to go tothe Tank only to provethat like others, we arealso human beings Hindu society shouldbe reorganised on twomain principles –equality and absenceof casteism.Fig. 14 – The gateway to theMadurai temple, drawn byThomas Daniell, 1792“Untouchables” were notallowed anywhere near suchgateways until the templeentry movement began.104OUR PASTS–those Americans who had fought to free slaves, thusestablishing a link between the conditions of the“lower” castes in India and the black slaves inAmerica.As this example shows, Phule extended hiscriticism of the caste system to argue against allforms of inequality. He was concerned about theplight of “upper”-caste women, the miseries of thelabourer, and the humiliation of the “low” castes.This movement for caste reform was continued inthe twentieth century by other great dalit leaderslike Dr B.R. Ambedkar in western India and E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker in the south.Who could enter temples?Ambedkar was born into a Mahar family. As a childhe experienced what caste prejudice meant ineveryday life. In school he was forced to sitoutside the classroom on the ground, and wasnot allowed to drink water from taps thatupper -caste children used. After finishingschool, he got a fellowship to go to the US forhigher studies. On his return to India in 1919,he wrote extensively about “upper”- castepower in contemporary society.In 1927, Ambedkar started a templeentry movement, in which his Mahar castefollowers participated. Brahman priestswere outraged when the Dalits used waterfrom the temple tank.Ambedkar led three such movementsfor temple entry between 1927 and 1935.His aim was to make everyone see thepower of caste prejudices within society.III2022-23

The Non-Brahman movementIn the early twentieth century, the non-Brahmanmovement started. The initiative came from thosenon-Brahman castes that had acquired accesstoeducation, wealth and influence. They argued thatBrahmans were heirs of Aryan invaders from thenorth who had conquered southern lands fromthe original inhabitants of the region – the indigenousDravidian races. They also challenged Brahmanicalclaims to power.E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, or Periyar, as hewas called, came from a middle-class family.Interestingly, he had been an ascetic in his earlylife and had studied Sanskrit scriptures carefully.Later, he became a member of the Congress, only toleave it in disgust when he found that at a feastorganised by nationalists, seating arrangementsfollowed caste distinctions – that is, the lower casteswere made to sit at a distance from the upper castes.Convinced that untouchables had to fight for theirdignity, Periyar founded the Self Respect Movement.He argued that untouchables were the trueupholders of an original Tamil and Dravidian culturewhich had been subjugated by Brahmans. He feltthat all religious authorities saw social divisionsand inequality as God-given. Untouchables had tofree themselves, therefore, from all religions in orderto 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 saidthat these texts had been used to establish theauthority of Brahmans over lower castes and thedomination of men over women.These assertions did not go unchallenged. Theforceful speeches, writings and movements of lowercaste leaders did lead to rethinking and some selfcriticism among upper-caste nationalist leaders. Butorthodox Hindu society also reacted by foundingSanatan Dharma Sabhas and the Bharat DharmaMahamandal in the north, and associations like theBrahman Sabha in Bengal. The object of theseassociations was to uphold caste distinctions as acornerstone of Hinduism, and show how this wassanctified by scriptures. Debates and struggles overcaste continued beyond the colonial period and arestill going on in our own times.Fig. 15 – E.V. RamaswamyNaicker (Periyar)Source 5Periyar on womenPeriyar wrote:Only with the arrival ofwords such as TharaMukurtham our womenhad become puppets inthe hands of theirhusbands we endedup with such fatherswho advise theirdaughters . that theyhad been gifted awayto their husbands andthey belong to theirhusband’s place. Thisis the result ofour association withSanskrit.Periyar, cited in PeriyarChintahnaikal ActivityWhy does caste remainsuch a controversial issuetoday? What do youthink was the mostimportant movementagainst caste in colonialtimes?WOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM2022-23105

Organising for reformThe Brahmo SamajThe Brahmo Samaj, formed in 1830, prohibited all forms of idolatry and sacrifice,believed in the Upanishads, and forbade its members from criticising otherreligious practices. It critically drew upon the ideals of religions – especially ofHinduism and Christianity – looking at their negative andpositive dimensions.Fig. 16 – KeshubChunder Sen –one of the mainleaders of theBrahmo SamajDerozio and Young BengalHenry Louis Vivian Derozio, a teacher at Hindu College, Calcutta, in the1820s, promoted radical ideas and encouraged his pupils to question allauthority. Referred to as the Young Bengal Movement, his students attackedtradition and custom, demanded education for women and campaigned forthe freedom of thought and expression.Fig. 17Henry DerozioThe Ramakrishna Mission and Swami VivekanandaNamed after Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda’s guru, theRamakrishna Mission stressed the ideal of salvation through social serviceand selfless action.Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), whose original name was NarendraNath Dutta, combined the simple teachings of Sri Ramakrishna with hiswell founded modern outlook and spread them all over the world. Afterhearing him in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, theNew York Herald reported, “We feel how foolish it is to send missionariesto this learned nation”. Indeed, Swami Vivekananda was the first Indian inmodern times, who re-established the spiritual pre-eminence of the VedantaFig. 18 Swamiphilosophy on a global scale. But his mission was not simply to talk ofVivekanandareligion. He was extremely pained at the poverty and the misery of hiscountry men. He firmly believed that any reform could become successful only by uplifting thecondition of the masses. Therefore, his clarion call to the people of India was to rise above thenarrow 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. Hissense of nationalism was, however, not narrow in its conception. He was convinced that manyof the problems facing the mankind could only be overcome if the nations of the world cometogether on an equal footing. Therefore, his exhortation to the youth was to unite on the basisof a common spiritual heritage. In this exhortation he became truly ‘the symbol of a new spiritand a source of strength for the future’.The Prarthana SamajEstablished in 1867 at Bombay, the Prarthana Samaj sought to remove caste restrictions, abolishchild marriage, encourage the education of women, and end the ban on widow remarriage. Itsreligious meetings drew upon Hindu, Buddhist and Christian texts.The Veda SamajEstablished in Madras (Chennai) in 1864, the Veda Samaj was inspired by the Brahmo Samaj. Itworked 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 orthodoxHinduism.106OUR PASTS–III2022-23

The Aligarh MovementThe Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, founded by Sayyid AhmedKhan in 1875 at Aligarh, later became the Aligarh Muslim University.The institution offered modern education, including Western science, toMuslims. The Aligarh Movement, as it was known, had an enormous impactin the area of educational reform.The Singh Sabha MovementReform organisations of the Sikhs,the first Singh Sabhas were formedat Amritsar in 1873 and at Lahore in1879. The Sabhas sought to ridSikhism of superstitions, castedistinctions and practices seen bythem as non-Sikh. They promotededucation among the Sikhs, oftencombining modern instruction withSikh teachings.Fig. 19Sayyid Ahmed KhanFig. 20 – Khalsa College, Amritsar, established in 1892 by theleaders of the Singh Sabha movementELSEWHEREBlack slaves and white plantersYou have read about how Jyotirao Phule established a connection in his book Gulamgiribetween caste oppression and the practice of slavery in America. What was this systemof slavery?From the time that European explorers and traders landed in Africa in theseventeenth century, a trade in slaves began. Black people were captured and broughtfrom Africa to America, sold to white planters, and made to work on cotton andother plantations – most of them in the southern United States. In the plantationsthey had to work long hours, typically from dawn to dusk, punished fo

She Fig. 5Fig. 5Fig. 5 Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar Fig. 6 Fig. 6 Fig. 6 Fig. 6 – Students of Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya, 1875 When girls’ schools were first set up in the nineteenth century, it was generally believed that the curriculum for girls ought to be less taxing than that for