இந்தக் கட்டுரையில், TNPSC குரூப் 1, குரூப் 2, குரூப் 2A, குரூப் 4 மாநிலப் போட்டித் தேர்வுகளான TNUSRB, TRB, TET, TNEB போன்றவற்றுக்கான முறைகள் இலவசக் குறிப்புகளைப் பெறுவீர்கள்.தேர்வுக்கு தயாராவோர் இங்குள்ள பாடக்குறிப்புகளை படித்து பயன்பெற வாழ்த்துகிறோம்.
Islamic Reform Movements
The Revolt of 1857 and its brutal suppression by the British had an adverse impact on
the Muslims of South Asia.
While they were viewed with suspicion by the British for the 1857 insurgency, the
Muslims themselves withdrew into a shell and did not use the opportunities opened up
by colonial modernity.
Consequently, they lagged behind in education and attendant employment
opportunities.
In this context, a few decades later, some reform movements emerged among the
Muslims.
Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan
As Indian Muslims steadily lost ground in education, in the public services, and in
general leadership in India, there was a realization that there was no alternative but to
accept modern education if the community was to go on the path of progress.
The man who gave life and soul to it was Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817–98).
Born in Delhi into a noble Muslim family, Sayyid Ahmed Khan thought that lack of
education, especially modern education, had harmed the Muslims greatly and kept
them backward.
He exhorted the Muslims to accept Western science and take up government services.
He founded a scientific society and translated many English books, especially science
books, into Urdu.
He believed that the interest of the Muslims would be best served if they bonded with
the British Government rather than pitch in with the rising nationalist movement.
So he advised the Muslims to take to English education and to concentrate on it.
Aligarh Movement (1875)
The Aligarh Movement was started by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan for the social and
educational advancement of the Muslims in India.
He fought against medieval backwardness and advocated a rational approach towards
religion.
He wanted to reconcile Western scientific education with the teachings of the Quran.
The Aligarh movement aimed at spreading:
i. Modern education among Indian Muslims without weakening their allegiance to
Islam, and
ii. Social reforms among Muslims relating to purdah, polygamy, and divorce.
Syed’s progressive social ideas were propagated through his magazine Tahdhib-ul-
Akhluq (Improvement of Manners and Morals).
He said that the Hindus and Muslims are two eyes of the beautiful bird that was India.
In 1864, he founded the Scientific Society of Aligarh for the introduction of Western
sciences through translations into Urdu of works on physical sciences.
The same year he founded a modern school at Ghazipur.
In 1868, he promoted the formation of education committees in several districts, to
initiate modern education among the Muslims.
During his visit to Europe in 1869–70, he developed the plans of his life-work, a major
educational institution for Indian Muslims.
In order to promote English education among the Muslims, he founded in 1875 a
modern school at Aligarh, which soon developed into the Muhammadan Anglo–Oriental
College (1877). This college was to become the Muslim University after his death in
1920.
It became the nursery of Muslim political and intellectual leaders.
In 1886, Syed Ahmad Khan founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Educational
Conference as a general forum for spreading liberal ideas among the Indian Muslims.
He rejected blind adherence to religious law and asked for a reinterpretation of the
Quran in the light of reason to suit the new trends of the time.
Ahmadiya Movement (1889)
The Ahmadiya Movement, founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed (1835–1908) in 1889,
established a different trend.
While emphasising the return to the original principles enunciated in the Quran, Ghulam
Ahmed became controversial when he claimed to be a Messiah, which was considered
heretical by mainstream Islam.
But he won many converts. His primary work was to defend Islam against the polemics
of the Arya Samaj and the Christian missionaries.
In social morals, the Ahmadiya movement was conservative, adhering to polygamy, the
veiling of women, and the classical rules of divorce.
The Deoband Movement (1866)
The Deoband Movement was organised by the orthodox section among the Muslim
ulemas as a revivalist movement with the twin objectives:
i. to propagate among the Muslims the pure teachings of the Quran and the Hadis
ii. to keep alive the spirit of jihad against the foreign rulers.
The movement was established in Deoband in Saharanpur district (by Mohammad
Qasim Nanotavi (1833–77) and Rashid Ahmed Gangohi (1828–1905) to train religious
leaders for the Muslim community.
They founded the school at Deoband in the Saharanpur district of the U.P in 1866. The
school curricula shut out English education and western culture. The instruction
imparted was in the original Islamic religion and the aim was moral and religious
regeneration of the Muslim community.
In contrast to the Aligarh Movement, which aimed at the welfare of Muslims through
Western education and support of the British Government, the aim of the Deoband
Movement was the religious regeneration of the Muslim community. The instruction
imparted at Deoband adhered to classical Islamic tradition.
Maulana Mahmud-ul-Hassan (1851-1920) became the new Deoband leader. The Jamait-
Ul-Ulema (council of theologians) led by him gave a concrete shape to Hassan’s ideas of
protection of the religious and political rights of the Muslims in the overall context of
Indian unity.
The seminary at Deoband was founded in 1867 by theologians of the School of Wali-
Allah.
Muhammad Qasim Nanotavi took a prominent part in counter-polemics against the
Christian missionaries and the Arya Samajists.
The principal objectives of the seminary at Deoband were to re-establish contact
between the theologians and the educated Muslim middle classes, and to revive the
study of Muslim religious and scholastic sciences.
As a religious university Deoband soon became an honoured institution, not only in
Muslim India but also in the world of Islam at large.
In the political arena, Deoband School welcomed the formation of the All India National
Congress in 1885. In 1888, Deoband Ulema issued a fatwa against Syed Ahmed Khan’s
organizations, the United Patriotic Association and the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental
Association.
Parsi Reform Movements
Zoroastrians, persecuted in their Persian homeland, migrated in large numbers to the
west coast of India in the tenth century.
As a trading community, they flourished over the centuries.
A close-knit community, it too was not left untouched by the reform movements of the
nineteenth century.
The Parsi Religious Reform Association was founded at Bombay by Furdunji Naoroji and
S.S. Bengalee in 1851.
The Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabha (Religious Reform Association) was founded in 1851
by a group of English-educated Parsis for the “regeneration of the social conditions of
the Parsis and the restoration of the Zoroastrian religion to its pristine purity”.
The movement had Furdonji Naoroji, Dadabhai Naoroji, K.R.Cama and S.S.Bengalee as
its leaders.
The message of reform was spread by the newspaper Rast-Goftar (Truth Teller).
They advocated the spread of women’s education.
They also wanted to reform their marriage customs.
Naoroji published a monthly journal, Jagat Mithra.
Behramji Malabari organized a campaign for legislation against the practice of child
marriage.
The community produced many leaders such as Pherozeshah Mehta and Dinshaw
Wacha who played a big role in the early Congress.
Parsi religious rituals and practices were reformed and the Parsi creed redefined.
In the social sphere, attempts were made to uplift the status of Parsi women through
education, removal of the purdah, raising the age of marriage and the like.
Gradually, the Parsis emerged as the most westernised section of Indian society.
They played a key role in the nationalist movement and in the industrialisation of India.
Sikh Reform Movements
The Sikh community could not remain untouched by the rising tide of rationalist and
progressive ideas of the nineteenth century.
The Singh Sabha Movement was formed in 1873, with a two-fold objective
To make available modern western education to the Sikhs.
To counter the proselytizing activities of Christian missionaries as well as Hindu
revivalists.
They helped to set up the Khalsa College at Amritsar in 1892.
They also encouraged Gurmukhi and Punjabi literature.
Singh Sabha was a forerunner of the Akali Movement.
The Akali movement aimed at liberating the Sikh Gurudwara from the corrupt control of
the Udasi Mahants (priests).
The Government passed the Sikh Gurudwara Act in 1922 (amended in 1925), which gave
control to Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) as the main body.
Baba Dayal Das, founder of the Nirankari Movement, stressed the worship of god as
Nirankar (formless).
Rejection of idols, rejection of rituals associated with idolatry, reverence for the
authority of Guru Nanak and of the Adi Granth formed the essence of his teachings.
He reiterated the prohibition on meat-eating, and liquor consumption.
The Namdhari Movement, founded by Baba Ram Singh, was another socio-religious
movement among the Sikhs.
The Namdharis insisted on wearing the symbols of Sikhism except the kirpan (sword).
Instead Baba Ram Singh wanted his followers to carry a lathi.
It considered both men and women equal and accepted widow remarriage.
It prohibited the dowry system and child marriage.
Christian Missionaries:
The official religious policy of the East India Company was one of the neutrality towards
the native religions.
Their reason for continuing this policy was the belief that the earlier Portuguese rule
had come to an end because of their attempts to forcibly convert people to Christianity.
As a result of this concern, the Company government prohibited the entry of
missionaries into the territories under their control.
In 1793 William Carey and John Thomas, both Baptists, set out to India with the
intention of starting a missionary.
In view of the ban on missionary activity, they settled down in the Danish Colony of
Serampore, north of Calcutta.
Carey, along with two other missionaries, Joshua Marshman and William Ward
established the Serampore Missionary in 1799.
The Serampore missionaries were the first evangelical Baptist missionaries in India.
They were followed later by other missionary groups belonging to different Protestant
denominations.
Before the arrival of the Serampore missionaries, several centuries earlier, there were
Christian missionaries in the Portuguese territory of Goa, and also on the Malabar Coast
and the Coromandel Coast.
The work of the earlier missionaries was limited both geographically and in terms of the
number of conversions to Christianity. Thus major attempts at proselytization began
during the nineteenth century.
The missionaries organised schools for the socially and economically deprived and
pleaded for their economic improvement through employment in the state service.
They also fought for their ‘civil rights’ that included access to public roads, and
permission for the women of these groups to wear upper garments.
The missionaries gave shelter to orphaned children and other destitute widows in their
missions and provided education for them in their boarding schools.
Particularly after the famines, which were quite common during the nineteenth century,
the missionaries organized relief.
Providing shelter and succour gave these an opportunity to convert people to
Christianity.
In Tirunelveli district, many villages took to Christianity during famines, especially in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century.
It must be noted that the Christian Missionaries took the initiative of establishing
Hospitals and Dispensaries.
Impact of Reform Movements
Raja Ram Mohan Roy worked for English East India Company till 1814. He built many
schools and founded Calcutta College.
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