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.
Social and Religious Reform Movement
Introduction
By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, India had produced a small English-
educated intelligentsia, closely associated with British administration or British trade.
The ideas and the work of the Christian missionaries had already begun to have its
impact.
Bengal was the first province to be affected by the British influence and so it was here
that several ideas of reform originated.
British administration, English education, and European literature brought India a new
wave of thoughts that challenged traditional knowledge.
Rationalism as the basis for ethical thinking, the idea of human progress and evolution,
the concept of natural rights associated with the enlightenment, were the new ideas
that led to what has been termed as Indian Renaissance.
The spread of printing technology played a crucial role in the diffusion of ideas.
Emergence of Reform Movements
The British characterised Indian society in the nineteenth century as being caught in a
vicious circle of superstitions and obscurantism.
In their view, idolatry and polytheism reinforced orthodoxy impelling the people to
follow them blindly.
The social conditions were equally depressing and the condition of women was
deplorable.
The practice of Sati came in for particular condemnation. The division of society
according to birth resulting in the caste system was also criticised.
Most importantly, the British argued that without their intervention, there was no
possibility of deliverance from these evils for Indians.
Needless to say, this was a self-serving argument articulated by missionaries and
utilitarians to justify British rule.
Utilitarians: believers in the doctrine of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
India was a much bigger, more complex, and diverse country in the early nineteenth
century. Conditions varied vastly across it.
The social and cultural evils had been fought by Indian reformers through the ages. But
the advent of the British with their Enlightenment ideas undoubtedly posed a new
challenge.
The development of the Western culture and ideology forced the traditional institutions
to revitalise themselves.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the expression of protest and desire
for change were articulated through various reform movements.
These movements aimed at reforming and democratising the social institutions and
religious outlook of the Indian people.
The emergence of new economic forces, spread of education, growth of nationalist
sentiment, influence of modern Western thoughts, ideas and culture, and awareness of
the changes taking place in Europe strengthened the resolve to reform.
This perspective enabled them to adopt a rational approach to tradition and evaluate
the contemporary socio-religious practices from the standpoint of social utility.
For example, Raja Rammohun Roy repudiated the infallibility of the Vedas and during
the Aligarh Movement, Syed Ahmed Khan emphasised that religious tenets were not
immutable.
As Keshab Chandra Sen said, ‘Our position is not that truths are to be in all religions, but
that all established religions of the World are true.’
These movements enveloping the entire cultural stream of Indian society brought about
significant practices in the realms of language, religion, art and philosophy.
These reform movements can be broadly classified into two categories:
Reformist Movements
Revivalist Movements
Both the movements depended in varying degrees on an appeal to the lost purity of
religion.
The primary difference between them lay in the degree to which they relied on tradition
or on reason and conscience.
The social reform movements formed an integral part of the religious reforms primarily
because all the efforts towards social ills like caste- and gender-based inequality derived
legitimacy from religion.
Initially, the social reform movement had a narrow social base – they were limited to
the upper and middle strata of the society that tried to adjust their modernized views to
the existing social reality.
From then on, the social reform movements began to percolate to the lower strata of
society to reconstruct the social fabric.
Heated debates among the intellectuals expressed in the form of public arguments,
tracts and journals played a big role in taking new ideas to large sections of the people,
as well as to reformulate older ideas in a new form.
At the start, organizations such as the Social Conference, Servants of India, and the
Christian missionaries were instrumental in giving an impetus to the social reform
movements along with many enlightened individuals about whom we dwell on in the
following pages.
In later years, especially by the twentieth century, the national movement provided the
leadership and organisation for social reform.
Brahmo Samaj and Prathana Samaj
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833)
Raja Rammohan Roy was born in 1772 in the Hooghly district of Bengal.
He was one of the earlier reformers influenced by the western ideas to initiate reforms.
He was a great scholar, well-versed in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, French, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew and English, apart from his knowledge in his mother tongue, Bengali.
“Precepts of Jesus Christ”, “The Guide to Peace and Happiness” were some of them.
Rammohan Roy started the first Bengali weekly Samvad Kaumudi and edited a Persian
weekly Mirat-ul-akhbar.
Rammohan Roy opposed meaningless religious ceremonies and all forms of pernicious
social customs. Yet, he wanted to preserve continuity with the past.
In his religio–philosophical social outlook, he was deeply influenced by monotheism and
anti-idolatry.
Based on his interpretation of the Upanishads, he argued that all the ancient texts of the
Hindus preached monotheism or worship of one God.
He is considered as the ‘first modern man of India’.
He was a pioneer of socio-religious reform movements in modern India.
His tract written in 1818, A Conference Between an Advocate for and an Opponent of
the Practice of Burning Widows cited sacred texts to prove that no religion sanctioned
the burning alive of widows.
His campaign played a key role in forcing the Governor-General William Bentinck’s
legislation to abolish sati in 1829.
His efforts fructified, and the Company through an enactment of law (1829) declared
the practice of sati a crime.
He joined the service of East India Company in 1805 and continued the same up to
1814.
In 1815, he established the Atmiya Sabha.
Later, it was developed into the Brahmo Sabha in August 1828.
Through this organisation, he preached that there is only one God.
He combined the teachings of the Upanishads, the Bible and the Koran in developing
unity among the people of different religions.
The work of the Atmiya Sabha was carried on by Maharishi Debendranath Tagore
(father of Rabindranath Tagore), who renamed it as Brahmo Samaj.
He turned the Brahmo Samaj into a leading social organisation of India.
In 1817, he founded the Hindu College (now Presidency College, Calcutta) along with
David Hare, a missionary. He also set up schools for girls.
In 1828, he founded the Brahmo Samaj, and on 20 August 1828 he opened a temple in
Calcutta, where there was no image.
There he laid down that ‘no religion should be reviled or slightly or contemptuously
spoken off or alluded to.’ The Samaj forbade idol-worship and condemned meaningless
religious rites and ceremonies.
He went to England to represent the cause of the Mughal Emperor Akbar II for an
enhanced allowance.
He was given the title of “Raja” by the Mughal Emperor.
He was called as “Herald of New Age” in India.
He was also called as “Father of Indian Renaissance”.
Inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, Rammohan Roy left for Europe and died
in Bristol in 1833.
The Brahmo Samaj (1828)
Raja Rammohan Roy established the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in August 1828 in order
to purify Hinduism and to preach monotheism.
The overall contribution of Brahmo Samaj can be summed up as follows
It denounced polytheism, idol worship, and the faith in divine avatars (incarnations).
It condemned the caste system, dogmas and superstitions.
It wanted the abolition of child marriage, purdah system, and the practice of Sati.
It supported widow remarriage.
However, from the beginning, the appeal of the Brahmo Samaj remained limited to the
intellectuals and enlightened Bengalis.
After his death, there was a steady decline, but a new life was given to it by
Devendranath Tagore (father of Rabindranath Tagore).
After him, the organisation was taken forward by Keshab Chandra Sen from 1857.
The strength of the organisation is known from the number of branches it had in 1865,
54 Samajas (fifty in Bengal, two in North West Province, one each in Punjab and
Madras).
In course of time, the Brahmo Samaj broke into two namely Devendranath Tagore’s,
‘Brahmo Samaj of India’ and Keshub Chandra Sen’s ‘Sadharan Brahmo Samaj’.
In Tamilnadu, Saidai Kasi Viswanatha Mudaliar was an adherent of the Samaj and he
wrote a play titled ‘Brahmo Samaja Natakam’ to expound the ideas of the Samaj.
He also wrote a tract in support of widow remarriage. In 1864, a Tamil journal titled
‘Tathuva Bodhini’ was started for the cause of the Brahmo Samaj.
Maharishi Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905)
After the death of Rammohan Roy in 1833, Maharishi Debendranath Tagore
(1817–1905), the poet Rabindranath Tagore’s father, carried on the work.
He laid down four articles of faith:
In the beginning, there was nothing. The one Supreme Being alone existed who
Created the Universe.
He alone is the god of truth, infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, eternal,
omnipresent, the one without second.
Our salvation depends on belief in him and in his worship in this world and the next.
Belief consists of loving him and doing his will.
Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–84)
Debendranath was a moderate reformer. But his younger colleagues in the Sabha were
for rapid changes.
The greatest of these, Keshab Chandra Sen, (1838–84) joined the movement in 1857.
He was greatly influenced by Christianity, believing in its spirit.
But in 1866 a split occurred in the ranks of Brahmo Samaj. Keshab left the Samaj and
founded a new organisation.
Debendranath’s organisation, thereafter, came to be known as ‘Adi Brahmo Samaj’.
After Keshab had his fourteen-year-old daughter married to an Indian prince, in
contravention of the Samaj’s condemnation of child marriages, the opponents of child
marriage left the Brahmo Samaj of India and started the Sadharan Samaj, which
developed anti-Christian tendencies.
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891)
Another outstanding reformer in Bengal was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891).
While Ram Mohan Roy and others looked to western rationalist ideas to reform society,
Vidyasagar argued that the Hindu scriptures were progressive.
He provided evidence from scriptures that there was no sanction for burning of widows
or for the prohibition on the remarriage of widows. He wrote a number of polemical
tracts.
He was the pioneer of modern Bengali prose.
He played a leading role in promoting the education of girls and helped them in setting
up a number of schools.
He dedicated his whole life for the betterment of the child widows of the Hindu society.
The movement led by Vidyasagar, resulted in the Widows’ Remarriage Reform Act of
1856.
This Act was intended to improve a lot of child widows and save them from perpetual
widowhood.
It was also to the credit of Vidyasagar that the first age of consent Act was enacted in
1860. The age for marriage was fixed as ten years.
It was raised to twelve and thirteen years in 1891 and 1925 respectively.
Sadly, as reported in the Age of Consent Committee (1929), the law remained on paper.
The knowledge of it was confined to judges, lawyers and a few educated men.
The Prarthana Samaj (1867)
The Prarthana Samaj was founded in 1867 in Bombay by Dr. Atmaram Pandurang
(1823– 98).
It was an offshoot of Brahmo Samaj.
It was a reform movement within Hinduism and concentrated on social reforms like
inter-dining, inter-marriage, widow remarriage and uplift of women and depressed
classes.
Justice M.G. Ranade and R.G. Bhandarkar joined it in 1870 and infused new strength to
it.
The National Social Conference, organised at the initiative of M.G. Ranade(1852-1901)
met each year immediately after the Indian National Congress (1885) annual sessions.
Justice Ranade was an erudite scholar with a keen intellect and under his able guidance,
the Prarthana Samaj became the active centre of a new social reformation in western
India.
Ranade (1842–1901) was the founder of,
The Widow Marriage Association (1861)
The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870)
The Deccan Education Society (1884)
While the above reformers worked among the upper castes, during the same time,
Jyotiba Phule worked for the upliftment of depressed castes and the cause of women.
His book Gulamgiri (‘Slavery’) is an important work that condemned the inequities of
caste.
When Ranade died in 1901, his leadership was taken over by Chandravarkar.
Arya Samaj
The founder of the Arya Samaj was Dayananda Saraswati (1824–83).
Dayananda, a Gujarati, left home in his youth to become an ascetic.
He wandered around India for seventeen years.
In 1863, he became a wandering preacher, and five years later he added the
establishment of schools to his activities.
In 1872, he met the Brahmo Samaj members in Calcutta.
In 1875, he founded the Arya Samaj and published his major work, the Satyarth Prakash.
In his view, contemporary Hinduism had become degenerated.
Therefore he rejected puranas, polytheism, idolatry, the role of Brahmin priests,
pilgrimages, many rituals, and the prohibition on widow marriage.
As a good Sanskrit scholar, he made a call “Back to the Vedas”.
He wanted to shape society on the basis of the Vedas, at the same time, disregarded the
Puranas.
Like the other social reformers, he encouraged female education and remarriage of
widows.
Swami Dayananda’s sphere of influence was largely in the Punjab region.
The trading community of Khatris experienced great mobility in colonial times.
However, in the Punjab region, there was much communal conflict among Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs.
Dayananda’s Shuddi (purification) movement, i.e., conversion of non-Hindus to Hindus,
was controversial and provoked controversies, especially with the Ahmadiya movement.
Arya Samaj is considered to be a revivalist movement. Dayananda’s influence continued
into the twentieth century through the establishment of Dayanand Anglo Vedic (DAV)
schools and colleges.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Ramakrishna (l836–86), a simple priest of Dakshineswar near Kolkata, emphasised the
spiritual union with God through ecstatic practices such as singing bhajans.
An ardent worshipper of goddess Kali, the sacred mother, he declared that the
manifestations of the divine mother were infinite.
In his view, all religions contain the universal elements which, if practised, would lead to
salvation.
He said, “Jiva is Siva” (all living beings are God).
Service for man, must be regarded as service to God.’
Ramakrishna Mission
Bengal participated in the early reform movements questioning and criticising tradition
very strongly.
In response to this emerged the Ramakrishna Mission in the memory of Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa.
He had a deep faith in the inherent truth of all religions and tested its belief by
performing religious service in accordance with the practices of different religions.
According to him, ‘all the religious views are but different ways to lead to the same
goal’.
In a backlash, the later generation of Western-educated intellectuals was drawn to
Ramakrishna’s broad view, mysticism and spiritual fervour.
He expounded his views in short stories and admirable parables.
They were compiled by an admirer as Ramakrishna Kathamrita (‘The Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna’).
The most famous among his disciples was a young graduate of the Calcutta University
named Narendranath Dutta, afterwards famously called Swami
Vivekananda(1863–1902).
Following the organisational structure of Christian missionaries, Vivekananda
established the Ramakrishna Mission.
It did not restrict itself to religious activities.
It actively involved in social causes such as education, health care and relief in times of
calamities.
He carried Ramakrishna’s message all over India and the world.
His learning, eloquence, spiritual fervour, and personality gathered around him a band
of followers across the country, many of whom also joined the national movement.
He attended the famous, ‘Parliament of Religions’ at Chicago in 1893, and made a deep
impact on those congregated there.
Swami Vivekananda
Narendra Nath Datta (l863–1902), later known as Swami Vivekananda, was the prime
follower of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.
As an educated youth, he was drawn to Ramakrishna’s message.
Dissatisfied with conventional philosophical positions and practices, he advocated the
practical Vedanta of service to humanity and attacked the tendency to defend every
institution simply because it was connected with religion.
He emphasised a cultural nationalism and made a call to Indian youth to regenerate
Hindu society.
His ideas bred a sense of self-confidence among Indians who felt inferior in relation to
the materialist achievements of the West.
He became famous for his addresses on Hinduism at the 1893 World Congress of
Religions in Chicago.
Despite his fame, he was condemned by orthodox Hindus for suggesting that the lower
castes should be allowed to engage in the Hindu rituals from which they were
traditionally excluded.
Vivekananda’s activist ideology rekindled the desire for political change among many
western-education young Bengalis.
Many of the youths who were involved in the militant nationalist struggle during the
Swadeshi movement following the Partition of Bengal were inspired by Vivekananda.
The Mission opened schools, dispensaries, and orphanages and helped people during
their time of distress caused by calamities.
Swami Vivekananda was a personification of youth and boldness and referred to as the
Morning Star of Modern India.
In the words of Valentine Chirol, ‘the first Hindu whose personality won demonstrative
recognition abroad for India’s ancient civilization and for her newborn claim to
nationhood.
Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society was found by a Russian Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831–1891)
and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), an American colonel in the USA in 1875 to preach
about God and Wisdom (“Theos” means “God” and “Sophos” means “Wisdom”).
They came to India in 1879 and established their headquarters at Adyar in 1886.
Under the leadership of Annie Besant, who came to India in 1893, the Theosophical
Society gathered strength and won many adherents across South India.
Their main objectives were to form a universal brotherhood of man without any
distinction of race, colour, or creed and to promote the study of ancient religions and
philosophies.
Mrs. Annie Besant found the Central Hindu School along with Madan Mohan Malaviya
at Benaras, which later developed into the Banaras Hindu University.
Theosophical Society stimulated a study of the Hindu classics, especially the Upanishads
and the Bhagavad Gita.
The Theosophical Society also played an important role in the revival of Buddhism in
India. Western interest in Hindu scriptures gave educated Hindus great pride in their
tradition and culture.
Though involved in many controversies, the Society played an important role in the
revival of Buddhism in India.
Iyotheethoss Pandithar, the radical Dalit thinker, was introduced to modern Buddhism
through his interaction with Colonel Olcott.
Olcott took him to Sri Lanka. There he met many Buddhist monks, including the
renowned revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala and Acharya Sumangala.
Contribution of Annie Besant
In India, the movement became further popular with the election of Annie Besant
(1847–1933) as its President after the death of Olcott.
At Adyar, she established a big library in which she preserved the rare books of Sanskrit.
She played a role in Indian nationalist politics and formed the Home Rule League
demanding home rule to India on the lines of Ireland.
Annie Besant spread Theosophical ideas through her newspapers called ‘New India’ and
‘Commonweal’.
Thus Theosophical Society has played a leading role in the Indian Renaissance.
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