Social and Religious Reform: Causes and Overview
The 19th-century reform movements in India tried to remove social evils and revive religion through reason, and are called the Indian Renaissance or the Awakening.
Why the reform movements began
- Western education and ideas of reason, liberty and equality, brought by English-educated Indians.
- Contact with the West through missionaries, the printing press and the study of Indian texts by scholars such as William Jones and Max Muller.
- Social evils: sati, child marriage, caste discrimination, widow's misery, female infanticide, polygamy and the ban on sea voyages.
- Christian missionary criticism of Hinduism and Islam made Indians examine their own faiths.
- Rediscovery of the glorious past by Indian and European scholars.
Two approaches
| Approach | Idea | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Reformist | Reform society using reason and Western ideas | Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, Aligarh Movement, Young Bengal |
| Revivalist | Return to the pure old faith (the Vedas or the Quran) | Arya Samaj, Deoband, Wahabi, Faraizi |
Common features
- Both used reason and rejected blind belief; both wanted education, including women's education.
- Both attacked caste rigidity (in varying degrees), idolatry and superstition.
- Most were limited to the educated middle classes, but they produced the leaders of the later national movement.
Keep practising
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Prepared for exam revision from standard sources such as NCERT, Bipan Chandra, Spectrum and official records. Historians differ on some dates, figures and interpretations, so check your exam syllabus and a standard textbook. Found a mistake? Tell us.