SOCIO-RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENTS:GENERAL FEATURES Flashcards
Socio-religious reforms.
1. Indian society in the nineteenth century was caught in a vicious web created by religious superstitions and social obscurantism.
2. The practice of polygamy prevailed and in Bengal, under kulinism, even old men took very young girls as wives.
True/false?
- True
- True.
Who described sati as a “murder according to every shastra”?
Raja Rammohan Roy.
Who brought medical opinion to support his views against child marriage?
Akshay Kumar Dutt.
- According to Raja Rammohan Roya, the same method of investigation which applies to sciences should be the basis on which religion must justify itself.
- Swami Vivekananda defended the basic and universal principles of all religions—such as the monotheism of the Vedas and unitarianism of Christianity—while attacking the polytheism of Hinduism and trinitarianism of Christianity.
True/false?
- False, Swami Vivekananda.
- False, Raja Rammohan Roy.
Classification of reform movements?
- Reformist movements like Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj and the Aligarh movement.
- Revivalist movements like Arya Samaj and the Deoband movement.
Similarity and difference between reformist and revivalist movements?
- The reformist as well as the revivalist movement depended, to varying degrees, on an appeal to the lost purity of religion they sought to reform.
- The only difference between one reform movement and the other lay in the degree to which it relied on tradition or on reason and conscience.
Two point agenda of the social reform movements?
- Fight for the betterment of the status of women in society.
- Fight to remove disabilities arising out of untouchability.
Social reform movements.
1. Hindu women did not enjoy the right to inherit property or to terminate an undesirable marriage.
2. Muslim women could inherit property but only half as much as men could.
3. While in matters of divorce there was no equality between men and women.
4. Polygamy was prevalent among Hindus as well as Muslims.
True/false?
- True
- True
- True
- True.
Abolition of Sati?
- Raja Rammohan Roy.
- Government declared sati as illegal and punishable by criminal courts as culpable homicide.
- The regulation of 1828 (Regulation 17, A.D. 1829 of the Bengal Code) was applicable in the first instance to Bengal Presidency alone, but was later extended in slightly modified forms to Madras and Bombay Presidencies in 1830.
Preventing Female Infanticide?
- A common practice among upper class Bengalis and Rajputs.
- Bengal regulations of 1795 and 1804 declared infanticide illegal equivalent to murder.
- An act was passed in 1870 made it compulsory for parents to register the birth of all babies and provided for verification of female children for some years after birth.
Widow Remarriage Act?
- Top agenda of Brahmo Samaj.
- Efforts of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the principal of Sanskrit College, Calcutta, that the Hindu Widows Remarriage Act, 1856, was passed.
Jagannath Shankar Seth and ______ were among the active promoters of girls schools in Maharashtra.
Bhau Daji.
Who founded the Widow Remarriage Association?
Vishnu Shahtri Pandit in 1856.
Who started the Satya Prakash and why?
Karsondas Mulji started the Satya Prakash in Gujarati in 1852 to advocate widow remarriage.
Role of D.K. Karve in widow remarriage?
- He himself married a widow.
- Became the secretary of the Widow Remarriage Association.
- He opened a widows home in Poona to give the high caste widows an interest in life.
Native Marriage Act or Civil Marriage Act?
- 1872, Signified legislative action in prohibiting child marrriage.
- Limited impact as the Act was not applicable to Hindus, Muslims and other recognized faiths.
Age of Consent Act?
- B.M. Malabari
- 1891
- Forbade the marriage of girls below 12.
