SOCIO-RELIGIOUS REFORMS AND THE NATIONAL AWAKENING ‘

 I  regret to say,’ wrote Raja Rammohan Roy in 1828, ‘that the present system of religion adhered to by the Hindus is not well calculated to promote their political interest. The distinctions of castes introducing innumerable divisions and sub-divisions among them has entirely deprived them of patriotic feeling, and the multitude of religious rites and ceremonies and the laws of purification have totally disqualified them from undertaking any difficult enterprise. It is, I think, necessary that some change should take place in their religion at least for the sake of their political advantage and social comfort.” Written at a time when Indians had just begun to experience the ‘intellectual and cultural turmoil that characterized social life in nineteenth century India this represented the immediate Indian response.

The British conquest and the consequent dissemination of colonial culture and ideology had led to an inevitable introspection about the strengths and weaknesses of indigenous culture and institutions. The response, indeed, was varied but the need to reform social and religious life was a commonly shared conviction. The social base of this quest which has generally, but not altogether appropriately been called the renaissance, was the newly emerging middle class and the traditional as well as western educated intellectuals. The socio￾cultural regeneration in nineteenth century India was occasioned by the colonial presence, but not created by it.

The spirit of reform embraced almost the whole of India beginning with the efforts of Raja Rammohan Roy in Bengal leading to the formation of the Brahmo Samaj in 1828. Apart from the Brahmo Samaj, which has branches in several parts of the country, the Paramahansa Mandali and the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra and the Arya Samaj in Punjab and North India were some of the prominent movements among the Hindus.

There were several other regional and caste movements like the Kayasth Sabha in Uttar Pradesh and the Sarin Sabba in Punjab.

The backward castes also started the work of reformation with the Satya Sodhak Samaj in Maharashtra and the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sabha in Kerala. The Ahmadiya and Aligarh movements, the Singh Sabha and the Rehnumai Mazdeyasan Sabha represented the spirit of reform among the Muslims, the Sikhs and the Parsees respectively. Despite being regional in scope and content and confined to a particular religion, thei rgeneral perspectives were remarkably similar; they were regional and religious manifestations of a common Consciousness.

Although religious reformation ‘was a major concern of these movements, none of them were exclusively religious in character. Strongly humanist in inspiration, the idea of otherworldliness and salvation were not a part of their agenda;instead their attention was focused on worldly existence. RajaRammohan Roy was prepared to concede the possible existence of the other world mainly due to its utilitarian value. Akshay Kumar Dutt and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar were agnostics who refused to be drawn into any discussion on supernatural questions. Asked about the existence of God, Vidyasagar quipped that he had no time to think about God, since there was much to be done on earth. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Vivekananda emphasized the secular use of religion and used spirituality to take cognizance of the material conditions of human existence.

Given the inter-connection between religious beliefs and social practices, religious reformation was a necessary pre requisite for social reform. ‘The Hindu meets his religion at every turn. In eating, in drinking, moving, sitting, standing, he is to adhere to sacred rules, to depart from which is sin and impiety.’

Similarly, the social life of the Muslims was strongly influenced by religious tenets. Religion was the dominant ideology of the times and it was not possible to undertake any social action Without coming to grips with it.

Indian society in the nineteenth century was caught in a vicious web created by religious superstitions and social obscurantism. Hinduism, as Max Weber observed, had ‘become a compound of magic,animism and superstition’ and abominable rites like animal sacrifice and physical torture had replaced the worship of God.

The priests exercised an overwhelming and, indeed, unhealthy influence on the minds of the people. Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their Position. As suggested by Raja  Rammohan Roy, their monopoly of scriptural knowledge and of ritual interpretation imparted a deceptive character to all religious systems. The faithful lived in submission, not only to God, the powerful and unseen, but even to the whims, fancies and wishes of the priests. There was nothing that religious ideology could not persuade people to do — women even went to the extent of offering themselves to priests to satisfy their carnal pleasures.

Social conditions were equally depressing. The most distressing was the position of women. The birth of a girl was unwelcome, her marriage a burden and her widowhood inauspicious. Attempts to kill girl infants at birth were not unusual. Those who escaped this initial brutality were subject to fo the violence of marriage at a tender age. Often the marriage  was a device to escape social ignominy and, hence, marital life did not turn out to be a pleasant experience. An eighty-year-old Brahmin in Bengal had as many as two hundred wives, the youngest being just eight years old. Several women hardly had a married life worth the name, since their husbands participated in nuptial ceremonies for a consideration and rarely set eyes on their wives after that. Yet when their husbands died they were expected to commit Sati which Rammohan described as ‘murder according to every shasfra.’ If they succeeded in overcoming this social coercion, they were condemned, as widows, to life-long misery, neglect and humiliation.

Another debilitating factor was caste; it sought to maintain a system of segregation, hierarchically ordained on the basis of ritual status. The rules and regulations of caste hampered social mobility, fostered social divisions and sapped individual initiative.

Above all was the humiliation of untouchability which militated against human dignity.There were innumerable other practices marked by constraint, credulity, status, authority, bigotry and blind fatalism. Rejecting them as features of a decadent society, the reform movements sought to create a social climate for modernization. In doing so, they referred to a golden past when no such malaise existed. The nineteenth century situation was the result of an accretionary process; a distortion of a once ideal past. The reformers’ vision of the future, however, was not based on this idealization. It was only an aid and an instrument —

since practices based on faith cannot be challenged without

bringing faith itself into question. Hence, Raja Rammohan Roy,

demonstrated that sati had no religious sanction, Vidyasagar did

not ‘take up his pen in defence of widow marriage’ without being

convinced about Scriptural support and Dayanand based his

anti-casteism on Vedic authority.

This, however, did not mean a subjection of the present to

the past nor a blind resurrection of tradition ‘The dead and the

buried,’ maintained Mahadev Govind Ranade, the doyen of

reformers in Maharashtra, ‘are dead, buried, and burnt once for

all and the dead past cannot, therefore, be revived except by a

reformation of the old materials into new organized forms.’

Neither a revival of the past nor a total break with tradition was

contemplated.

*

Two important intellectual criteria which informed the

reform movements were rationalism and religious universalism.

Social relevance was judged by a rationalist critique. It is difficult

to match the uncompromising rationalism of the early Raja

Rammohan Roy or Akshay Kumar Dutt. Rejecting supernatural

explanations, Raja Rammohan Roy affirmed the principle of

causality linking the whole phenomenal universe. To him

demonstrability was the sole criterion of truth. In proclaiming

that rationalism is our only preceptor,’ Akshay Kumar went a

step further. All natural and social phenomena, he held, could be

analyzed and understood by purely mechanical processes. This

perspective not only enabled them to adopt a rational approach

to tradition but also to evaluate the contemporary socio-religious

practices from the standpoint of social utility and to replace faith

with rationality. In the Brahmo Samaj, it led to the repudiation of

the infallibility of the Vedas, and in the Aligarh Movement, to the reconciliation of the teachings of Islam with the needs of the

modern age. Holding that religious tenets were not immutable,

Syed Ahmed Khan emphasized the role of religion in the progress

of society: if religion did not keep pace with and meet the

demands of the time. It would get fossilized as in the case of

Islam in India.

The perspectives on reform were not always influenced by

religious Considerations A rational and secular outlook was very

much evident in Posing an alternative to prevalent social

practices. In advocating widow marriage and opposing polygamy

and child marriage, Akshay Kumar was not concerned about

religious sanction or whether they existed in the pa His

arguments were mainly based on their effects of Society. Instead

of depending on the scriptures, he cited medical Opinion against

Child marriage. He held very advanced ideas about marriage and

family: courtship before marriage, partnership and equality as

the basis of married life and divorce by both law and custom. In

Maharashtra, as compared to other regions, there was less

dependence on religion as an aid to social reform. To Gopal Han

Deshmukh, popularly known as Lokahitavadi whether social

reforms had the sanction of religion was immaterial. If religion

did not sanction these, he advocated that religion itself should be

changed as it was made by man and what was laid down, in the

scriptures need not necessarily be of contemporary relevance.

Although the ambit of reforms was particularistic, their

religious perspective was universalistic. Raja Rammohan Roy

considered different religions as national embodiments of

universal theism. The Brahmo Samaj was initially conceived by

him as a universalist church. He was a defender of the basic and

universal principles of all religions — the monotheism of the

Vedas and the Unitarianism of Christianity — and at the same

time attacked polytheism of Hinduism and the trinitarianism of

Christianity. Syed Ahmed Khan echoed the same idea: all

prophets had the same din (faith) and every country and nation

had different prophets. This perspective found clearer articulation

in Keshub Chandra Sen’s ideas. He said ‘our position is not that

truths are to be found in all religions, but all established religions

of the world are true.’ He also gave expression to the social

implications of this universalist perspective: ‘Whoever worships

the True God daily must learn to recognize all his fellow  countrymen as brethren. Caste would vanish in such a state of

society. If I believe that my God is one, and that he has created

us all, I must at the same time instinctively, and with all the

warmth of natural feelings, look upon all around me — whether

Parsees, Hindus, Mohammadans or Europeans — as my

brethern.’

The universalist perspective was not a purely philosophic

concern; it strongly influenced the political and social outlook of

the time, till religious particularism gained ground in the second

half of the nineteenth century. For instance, Raja Rammohan

Roy considered Muslim lawyers to be more honest than their

Hindu counterparts and Vidyasagar did not discriminate against

Muslims in his humanitarian activities. Even to Bankim, who is

credited with a Hindu outlook, dharma rather than religious

belonging was the criterion for determining superiority. Yet,

‘Muslim yoke’ and ‘Muslim tyranny’ were epithets often used to

describe the pre-colonial rule. This, however, was not a religious

but a political attitude, influenced by the arbitrary character of

pre-colonial political institutions. The emphasis was not on the

word ‘Muslim’ but on the word ‘tyranny.’ This is amply clear from

Syed Ahmed Khan’s description of the pre-colonial system: ‘The

rule of the former emperors and rajas was neither in accordance

with the Hindu nor the Mohammadan religion. It was based upon

nothing but tyranny and oppression; the law of might was that of

right; the voice of the people was not listened to’. The yardstick

obviously was not religious identity, but liberal and democratic

principles. This, however, does not imply that religious identity

did not influence the social outlook of the people; in fact, it did

very strongly. The reformers’ emphasis on universalism was an

attempt to contend with it. However, faced with the challenge of

colonial culture and ideology, universalism, instead of providing

the basis for the development of a secular ethos, retreated into

religious particularism.

The nineteenth century witnessed a cultural-ideological

struggle against the backward elements of traditional culture, on

the one hand, and the fast hegemonizing colonial culture and

ideology on the other. The initial refonning efforts represented the former. In the religious sphere they sought to remove idolatry,

polytheism and priestly monopoly of religious knowledge and to

simplify religious rituals. They were important not for purely

religious reasons but equally for their social implications. They

contributed to the liberation of the individual from conformity

born out of fear and from uncritical submission to the

exploitation of the priests. The dissemination of religious

knowledge through translation of religious texts into vernacular

languages and the right granted to the laity to interpret

scriptures represented an important initial breach in the

stranglehold of misinterpreted religious dogmas. The

simplification of rituals made worship a more intensely personal

experience without the mediation of intermediaries. The

individual was, thus, encouraged to exercise his freedom.

The socially debilitating influence of the caste system which

perpetuated social distinctions was universally recognized as an

area which called for urgent reform. It was morally and ethically

abhorrent, more importantly, it militated against patriotic feelings

and negated the growth of democratic ideas. Raja Rammohan

Roy initiated, in ideas but not in practice, the opposition which

became loud and clear as the century progressed. Ranade,

Dayanand and Vivekananda denounced the existing system of

caste in no uncertain terms. While the reform movements

generally stood for its abolition, Dayanand gave a utopian

explanation for chaturvarna (four-fold varna division of Hindu

society) and sought to maintain it on the basis of virtue. ‘He

deserves to be a Brahman who has acquired the best knowledge

and character, and an ignorant person is fit to be classed as a

shudra,’ he argued. Understandably the most virulent opposition

to caste came from lower caste movements. Jyotiba Phule and

Narayana Guru were two unrelenting critics of the caste system

and its consequences. A conversation between Gandhiji and

Narayana Guru is significant. Gandhiji, in an obvious reference

to Chaturvarna and the inherent differences in quality between

man and man, observed that all leaves of the same tree are not

identical in shape and texture. To this Narayana Guru pointed

out that the difference is only superficial, but not in essence: the

juice of all leaves of a particular tree would be the same in

content. It was he who gave the call — ‘one religion, one caste

and one God for mankind’ which one of his disciples, Sahadaran Ayyapan, changed into ‘no religion, no caste and no God for

mankind.’

The campaign for the improvement of the condition and

status of women was not a purely humanitarian measure either.

No reform could be really effective without changes in the

domestic conditions, the social space in which the initial

socialization of the individual took place. A crucial role in this

process was played by women. Therefore, there could be no

reformed men and reformed homes without reformed women.

Viewed from the standpoint of women, it was, indeed, a limited

perspective. Nevertheless it was realized that no country could

ever make ‘significant progress in civilization whose females were

sunk in ignorance.’

If the reform movements had totally rejected tradition,

Indian society would have easily undergone a process of

westernization. But the reformers were aiming at modernization

rather than westernization. A blind initiation of western cultural

norms was never an integral part of reform.

To initiate and undertake these reforms which today appear

to be modest, weak and limited was not an easy proposition. It

brought about unprecedented mental agony and untold domestic

and social tension. Breaking the bonds of tradition created

emotional and sentimental crises for men and women caught

between two worlds. The first widow marriage in Bengal attracted

thousands of curious spectators. To the first such couple in

Maharashtra the police had to give lathis to protect themselves!

Rukmabhai, who refused to accept her uneducated and

unaccomplished husband, virtually unleashed a storm. Faced

with the prospect of marrying a young girl much against his

conviction, Ranade spent several sleepless nights. So did

Lokahitavadi, Telang and a host of others who were torn between

traditional sentiments and modern commitments. Several

however succumbed to the former, but it was out of this struggle

that the new men and the new society evolved in India.

*

Faced with the challenge of the intrusion of colonial culture

and ideology, an attempt to reinvigorate traditional institutions and to realize the potential of traditional culture developed during

the nineteenth century. The initial expression of the struggle

against colonial domination manifested itself in the realm of

culture as a result of the fact that the principles on which the

colonial state functioned were not more retrogressive than those

of the pre-colonial state. All intrusions into the cultural realm

were more intensely felt. Therefore, a defence of indigenous

culture developed almost simultaneously with the colonial

conquest.

This concern embraced the entire cultural existence, the

way of life and all signifying practices like language, religion, art

and philosophy. Two features characterized this concern; the

creation of an alternate cultural-ideological system and the

regeneration of traditional institutions. The cultivation of

vernacular languages, the creation of an alternate system of

education, the efforts to regenerate Indian art and literature, the

emphasis on Indian dress and food, the defence of religion and

the attempts to revitalize the Indian system of medicine, the

attempt to probe the potentialities of pre-colonial technology and

to reconstruct traditional knowledge were some of the

expressions of this concern. The early inklings of this can be

discerned in Raja Rammohan Roy’s debates with the Christian

missionaries, in the formation and activities of Tattvabodhini

Sabha, in the memorial on education signed by 70,000

inhabitants of Madras and in the general resentment against the

Lex Loci Act (the Act proposed in 1845 and passed in 1850

provided the right to inherit ancestral property to Hindu converts

to Christianity). A more definite articulation, however, was in the

ideas and activities of later movements generally characterized as

conservative and revivalist. Strongly native in tendency, they

were clearly influenced by the need to defend indigenous culture

against colonial cultural hegemony. In this specific historical

sense, they were not necessarily retrogressive, for underlying

these efforts was the concern with the revival of the cultural

personality, distorted, if not destroyed, by colonial domination.

More so because it formed an integral element in the formation of

national consciousness. Some of these tendencies however, were

not able to transcend the limits of historical necessity and led to

a sectarian and obscurantist outlook. This was possibly a

consequence of the lack of integration between the cultural and political struggles, resulting in cultural backwardness, despite

political advance.

The cultural-ideological struggle, represented by the socio￾religious movements, was an integral part of the evolving national

consciousness. This was so because it was instrumental in

bringing about the initial intellectual and cultural break which

made a new vision of the future possible. Second, it was a part of

the resistance against colonial cultural and ideological hegemony.

Out of this dual struggle evolved the modern cultural situation:

new men, new homes and a new society.