Our Past Iii Part Ii Chapter 9 Women, Caste And Reform

These people supported the following ideas:

(i) Spread of education among women.

(ii) Widow remarriage.

(iii) Caste equality and justice.

(iv) Abolition of child marriage.

(v) Social equality for untouchables.

(vi)Self respect movement for untouchables

(vii)women's education

(viii)Widow remarriage

The reformers who were well versed in Sanskrit, Persian and several other Indian and Europeon languages, tried to show through their writings and tried to convince people that the practices such as widow burning, caste distinctions, child marriage, etc had no sanction in ancient texts.

Their knowledge of ancient texts gave them immense confidence and moral support which they utilised in promoting new laws. They did not get feared when people raised voice against the reforms they had brought.

The Christian missionaries were suspected of being  involved in forced conversion of the poor and tribal people from Hinduism to Christianity.

Yes, they provided the oppurtunity to the poor to study in school which were being set up by them.

Jyotirao attacked the Brahmans, claim that they were superior to others because they were Aryans.

(i)Phule argued that the Aryans were outsiders. They came from outside the sub-continent, and defeated and subjugated the true children of the country—those who had lived here from before the coming of the Aryans.

(ii)These Aryans established their dominance and began looking at the defeated population as low-caste people.

(iii)Phule opined that the ‘upper’ castes had no right to their land and power. The land, in fact, belonged to the natives, who were considered as low-caste people.

Phule dedicated his book to all those Americans who had fought to free slaves. He did this in order to establish a link between the conditions of the lower castes in India and the black slaves in America.

Ambedkar sole purpose behind these movements was to make people see the power of caste prejudices within society.

They were critical of the national movement because the nationalists had made seating arrangements according to caste distinctions at feasts. The lower castes were made to sit at a distance from the upper castes.

Their criticism helped the national struggle to a great extent. Ramaswamy Naicker inspired the untouchables to fight for their diginity by initiating the Self Respect Movement.

B.

Raja Rammohan Roy

D.

1829

B.

Pandita Ramabai

B.

Shudras

A.

Self Respect Movement

C.

Sayyid Ahmed Khan

18 years

16 years

Madigas

Stripurushtulna

Sanskrit

Persian

Ghasidas

Slavery

Bhopal

People like Rammohun Roy were described as reformers because they felt that changes were necessary in society, and unjust practices needed to be done away with.

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Reforms thought that the best way to ensure reforms was by persuading people to give up old practices and adopt a new way of life.

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The practice of widow burning.

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Traders and moneylenders were referred as Vaishyas.

Raja Rammohan Roy was social reformer. He was well versed in Sanskrit, Persian and several other Indian and European languages. 

He founded a reform association known as the Brahmo Sabha (later known as the Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta.

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It was a popular festival in which devotees underwent a peculiar form of suffering as part of ritual worship. With hooks pierced through their skin they swung themselves on a wheel.

Mumtaz Ali was a social reformer who reinterpreted verses from the Koran to argue for the education of women.

Tarabai Shinde had published Stripurushtulna. It is about the social differences between men and women.

Widows’ home at Poona  provided shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands’ relatives. Here women were trained so that they could support themselves economically.

Christian missionaries had set up schools for tribal groups and lower caste children. These children were equipped with some resources to make their way into a changing world.

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The leatherworkers were traditionally held in contempt since they work with dead animals which are seen as dirty and polluting.

Madigas were an important untouchable caste of
present-day Andhra Pradesh. They were experts at cleaning hides, tanning them for use and sewing sandals.

Untouchables were not allowed to enter temples, draw water from the wells used by the upper castes, or bathe in ponds where upper castes bathed. They were seen as inferior human beings.

The Satyashodhak Samaj was an association that propagated caste equality. It was founded by Jyotirao Phule.

E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker had left the congress in disgust when he found that at a feast organised by nationalists, seating arrangements followed caste distinctions – that is, the lower castes were made to sit at a distance from the upper castes.

There was a misconception among the upper-caste that untouchables would pollute the rooms where their children were taught.

He tried to show through his writings that the practice of widow burning had no sanction in ancient texts.

From the early twentiethcentury, Muslim womenlike the Begums of Bhopal played a notable role in promoting education among women.

They founded a primary school for girls at Aligarh. Another remarkable woman, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started schools for Muslim girls in Patna and Calcutta. She was a fearless critic of conservative ideas, arguing that religious leaders of every faith accorded an inferior place to women

Pandita Ramabai was a great scholar of Sanskrit. She had felt that Hinduism very oppressive towards women and wrote a book about the miserable lives of Hindu women belonging to upper caste. 

She founded a widows’ home at Poona to provide
shelter to widows who had been treated badly by their husbands’ relatives. Here women were trained so that they could support themselves economically.

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E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker belonged to a middle-class family. He had been an ascetic in his early life and had studied Sanskrit scriptures carefully. 

In most regions, people were divided along lines of caste.

(i)Brahmans and Kshatriyas considered themselves as “upper castes”.

(ii)Others, such as traders and moneylenders (often referred to as Vaishyas) were placed after them.

(iii)Then came peasants, and artisans such as weavers and potters (referred to as Shudras).

(iv)At the lowest rung were those who laboured to keep cities and villages clean or worked at jobs that upper castes considered “polluting”, that is, it could lead to the loss of caste status.

(v)The upper castes also treated many of these groups at the bottom as “untouchable”. They were not allowed to enter temples, draw water from the wells used by the upper castes, or bathe in ponds where upper castes bathed. They were seen as inferior human beings.

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The reasons are:

(i)One important reason for this was the development of new forms of communication. For the first time, books, newspapers, magazines, leaflets and pamphlets were printed.

(ii)These were far cheaper and far more accessible than the manuscripts. Therefore ordinary people could read these, and many of them could also write and express their ideas in their own languages.

(iii)All kinds of issues – social, political, economic and religious – could now be debated and discussed by men (and sometimes by women as well) in the new cities. The discussions could reach out to a wider public, and could become linked to movements for social change.

(i)The advocate of sati, considered women to be of inferior understanding without resolution and unworthy of trust. 

(ii)The opponent accused the society of not afford ing them a fair opportunity of exhibiting their natural capacity. It was wrong to consider women to be inferior without educating them.

(i)Ambedkar was a dalit leader who was born into Mahar family. 

(ii)Hindu society should be reorganised on the basis of two principles— equality and absence of casteism.

(i) In 1929, the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed to prevent the practice of child marriage.
(ii) According to the Act no man below the age of 18 and woman below the age of 16 could marry.

(i) These people are Dublas of Gujarat. In the picture, they are carrying mangoes to the market.
(ii)Dublas laboured for upper-caste landowners, cultivating their feilds, and working at a variety of odd jobs at the landowner’s house.