Social and Religious Reform: The Hindus of British India

In the Indian context, the use of the term ‘reform’ to indicate changes in religious belief or social practices dates to the nineteenth century, coinciding with the consolidation of British power and the advent of so-called ‘modernity’. Social and religious reform in colonial India has often been written about without an effort to highlight the wide-ranging debates that have affected it. The present volume is thus the first work to focus on ‘reform’ as a disputed concept. It retraces some of the critical contestations around the phenomenon of reform as it affected the largest community of British India-the Hindus. The essays in this volume, the fourth in the debates in Indian History and Society series, identify major issues within the history of socio-religious reform among Hindus that grew into passionate public debates. Amiya P. Sen’s insightful introduction engages with the key components of these debates, for example, the choice of issue or the pace at which reform was to be carried out. The issues themselves are primarily presented through contemporary writings and speeches now rarely obtainable. The volume includes extracts by such well-known personalities as Swami Vivekananda, Lajpat Rai, Bankim Chandra, Raja Rammohan Roy, K.T. Telang, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rabindranath Tagore, M.G. Ranade, Mahatma Gandhi, and B.R. Ambedkar among many others. A valuable entry point to understanding the present day social problems faced by the Hindu community, this volume will be a useful supplementary text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of modern Indian history, sociology, and religious studies. It will also engage informed general readers interested in the discussion that continues to surround reform among Hindus.