Reform movements: Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and the anti-caste reformers
Under colonial rule, Hindu reformers campaign against widow-burning, child marriage and caste, and argue over how to renew their religion.
- Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New Cambridge History of India III.1) — Kenneth W. Jones, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind — David Kopf, Princeton University Press (1979)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
In Calcutta, the capital of British India, Ram Mohan Roy argued from the Upanishads that Hinduism at its root worshipped one formless God. He campaigned against sati, the burning of widows on their husbands’ pyres, which the British banned in 1829, and in 1828 founded the Brahmo Sabha, later the Brahmo Samaj. Bengali reformers such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar won the legal right of widows to remarry in 1856.
- The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind — David Kopf, Princeton University Press (1979)
- Ram Mohan Roy — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New Cambridge History of India III.1) — Kenneth W. Jones, Cambridge University Press (1989)
In 1875 Dayananda Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj, calling Hindus “back to the Vedas”. He rejected image worship and caste by birth, but also sought to reconvert Muslims and Christians, giving his movement a more assertive Hindu edge that fed later nationalism.
- Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New Cambridge History of India III.1) — Kenneth W. Jones, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
More radical challenges came from below. In Pune, Jyotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai opened a school for girls in 1848 and attacked Brahmin dominance, founding the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873. In Kerala, Narayana Guru, from the Ezhava caste, consecrated temples for those barred from them and preached “one caste, one religion, one God for mankind”.
- Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New Cambridge History of India III.1) — Kenneth W. Jones, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement — Eleanor Zelliot, Manohar (1992)
Why it matters today
Modern Hinduism, with its emphasis on one God, the Vedas and the Upanishads, social service and women's education, owes much to these reformers. Their quarrels, between reform from within and rejection of caste altogether, between universalism and Hindu revival, still shape Hindu debates.