The Social reform movements in India including Sati, Widow remarriage, Child marriage

The Social Reform Movements in India: Sati, Widow Remarriage, and Child Marriage

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Background: Factors Behind the Nineteenth-Century Reform Movements

• Although the eighteenth century remained under the sway of conservative ideas and practices, nineteenth-century India witnessed several currents of reform that brought about a broader social awakening.
  • This was the direct result of several converging factors — English education, contact with Western liberal thinkers, British administration, the work of Christian missionaries, the idea of equality, the rule of law, and the contribution of the press, among others.
• English education led Indians to revolt against ignorance, apathy, lethargy, superstition, fatalism, and sloth. The English language played an important role in communicating Western ideas across sections, segments, cultures, and language groups, functioning as a common platform for people otherwise divided by these boundaries.
  • It brought to public notice the flaws, shortcomings, and lapses in Indian religious and social life, and motivated people to follow the liberal ideas advocated in Western literature.
• The beginning of the nineteenth century is considered the beginning of modern times in India, as people confronted new rulers and an unfamiliar way of life.
  • Lord Moira observed that although the British had come to India as traders and become a political power that exploited the country extensively, they gradually adopted a wider perspective over time, seeking to establish peace and order in society.
  • British officers such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, who were liberal and believed in reason, opened schools and colleges where Indian students could study English literature and the thought of Francis Bacon, David Hume, Middleton, George Berkeley, Condorcet, and Joseph Butler, among other liberal thinkers.
• Among British officials, Elphinstone’s contribution to starting Western education in Maharashtra was by far the greatest, shaped in turn by the influence of figures such as T. Erskine, Colebrooke, John Locke, and Jeremy Bentham.
  • He secured the cooperation of traditional institutions and the educated higher classes in Maharashtra, improved the mode of teaching at native schools, increased the number of schools, supplied school books, and encouraged the lower classes to receive affordable instruction.
  • He established schools for teaching European sciences, improved higher education within his jurisdiction, and provided funds to publish books on the moral and physical sciences in native languages, alongside support for teaching English as a classical language to access European scientific discoveries.
  • He redirected funds that had earlier been distributed to Brahmins under the Peshwas towards public education instead — efforts that helped create broader awareness in Maharashtra, as English-educated people began to question outdated dogmas and revolt against ignorance, apathy, superstition, lethargy, and fatalism, thereby fermenting a general social and religious awakening.
• Alongside English education, the work of Christian missionaries also provoked people to develop a new awareness in their social and religious life and to aspire to a way of life resembling that of contemporary Europe.
  • Missionaries criticised Hinduism as a “backward” religion and worked to convert Hindus to Christianity — a stance that hurt educated Indians and strengthened their resolve to reform their own social and religious life.
  • The idea of equality was reinforced by the fact that missionaries admitted Indians of all castes, creeds, and races into their schools; they also opened schools for girls, which appealed to educated Indians and further spurred social awareness.
  • Their dedicated service to the poor and to the physically and mentally challenged likewise provoked Indians to launch their own reform movements.
• Finally, the contribution of the printing press and the efforts of orientalist scholars to revive India’s past glory were among the reasons behind the beginning of socio-religious reform movements in both Maharashtra and India more broadly during the nineteenth century.

Nationalism and Social Reform Groups

• The English-educated middle class turned its attention towards religious, social, and cultural renaissance; its emerging spirit of nationalism stirred both Hindus and Muslims to “set their houses in order.”
  • This middle class began analysing its own socio-religious conditions, coming to believe that their original, pure religions had been defiled by blind traditions, meaningless rituals, customs, and superstitious beliefs — naturally leading them to seek reform in both religious and social life.
• The socio-religious reform movement thus exerted considerable influence on India’s educated classes, who in turn helped create a broader renaissance or awakening among the people.

Problems Faced by Women

• The position of women in Indian society varied considerably from period to period. While it was relatively satisfactory in the Rig Vedic period, it deteriorated considerably in later periods, reducing women to a subservient status.
• The position of women in a given society depends mainly on two elements: the prevailing social philosophy, which shapes the general cultural outlook, and the social institutions — family, marriage, Hindu law, and religion — that develop over time; in the Indian case, these institutions never reflected a liberal outlook towards women.
  • These institutions gave rise to numerous problems in women’s lives. Outside the cities, the joint family remained the norm, within which contractual marriages took place — bringing to the surface problems such as incompatibility between partners, child marriage, polygamy, restrictions on widow remarriage, denial of divorce, sati, female slavery, and concubinage.
• The practice of sati rested on a religious belief that a woman, through self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre, attained such spiritual merit that her husband’s sins were annihilated and the couple was united in eternal union in heaven.
  • This religious sanction likely drove many women to undergo the ordeal of burning themselves alive; wives were, in effect, treated as personal property rather than as companions — a position of Indian women that persisted from ancient times into the modern era.
• It is said that the gradual deterioration in women’s status began during the Smriti period, when women lost independent standing and became entirely dependent on men in socio-economic matters.
  • Over time, women fell victim to evils such as female infanticide, seclusion, and dowry, and were also denied education — evils and a low social status that persisted from the ancient period onward.
• Indian women thus faced a range of severe problems across the ages — child marriage, female infanticide, illiteracy, restrictions on widow remarriage, polygamy, concubinage, sati, and denial of divorce among them.
  • The purdah system, which had entered India with the arrival of Muslim rule, endured and was further tightened during the British period, largely confining women’s mobility to the four walls of their homes.
  • The average Indian woman had no access to schools, colleges, or other public spaces, with only a small minority among the urban elite enjoying relatively greater freedom.

Social Reforms and Women

• When the British became rulers of India, they passed social legislation prohibiting practices such as female infanticide, sati, and slavery, and also passed a widow remarriage Act — legislation that unsettled sections of the country and contributed to the unrest that culminated in the Uprising of 1857.
  • The British subsequently decided against further interference in the social life of the people, a stance affirmed by the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858.
  • Nevertheless, a social reform movement took root that succeeded in securing meaningful reforms and creating broader social awareness. The efforts made toward the emancipation of women may be studied under the following heads.

1) Sati System

• As noted above, the practice of sati rested on the belief that a woman’s self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre annihilated his sins and united the couple in eternal heavenly union — a religious sanction that drove many women to this ordeal.
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy was determined to improve the condition of Indian women and raised his voice against the practice of sati, pointing out that most instances of sati were not voluntary but forced.
  • When orthodox leaders petitioned the government requesting withdrawal of the regulations of 1812–13 and 1817, Ram Mohan Roy and his associates submitted a counter-petition in August 1818.
  • He wrote numerous articles in English to demonstrate that nowhere in the Hindu Shastras was the burning of widows prescribed as a compulsory measure, and also published articles against the practice in his Bengali journal, the Samvad Kaumudi.
  • His sustained campaign finally succeeded when Lord William Bentinck declared sati illegal through a law passed in 1829.

2) Child Marriage

• Initially, no minimum marriageable age existed in India, and children were often married as young as two to five years old, a practice that generated a chain of further problems, including sati, polygamy, and concubinage.
  • Reformers such as B.M. Malabari, R.G. Bhandarkar, and M.G. Ranade worked to raise awareness against this custom. Malabari, a Parsi reformer, was especially vocal in his campaign, leading the British Government to pass the Act of 1860, which raised the age of consent for marriage from ten to twelve years.
• Social workers in Maharashtra further challenged the custom of child marriage, pressing the British to pass the Act of 1872, which abolished early marriage, made polygamy a penal offence, and sanctioned both widow remarriage and inter-caste marriage. Despite this legislation, the practice of child marriage persisted in Maharashtra.
  • In 1880, B.M. Malabari, editor of the Indian Spectator, drew public attention to the issue of child marriage, and in 1884 published his notes on enforced widowhood and infant marriage, arguing that the Government should include the evils of child marriage in the school syllabus to spread awareness from an early age.
  • Justice Ranade advised the Government to legislate a minimum marriage age of twelve years for girls and to amend the penal code to punish violators. Despite opposition from some prominent quarters, Malabari travelled to England to pressure the British Government into passing such legislation — efforts that led to the passage of the Age of Consent Act of 1891, a significant step forward in the emancipation of women.
  • These legislative gains encouraged enlightened, English-educated people across Maharashtra to work jointly toward creating better conditions for women.
• Pandita Ramabai was another pioneering figure in this cause — criticised by many orthodox Puneites for her marriage to a non-Brahmin Bengali man, but deeply critical of the miseries inflicted upon women.
  • To support women in distress, she established the Arya Mahila Samaj with the help of the Prarthana Samaj, supported in her efforts by Bhandarkar and Justice Ranade.
  • Harassed by orthodox Brahmins to the point that she was compelled to convert to Christianity and leave for England and America for a period, she wrote a book placing the blame for her sufferings on orthodox Hindu society.
  • She established the Sharada Sadan in Mumbai in 1889, later shifting it to Pune at the request of Ranade and Bhandarkar, who supported her efforts to help destitute women.
  • In 1930, the Government passed the Sharda Act, providing for fine and imprisonment for anyone abetting the marriage of a girl below fourteen years of age.

3) Female Education

• Illiteracy among Indian women stemmed from misunderstanding, superstition, and the general backwardness of society, compounded by the traditional view that parents should spend on a daughter’s marriage and dowry but nothing on her education, reserving such expenditure for sons alone.
  • This began to change with the arrival of Christian missionaries, who established convent schools for girls under the supervision of nuns — though these schools attracted suspicion that they were being used to convert girls to Christianity, despite being open to all castes, communities, religions, and groups; this suspicion kept many girls from availing of the opportunity.
• As English education spread, some English-educated families began to educate their daughters.
  • Historian R.C. Majumdar notes that the absence of the purdah system in the Bombay Presidency made it easier for people there to educate their girls.
  • The Students’ Literary and Scientific Society was founded under the banner of the Gujarati Dyan Prasarak Mandal to support female education, and reformers such as Dadabhai Naoroji, B.M. Malabari, P.C. Banaji, and members of the Cama family began educating their own daughters and opening schools for girls, despite opposition from orthodox sections of their communities.
  • Marathi industrialists such as Jagannath Shankar Seth and Bhau Daji also contributed to the cause of girls’ education in the Bombay Presidency.
• Among social reformers, B.M. Malabari (who started the Seva Sadan in Mumbai), Ranade, Bhandarkar, Chandavarkar, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, and Pandita Ramabai were especially prominent in the field of female education.
  • In 1851, Jyotiba Phule started a private school for girls with the help of his wife, Savitribai Phule; several other organisations subsequently opened schools for girls in Mumbai and Poona, further spreading the cause of female education.
  • Observers of the period — including the historian Bipan Chandra, and Capt. Lester, the education inspector — noted that the Bombay Presidency led the way in female education, and that establishing girls’ schools in Bombay and neighbouring Poona faced fewer obstacles thanks to the lead taken by eminent reformers such as Phule, Gokhale, Ranade, and Agarkar.

4) Widow Remarriage

• Widow remarriage was not permitted among the upper castes, and lower castes, seeking to imitate upper-caste norms, faced the same chain of problems — sati, or a lifetime spent as a widow. Widows were barred from participating in social or religious functions and were expected to spend their lives in isolation.
  • Many social reformers worked to encourage widow remarriage and helped secure passage of the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 — though the situation on the ground changed little in its immediate aftermath.
• In the following decades, reformers such as M.G. Ranade, Vishnu Shastri Pandit, D.K. Karve, and Pandita Ramabai actively worked to encourage widow remarriage and founded societies for the purpose.
  • In addition to the Vidhava Vivaha Uttejak Mandal, a Widow Remarriage Association was established in 1893, and an Anath Balikashram was set up near Pune in 1896 to shelter destitute widows.
  • Among these reformers, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule was particularly committed to the cause — supporting widow remarriage while criticising other reformers who, though remarrying widowers after the death of their own wives, would not permit their widowed sisters or daughters the same right.
• In Hindu tradition, marriage was considered sacrosanct and “solemnised in heaven,” rendering it irrevocable and, consequently, ruling out widow remarriage — condemning Hindu widows to lifelong suffering.
  • Western-educated reformers began to oppose this orthodoxy, advocating widow remarriage on the authority of the Vedas themselves. Although orthodox residents of Pune submitted two petitions to the Government opposing widow remarriage and formed a society to protect Hindu Dharma, reformers such as Vishnu Shastri Pandit challenged the orthodox position in public debate and published articles to raise awareness of the issue.
  • D.K. Karve went a step further, marrying a widow, Godubai — his friend’s sister — in 1883, setting an example for others to follow. He also established a Widow Home Association, modelled on Pandita Ramabai’s Sharada Sadan, with long-term support from M.G. Ranade and Bhandarkar.
  • This work created considerable awareness in society, reflected in the fact that Karve’s Widow Home Association successfully arranged the remarriage of twenty-five widows in Maharashtra, while publications such as Indu Prakash and the Social Conference gained wide popularity within Maharashtra’s social reform movement.

Contribution of Social Reformers Towards the Emancipation of Women

• Owing to the impact of Western education, educated Indians such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and other social reformers made concerted efforts to liberate women from the shackles of longstanding social disabilities through the socio-religious reform movements.
  • Ram Mohan Roy also opposed polygamy, pointing out that the Shastras permitted a man’s second marriage only under specific circumstances, and was a strong advocate of women’s education; the Brahmo Samajists more broadly sought to bring women into new roles through schools and prayer meetings.
  • Swami Vivekananda argued that women could become a powerful regenerative force in society, while Dayananda Saraswati encouraged female education and condemned evil customs.
  • M.G. Ranade, Malabari, and D.K. Karve worked to educate young widows and helped place them as teachers in girls’ schools; R.V.R. Naidu opposed the devadasi system, while Pantulu worked for marriage reforms in the south.
  • Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar supported female education and advocated widow remarriage — though even after the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 was passed, the status of women changed little and the reform never received wide social approval.

Mahatma Phule and Savitribai Phule

• Mahatma Jyotiba Phule never discriminated between men and women on the basis of sex, seeking equal rights for both, and envisioned a society founded on liberty, equality, and fraternity.
  • To spread his message, he started Dinbandhu, a weekly journal, with the help of his close associate and trade union leader Narayan Meghaji Lokhande.
  • Phule devoted his energy and intellect to emancipating women from the age-old bondage of tyrannical Brahmanical patriarchy, working to create awareness against the unnatural and unreasonable claims made upon women, and championed individual dignity and equality in socio-religious matters.
  • He was the first man to start a school for girls in Maharashtra.

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

• Gopal Ganesh Agarkar was the first editor of Kesari, during which time he discussed numerous social problems and proposed solutions for them — but was ultimately compelled to resign the editorship on account of his reformist views.
  • He subsequently started Sudharak to propagate social reform, continuing his practice of engaging with social problems and offering solutions. His thinking was, throughout, independent, progressive, and forceful.

Equality and Education

• Agarkar’s thinking was independent and fearless; his progressive approach to the “woman question” created a new awakening, and he propagated his views on social reform without hesitation.
  • He was deeply moved by the status of women within the family and stressed the importance of women’s education, believing that husband and wife were equally important members of the household.
  • He rejected the denigration of women found in ancient religious scriptures, arguing that outdated social practices that were wrong and injurious in the modern era should be discarded entirely, and was determined to use his newspaper to educate society on this front.
• As editor of the Sudharak, he was ready to confront orthodoxy — including the anger and short-sightedness of orthodox opponents — and the paper embraced the philosophy of “saying whatever is right and doing whatever is possible.”
  • Many of his articles reflected his deep concern for education; he spent much of his life teaching and propagating it. He argued that if men and women were given the same education, men might need to take on domestic responsibilities such as childcare and washing clothes — and that they should not consider such household work beneath their dignity.
• Agarkar believed in the universal law of change, holding that struggle was essential to bring it about, and stood for social legislation by the government — a position Tilak opposed.
  • As a staunch social reformer, Agarkar stood for transforming Hindu religion and society by adopting the best principles of Western civilisation, seeing it as his life’s mission to convey the essence of progressive principles to the people.

Child Marriage

• Agarkar denounced the system of child marriage, advocating reforms such as women’s education, a ban on child marriage, and the remarriage of widows.
  • He held that child marriage was physically and psychologically harmful, that it could not be justified, and that it was improper to marry off children before they reached physical maturity — noting that children born of such marriages were typically weak, both mentally and physically.
  • He maintained that the minimum age of marriage for the young could and should be raised, and advocated restrictions on child marriage with genuine conviction — a stance that led to sharp conflict between him and Tilak.
• Agarkar supported fellow reformer Malabari in his struggle to secure passage of the Age of Consent Bill, while Tilak opposed government interference in social reform on this question.
  • Agarkar strongly supported the Bill on the grounds of protecting women’s physical health and mental development, arguing it was necessary to adopt legal measures to prevent women from being treated as the property of men.
  • This and other differences with Tilak and his supporters eventually led Agarkar to resign from the editorship of Kesari, after which he started the independent weekly Sudharak to propagate social reform — a paper whose very first issue addressed both political and social reform.
  • He held that, given the prevailing public ignorance on religious and social issues, it would not be possible to rouse people to political questions without first addressing these underlying concerns — a goal to which he remained devoted.

Widow Remarriage

• While advocating restrictions on child marriage, Agarkar also placed considerable emphasis on the need for widow remarriage, noting that the ban on remarriage persisted among the higher castes and that a widow’s life in Hindu society was one of considerable misery.
  • He argued that society should accept widow remarriage, which would restore purpose and dignity to a widow’s life, and that this would also help address the problem of forced abortions. On this matter, he called for both legal reform and broader social education.

Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve

• Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve was a pioneer in promoting women’s education and the right of widows to remarry, and an active social reformer in his own right — after the death of his first wife, he chose to marry a widow rather than an unmarried girl.
  • He was inspired to dedicate his life to female education by the work of Pandita Ramabai, and to work for the upliftment of widows by the work of Vishnu Shastri Pandit.
• In 1893, Karve founded the Vidhwa Vivahottejak Mandali; in 1896, he established the Hindu Widows’ Home Association and started a Mahilashram at Hingane, aimed at giving high-caste widows an interest in life by training them toward self-sufficiency.
  • His next reform was the establishment of a Girls’ School (Mahila Vidyalaya), a boarding school for non-widow students; the managing committee of the Vidyalaya and the Widow’s Home Association subsequently decided to open further schools and institutions for women’s education.
  • The Widows’ Home Association was later renamed the Hingane Stree Shikshan Sanstha, and Karve went on to establish another school for girls around 1917–18.
• Karve’s greatest achievement was the founding of a women’s university in Maharashtra — an idea he first presented at a meeting of the National Social Conference in Mumbai, winning the support of leaders such as Annie Besant, Mahatma Gandhi, and Dr. Bhandarkar.
  • The Women’s University was founded in 1916, with all of Karve’s earlier educational institutions affiliated to it; in 1919, the Mumbai industrialist Sir Vithaldas D. Thackersey provided substantial funding, after which the institution became known as the SNDT (Shrimati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey) Women’s University.
• Karve also took the initiative in establishing girls’ high schools across Maharashtra and Gujarat, and was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in 1958, in recognition of his lifelong dedication to the cause of education.

Pandita Ramabai

• Pandita Ramabai was the daughter of Anant Shastri, a well-known Sanskrit scholar. She married Bipin Behari Das, a Brahmo Samajist, who unfortunately died in 1881 — after which she resolved to devote the rest of her life to the upliftment of women.
  • She was welcomed in Pune by reformers such as Ranade, Bhandarkar, Telang, and Agarkar, and established the Arya Mahila Samaj in 1882 at Pune.
• She travelled to England and America to raise awareness of the condition of Indian women, addressing numerous public meetings on the subject, and published a book, The High Caste Hindu Woman, describing the miserable plight of Indian women.
  • In Mumbai, she founded the Sharada Sadan, a home for widows, in 1889, aimed at providing educational facilities for widows and destitute women. Its founding drew both praise and criticism from Pune’s reformist and orthodox circles respectively — welcomed by reformers such as Ranade and Agarkar, but viewed with suspicion by orthodox sections, with Tilak among her opponents.
  • As criticism against her mounted, some reformers who had earlier sympathised with her withdrew their support; Ramabai nevertheless continued her work on her own strength.
• The sustained opposition of orthodox society eventually led Ramabai to convert to Christianity. In 1919, the British monarchy conferred upon her the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal in recognition of her service.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar

• Dr. B.R. Ambedkar rendered great service to Indian women through his emphasis on equality — the Preamble to the Constitution of India promises justice to all citizens, and Parts III and IV of the Constitution contain numerous provisions for the preferential treatment and promotion of the social status of women and children.
  • Because of his efforts, working women secured the right to full-pay maternity benefits.
• As Labour Minister in the Viceroy’s Executive Council (1942–1946), Ambedkar enacted several laws for the betterment of women, and as Law Minister, he introduced a bill that raised the age of consent for marriage, upheld monogamy, granted women the right to divorce, and recognised stridhan as women’s own property.
  • Conservative opposition to these radical proposals, however, led to the postponement of the Hindu Code Bill, prompting Ambedkar to resign in protest against the attitude of conservative members of the Constituent Assembly. Sections of the Bill were later passed as four separate Acts.
• Through this and his broader body of work, Ambedkar devoted his life to the upliftment of all sections of Indian society, and may rightly be regarded as a true liberator of Indian women.

Women and the Indian National Movement

• As Mahatma Gandhi remarked, when the history of India’s fight for independence comes to be written, the sacrifice made by Indian women will occupy a foremost place. Jawaharlal Nehru similarly noted that when most of the country’s menfolk were imprisoned, women came forward in unprecedented numbers to take charge of the struggle — an “avalanche” that took both the British Government and Indian men by surprise.
  • The freedom movement, which gathered momentum in the early twentieth century and produced stalwarts such as Mahatma Gandhi, Lala Lajpat Rai, Motilal Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad, C. Rajagopalachari, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Chandra Bose, is often remembered chiefly as a men’s movement — yet many prominent women played leading roles within it.
• The important place assigned to women in India dates back to the era of the Vedas and Smritis — Manu declared that where women are honoured, the gods reside — and during the Vedic age, women were regarded as equal partners with men in most respects, as reflected in figures such as Maitreyi, Gargi, Sati Anusuya, and Sita.
  • In keeping with this tradition, the burden of tears and toil across the long years of the freedom struggle was borne silently and cheerfully by wives, mothers, and daughters; the Gandhian programme of self-imposed poverty and periodic imprisonment was sustained only through the willing cooperation of workers’ families, and in villages, illiterate women played a quiet but essential supporting role alongside the men.
• It has often, and rightly, been said that India’s struggle for independence was also a struggle for the socio-economic emancipation of Indian women — credit for which belongs chiefly to Mahatma Gandhi, who made women’s upliftment an important part of the Congress constructive programme.
  • The resurgence of Indian womanhood was also aided by foreign-born women such as Dr. Annie Besant, Neili Sen Gupta, and Margaret Cousins, who worked zealously for India’s freedom and socio-economic development.
• Beyond political independence itself, the second great benefit of the freedom movement was the liberation of Indian women — initially among the urban elite, though the path they opened was gradually followed by rural women too.
  • Among the many women who plunged into the freedom movement, particular mention is due to Dr. Annie Besant, Madam Cama, Bina Das, Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Neili Sengupta, and Indira Gandhi.
  • The list of women whose sufferings and sacrifices deserve remembrance is a long one, including Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Kasturba Gandhi, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Sucheta Kripalani, Lilavati Munshi, Sister Nivedita, A.V. Kuthimalu Amma, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Sarla Devi Chaudharani, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, Kamala Das Gupta, Durgabai Deshmukh, Basanti Das, Nanibala, Rama Devi, Swaran Kumari, Urmila Devi, Subbamma Dhuvri, Lakshmibayamma Unnava, Kadambini Ganguly, Suhasini Ganguly, Santi Das, Avantikabai Gokhale, Hema Prabha, Meera Behn, Sharda Behn, Aruna Asaf Ali, Satyawati Devi, Lakshmi Menon, Muthulakshmi Reddi, Lila Roy, Pandita Ramabai, Violet Alva, Indumati Sinha, Rani Gaidinliu, and Annie Mascarene, among many others.
• Under Gandhi’s leadership, the national movement became a mass movement from 1920 onward, with women’s participation growing steadily from the Non-Cooperation Movement through to the Quit India Movement of 1942.
  • During these mass movements, women balanced household responsibilities with active participation in the freedom struggle — marching on the streets, shouting slogans, picketing shops selling foreign goods and liquor, and facing police lathi charges and even bullets.
  • Gandhiji’s appeal brought Indian women to fight shoulder to shoulder with men, enhancing their social status and bringing several women’s issues to the fore; the national movement became the first public forum in which women could participate to secure rights and positions previously denied to them, with Gandhi himself instrumental in tapping their potential as political agitators and nation-builders.
  • The national movement liberated women in far more drastic ways than earlier social reforms had, with many women emerging as Socialist, Communist, and militant revolutionaries — some fighting under Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for liberation from British rule.
• Women’s participation in the national movement can be traced through several milestones: in 1889, ten women attended the Indian National Congress session; in 1890, the novelist Swarnakumari Ghosal and Kadambini Ganguly — the first woman in the British Empire to earn a B.A. and India’s first woman doctor — attended as delegates.
  • Saraladevi, Muthulakshmi Reddy, and Amrit Kaur followed Gandhi into the movement; Sarojini Naidu, Goshiben Naoroji, and Avantikabai Gokhale were associated with the Rashtriya Stree Sangha; Urmila Devi, Shanti Das, and Bimal Protiba Devi were prominent in Bengal, while S. Ambujammal, Krishnabai Rau, and Rukmani Lakshmipathy led the movement in the South.
• This growing participation of women brought about corresponding changes in society and administration — the first major legislative change being the Hindu Women’s Property Act of 1937, applicable uniformly to all Hindus.
  • Under this Act, a widow whose husband died leaving property became entitled to the same share as his sons; in the case of joint family property, she was entitled to the same interest as her husband had held, including the right to demand partition.
• The Indian National Movement fundamentally transformed the condition of women in the country, enabling them to demand the trappings of modern life — education, healthcare, protective legislation, and civil and political rights — within an emerging framework of social reform. Women who had traditionally sacrificed for husband and family now found that very habit of sacrifice being cited to affirm their worthiness for equal rights within the nation.

Conclusion

• Since ancient times, Indian society remained bound by outdated systems, traditions, and superstitions — with women bearing a disproportionate share of the resulting suffering. It is clear that a great many social reformers devoted considerable effort to the upliftment of Indian society in this regard.
  • Mahatma Phule did pioneering work for the social reform movement in India during the second half of the nineteenth century, and most social reformers who followed worked toward the emancipation of women — securing solutions to many important issues through their efforts.
• Indian women, too, contributed significantly to the development of Indian society in their own right — among them, Madam Cama, Annie Besant, and Sarojini Naidu stand out as especially prominent figures.
  • Beyond these individual crusaders, thousands of women wholeheartedly participated in the Indian national movement, many of them deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and willing to undergo every manner of hardship and repression for the cause.
• It is evident, then, that Indian women did not lag behind in this national endeavour — and it stands as one of Gandhiji’s great contributions that, through his programmes and calls to action, he brought about the socio-economic upliftment of Indian women, no small achievement in itself.