For verification of this paper, please visit on http://www.socialresearchfoundation.com/innovation.php#8

To understand the social and cultural condition of Hindu society in the first half of 19th century also analyse the position of reformers and their efforts to improve the condition. Discuss under the four major headings, Religion, Education, caste system and female position .

Meena Gori ,sati and social Reforms, K.K.Dutta, Social History of Modern India, Suresh chander Gosh, The History of Education in Modern india.

The social and religious reform movements of the nineteenth century have a special place in the history of India.  In view of its multifaceted nature and broadness, it can be considered as a struggle movement.  After the death of Aurangzeb, the administrative structure of India began to crumble and was further weakened by the Britishers. As the British dominance over the country increased, the pace of exploitation accelerated and the economic base of the country was shaken.  It also had a disastrous effect on the social life of India.  In such a situation, along with economic poverty, social evils, discrimination and religious superstitions increasing.  The result was that by the end of the 18th century, India had reached the ultimate limit of poverty and backwardness.  “Hinduism was surrounded by idol worship, polytheism and many other superstitions. But these religious beliefs and practices were challenged by the many anti-scriptural sects that emerged in those days almost all over India. All of them condemned polytheism, idolatry and caste discrimination. Like the reformers of the nineteenth century, Charandas cited the Vedas for opposing idol worship and caste protests . He opposed to all kinds of rituals.  Major changes were taking place in the caste system in the nineteenth century, some of which are: fragmentation, occupational mobility and sanskritisation. Like other periods of Indian history there was no lack of  individual talent in the  fields of intellectual activity .RammohanRoy wrote, 'I have to say with sadness that the present Hindu system of religion is not well thought out to protect the political interests of the Hindus.  The caste discrimination among the Hindus and their division into different sections and different sub-castes cannot Hu a sense of patriotism in them.  They are so attached to the rituals of innumerable religious rituals and rituals of purification that it is impossible to take any difficult task in their hands.  Almost all the intellectuals of the nineteenth century believed that the social practices and religious beliefs prevalent in that century were obstacles in the way of progress. Polytheism and idolatry hindered the development of personality and due to supernaturalism and the dominance of religious teachers, people were  A fearful conservatism took its roots. Casteism was hated not only on the basis of moral and ethical principles, but also because it affected society was divided and the feeling of patriotism could not develop among the people.  "The practice of Sati and infanticide were considered 'murder in every scripture'." Thus the social and religious practices of nineteenth century India were seen as signs of a declining society characterized by restrictions, superstitions, social status.  Authority, bigotry and organ fatalism.  "In the 19th century, Indian society was socially and religiously crippled.The custom of the Hindu family was prevalent that the eldest male member was the head of family, whose orders were followed by every member of the family and every member work according to his direction.  Sometimes a woman also had the privilege of becoming the head of the family.  This situation existed only when there was no senior male member to look after the family.  By the way, the society was completely male dominated. Following the tradition and custom was the specialty of the Hindu  family. According to the tradition the members of the family used to do the same occupation, such as the work of Brahmin was teachings, farming the work of farmer ,the work of the potter was to make pottery, and the coming generations did not hesitate to adopt the business of their ancestors.  He used to get the education of this work from other members of the family, that is, the business that the father used to do, the son also had to adopt the same profession.  Its biggest advantage was that the problem of unemployment did not arise.  But its drawback was that even if the son's interest was not in the father's business, he had to adopt it.  Thus the characteristic of Hindu society was the varna system, mainly four varna were Ok, Kshatriyas, Vaishya, Shudras. "Brahmins had the highest position in the society. He was respected by all sections of the society. Their work was mainly to educate the people."  Due to his education and knowledge, he had attained high positions in many state departments. They did not miss to take proper and undue advantage of his position, marriage, birth and death rites were completed by him.  Many unfair customs were made valid in the society. The orthodox supported them. In short, the Brahmins had a very special place in the society. The second varna was that of the Kshatriyas. Their function was to provide security to all the people of the society.  But at that time the Kshatriyas had become degenerate. Many of them were living a neglected and impoverished life. The third varna was the Vaishya.there main occupation was business and they established relationships with Britishers.  Their interest was limited to business only.  The fourth varna was that of Shudras.  At that time they were the largest in the society.  They had to suffer the most under the varna system.   They did not have the right to study and enters in the temples.  It was the same class in the society that  Being fed up with the traditional customs of Hinduism, theywere getting attracted towards other religions.  "Due to the circumstances of this era, many classes, sub-classes, castes and sub-castes were formed in these four varnas. These castes were formed by many people adopting different types of professions to conduct their livelihood. Such as barber, washerman, tailor, potter  , Goldsmith, cobbler , Blacksmith and Weaver etc. These castes were also not free to choose their occupation because there were social restrictions on them. Despite the formation of many castes and sub-castes in the said Varnas, the feeling of caste superiority did not end in the modern period.  “The spirit of untouchability was very prevalent in the society at that time.  The people of the lower class could not touch the people of the upper class.  The religion of the upper class was destroyed by the shadow of the lower class.  On this evil of Hindus, Dr.LaxmisagarVarshney has said that in Hindu religion, the people of the upper class used to tremble at the mere of taking the life of an insect, but seeing the death of a lower class person, their heart did not melt , their religion was destroyed just by seeing him.

Religion and Superstitions

In the eighteenth century, economic poverty came but along with it religion was also badly corrupted. At that time superstitions and religious pomp were everywhere the same,there was sway and intellectual bankruptcy prevailed throughout the country.  In Hinduism, idol worship and unnecessary religious rituals were dominated.  "In the eighteenth century, India was in a miserable and pity condition. Hinduism was the religion of a large population at that  time and it was mainly divided into two groups, one who roamed in public following celibacy and  who lived outside the society.  Among the groups of these saints, one was Vaishnava saint and the other belonged to Shaivism. Vaishnava saints were more numerous and spread in north and south and they were more homogeneous than Shaive devotees. Vaishnava saints depict Vishnu as God.  and accepted his abode in everything. Also believed in incarnation and accepted Rama and Krishna as Vaishnava avatars. Shaive accepted Shiva as God and  the deity of all Gods.  A group of Shaivite devotees worshiped Kali and Durga by accepting them as Shiva's wife. Idol worship was prevalent in both Vaishnavas and Shaivas. But Shaivites worshiped Shivalinga more. In both the religions  Their respective gurus were worshipped. Both had strict rules and were fully possessed.  were traditional.  Both called themselves Vedanti but both had their own interpretations.

 "Buddhism, which came into existence in 525 BC, almost disappeared from its native land, but by this time (19th century) it had spread to eastern and southern Asia and it Was trying to take his initiative in India too.  Jainism, which came into existence a little before Buddhism and whose philosophy was that knowledge of God is inaccessible to human beings, was also trying to consolidate its roots in India in the 19th century.  The Jains were in good economic condition from the very beginning and this was posing a challenge to the Hindu religion.  The Parsis were also in front of the public in a small community.  Zorothian Persians who came to India from Prussia in the 8th century had now improved their position and were mainly in Gujarat.  But they were now concentrated in Bombay. 

To understand any social institution, it is necessary to know its philosophical basis. It is difficult to give a precise definition of Hinduism because there are conflicting opinions on this subject. One view is that the concept of God and the afterlife, reincarnation.  The concept of deity etc. is basically symbolic and they have been incarnated so that the common people should follow the laws and social rules. The second opinion is that Hinduism shows the way to attain happiness and peace in the hereafter and the third world and the third opinion is that Hindu religion is clearlyspiritual religion. Shaivism, Vaishnava and Vedanti all confirm this view. Most of the texts of Hindu religion were written by persons who had superstition in divine powers and who got inspiration from influential sections of society. Vedas, Puranas and  Smritis made Indians sosuperstitious worshipers of the scriptures.

Accepted Varnashramadharma  with faith and believing that a person should  follows his dharma, then he will definitely get salvation. "Dharma had an influence on the social movements of ancient times.  They belonged to the nature, worship, polytheism, monotheism, theistic totalitarianism or skepticism. "Many reform movements were carried out in the Hindu society in the modern era and changes took place in the social life of India.  Indian thinkers opposed the traditional beliefs and started thinking of religious reform.  The most prominent of the new sects was the Brahmo Samaj. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the country started taking the reins of renaissance.  Hindu thinkers this time wanted to establish a new type of coordination between Hinduism and Christianity.  Brahmo Samaj  propagated monotheism and want  to uplift the Hindu society from various types of superstitions.  There were fundamental differences between the Vaishnava movement and the Brahmo Samaj.  Vaishnava movement was a kind of mass movement within the realm of Puranic religion, but outside the varna system, in the social sense it was the path of liberation.  On the other hand the Brahmo Samaj was worthy of the faith of educated people.  

Superstitions

In the early 19th century and in late eighteenth  century, Indian society had become like a stagnant and dirty reservoir due to its superstitions and bad practices.  There were many social evils prevalent in the society.  For example, there were many malpractices in the society like  Sati, femaleinfantide , witchcraft ,slavery system, status of marriage etc.  Female infanticide was more prevalent than the practice of Sati.  Girl infants  were killed silently.  Apart from Rajputs, this practice was prevalent in other two, three castes also.  Mothers either did not give milk to the girls or used to apply opium or mild poison on their breasts, due to which the girl infant  would die.  "It was a popular belief that some women are dakinis and they eat children and young brides. Such a superstition was prevalent that the child or newlyweds fall ill as soon as they see them. Due to this evil practice  many women  were considered as witches.  A similar superstition was also prevalent that was childsacrifies as soon as the child was born, some people used to offer them to the Ganges,  they used to throw them into  the Ganges river. To stop this, in 1801 AD,  Lord Wellesley passed a law.  According to the intellectuals of the nineteenth century, the source of all the evils of Indian society, including religious superstitions and social enrichment, lay in the ignorance of the common people.  That is why the focus of his program was the dissemination of knowledge.

Lack of Education and Ignorance

At the end of the eighteenth century, Indian society was basically feudal in nature in  which many classes ,castes and tribes were lived.   some financial assistance was onlyprovided to higher  that educational institutionswhose  were based on religious grounds.Formal institutions of education i.e. schools were established for only those  people who received elementary education who  required reading and accounting, such as government servants, businessmen  , moneylenders, rich and zamindar classes etc. Schools were run in temples or mosques. Generally women never went to school for education. Therefore, due to lack of formal education system, foreigners propagated that Indians were immersed in darkness.

Even now a large number of people were getting education from the famous institutions of their time.  In Bengal, there was Queen Bhavani of Nadaur and Krishna Chandra of Nadia as the guardian of education. In 1834-1835, William Adam wrote in his report about the Rajshahi district that only one police station contained material related to Hindu University.  In which all aspects of Sanskrit could be studied ", and to attract the learner's of Sanskrit to this institution, provision of monthly installment was also made.  After the  company gained political power in 1765 AD, it started making changes in the education policy. In 1781 AD company established a madrasa in Calcutta. Soon after that many students came to this institution, some students came from Kashmir, Gujarat and some came from Karnataka." Its main objective was to make Muslims eligible for the work for the state.  Jonathan Duncan established a Sanskrit college in Banaras in 1791 AD.  The purpose of its establishment was to discover the law, literature and religion of the Hindus so that European judges could get qualified Hindu assistants.   When Christian missionaries opened their schools, discussions on Indian education were taking place in the British Parliament.  Bishop Wilberforce made a resolution in the House of Commons, according to which the directors of the company had the right to send missionaries to India to preach Christianity, although this resolution was not passed, but now the idea started to strengthen that the company should bear the responsibility of education of Indians.  And the Parliament had to accept the support of this matter and in the charter of 1813 AD, an annual provision of Rs 1 lakh was made for the education of Indians.  Now Christian missionaries also started coming in more and more numbers to open schools in India.  Thus the foundation of modern education was laid in 1813 AD.  "From time to time, inquiries related to education were conducted. In 1829 AD, the inquiry was conducted by the district judges. According to this, there were 1705 indigenous schools in Bombay province in which 35153 students studied." The disputes that arose regarding the charter of 1813 AD  They were - (1) the sense of education policy objectives (2) the medium of instruction (3) the agencies arranging educational institutions (4) related to the methods of propagation of education among the general public.  There was a difference of opinion among the high officials of the company regarding these four questions.    Their educational ideas differed from the colonial rulers both in terms of goals and details.  While the propagation of colonial principles of the British government and the policy related to administrative education had two goals, the utility of the needs while the educational program of Indian intellectuals was aimed at reviving the country.  For the Christian missionaries, education was primarily a tool for the propagation of the gospel.  The debate on education in government circles was not concerned with what is the best way to educate Indians, but its first concern was how to make education policy most useful for meeting administrative requirements.  Along with this, its second objective was also how to make foreign principles effective in the minds of Indians.  For this, education was considered the most useful tool.  So that the British institutions and values ​​could be ideally established.  Struggling against the theoretical implications of this system, Indian intellectuals tried to propose an alternative that was based on science and mass education through native languages.  He also had a basic belief that the education shoud be traditional and science based as literary education is not able to meet the demand of the times and  Most of the intellectuals agreed with this view of Rammohun Roy. 

Social Evils Towards Women

In the 19th century, the status of women in society continued to decline.  In the society, many  social evil practices were strengthened, child marriage, purdah system, sati system, female infanticide , mismatch marriage etc. were prevalent in the society, the place of woman was limited only to the kitchen of the house.  The condition of the widow was very bad.  Widow was looked down upon in the society.  The stigma of her husband's death was imposed on her, it was forbidden for her to make up, laugh, talk to men, participate in any auspicious work.  In Bengal the condition of widow was very bad.  When she became a widow, her hairwere  cut.  She could wear only white clothes.  Child marriages and mismatched marriages also took place in large numbers.  Polygamy was prevalent among men but women could not remarry under any circumstances.  In this way, many evils prevailed in the society, due to which the condition of women was getting worse day by day. 

Sati Pratha

There was a practice to reflect the plight of women. Although this practice was going on since ancient times. In ancient times, it was believed that the things of the deceased should be kept with the  dead body.     The details of this practice are also found in Rigveda.  There are two examples of sati in  Mahabharata also  (1) Madri was  sati along with her husband Pandu (2) Vasudeva's wives were also burnt to death with her.  But whether or not to be sati at that time depended on the wish of the widow.  But with the passage  of time, there was a change in this practice .  At the time of Alauddin's invasion, Rani Padmavati and her attendants adopted the Jauhar practice in groups, although there was opposition to this practice from time to time.  Manu's commentator Medhatithi, while condemning the practice of Sati, says that doing Sati on the funeral pyre of a husband is not a religious act.  This is the suicide committed by a helpless weak woman in the memory of her beloved, that is, because of the traditions,  Raja Rammohan Roy is credited for the prohibition of  Sati in 1829A.D "As long as there was no legal force behind the practice of Sati, but it continued  uninterruptedly, from 1815 to 1823, there are many  number of widows who committed This practice  The AdiGranth of the Sikhs    also opposed the practice of sati and it has been said that it is not decided that those who burn with their husbands in the fire, are satis those who live in the world even with a broken heart are sati .  But the status of widows in ancient times was not the same as that of widows of Bengal in the 19th century.  During this time the widow had to bear many kinds of torture.  On auspicious occasions, it was kept aside as inauspicious.  They had to face many physical tortures and moral difficulties.  For this reason she was compelled to accept religion.

Polygamy

This practice is going on since the Vedic age.  Pururava's lectures in the Rigveda show that he had many wives.  Similarly, many examples are found in Ramayana and Mahabharata also.  Therefore, while the Indian woman stood firm on the ideal of restraint of lust for marriage, the same man could not stick to this ideal and came down to do many marriages .In the 19th century this practice was in full swing in the society of Bengal.  The economic condition of the people was good when Bengal was a prosperous province.  These rich were called nobles.  It was considered an honour to have multiple wives in a family. "Mismatched marriages were also prevalent. Sometimes a marriageable girl was married to a boy of 12 years old and sometimes an older man to a younger girl, depending on the economic situation. The daily newspaper of Bengal 'DnyaneshwarPatrika'  ' (1836) in his statistics stated that 27 nobles had 818 wives and these wives were very young. It is also described in SamvadKaumudi that a noble can have many wives whose age ranges from 6 to 60.  years." So when a nobleman died, many women became widows.

In this way, many social evils in relation to women were prevalent in the 19th century, apart from this evils like femalefiticideand witchcraft were also prevalent in the society.  Since ancient times, the birth of a girl child was not considered good.  The girl was considered inferior to the son.  For example, Patanjali has written in his Mahabhashya “son is like light and daughter is the source of trouble.” Similarly, a writer of the fourteenth century writes - A daughter makes the whole family sad as soon as she is born and takes away everything at the time of marriage and does not know what to do at the time of puberty.  That is why the birth of a daughter is considered as a matter of sorrow for the parents.

Caste System

At this time the caste system was present in the country with the dominant castes and many sub-castes. Caste rules were strict and inter-caste marriage was prohibited. The superiority of castes was determined by their food. Interaction between castes was also prohibited and persons of higher castes were lower castes.  They did not eat food from the hands of the castes considered." The occupation of the people was fixed on the basis of caste, although there were exceptions at this time.  But the people of the upper castes did not do those works which were fixed for the shudras  Social status was determined on the basis of caste superiority.  There were caste organizations to enforce caste rules on individuals and to exercise effective social control over them.  The job of the institutions in all these parts of the country was to maintain social order and morality as far as possible.  The caste questions were resolved by the caste committees or the head of the caste.  Those who broke the rules were punished with fine, penance or caste boycott.  The social and religious dominance of the Brahmins rested on the basis of the caste system.  The Company also had a sharp weapon in the form of caste system by suppressing the Hindu caste, because caste boycott among Hindus was more dreadful than the death penalty.  In the year 1767, the company established caste courts and these courts also the right to  interfere in soci and family matters also. He was also given the right to interfere in family life.  The Hindus used to be very frightened by these courts, because the decision against them meant social death.

 In order to make  judges and lawyers aware of the Brahmanical rules, Warren Hastings, with the help of Brahmin scholars, presented a code of those rules on the basis of Sanskrit texts and got it translated into English.  The caste was given distinct economic and political importance.  The social reformers were completely unable to eradicate the caste system.  The government took the right to decide what is the caste, what are the status and rights of different social groups.  The meaning of the government policy of non-interference was the support of the status quo.   As the roots of the caste system got fixed, the people of the lower classes in Hindu society became aware of caste and tried to get admission or rise in Hindu society by following the Brahmanical rules.  Therefore, like the upper castes, the people of the lower caste also considered it appropriate to follow these rules.   There was a complete lack of generosity in the caste system because if there was generosity in it, there would have been no repression of Shudras, neither the talk of untouchability would have arisen, nor the caste system was formed on the basis of birth.so we find that there were so many social problems were in India during this period.

1. Altekar, A.S. , The position of women in Hindu civilization ,Delhi ,1962 2. A.R.Desai Social Background of Indian Nationalism,Bombay 1959. 3. Bipin chander ,Modern India,New Delhi ,1971. 4. Gori ,Meena ,Sati and Social Reforms , Jaipur ,1989 5. Dutta KK , social History of modern India ,New Delhi ,1985 6. Shiv S. Dua , Society and culture in northern India (1850-1900) 7. R.L.Shukal ,History of Modern India ,Delhi ,1987. 8. J.N.Ferquher , Modern Religious movement in India , reprint New Delhi ,1977. 9. Prasad Narmdeshver Singh , Caste system,Delhi ,1965. 10. Shiv Kumar Gupt , Social and Economic History of Modern India, Jaipur ,1999.