HISTORY
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WOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM
History – Class - 8
Presentred by – Mrs.Farzana Begum,
TGT-S.St., JNV Kalyani, Nadia, W.B
PROBLEMS
•200 years ago things were very different
•Most children were married off an early age
•Both Hindu and Muslim men could marry more than one wife
•Widows were praised if they chose death by burning
themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands
•Most women had virtually no access to education
•Many believed if women will get education, she would
become a widow
•People were divided into high and low caste
•Upper caste also treated many of these groups at the bottom
as “untouchable”
•Lower caste were considered as inferior human beings
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WORKING TOWARDS CHANGE
•It was initiated by Indian reformers and reform
groups
•One such reformer was Raja Rammohun Roy
(1772-1833)
•He founded a reform association known as the
Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta
•Rammohun Roy felt that changes were necessary in
society and unjust practices needed to be done away
•He wanted to spread the knowledge of western
education in the country and bring about greater
freedom and equality for women
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CHANGING LIVES OF WIDOWS
•Rammohun Roy was particularly moved by
the problems widow faced in their lives
•He began campaign against the practice of
sati
•He tried to show through his writings that the
practice of widow burning had no sanction in
ancient texts
•Many British officials had also begun to
criticise Indian traditions and customs
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GIRLS BEGAN TO GO TO SCHOOL
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PROBLEMS FACED BY GIRLS TO GO TO SCHOOL
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WOMEN WRITE ABOUT WOMEN
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MOVEMENTS AND REFORMERS
•Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar- he suggested widow remarriage and
law was passed in 1856 for the same
•Veerasailingam Pantulu- formed an association for widow
remarriage
•Swami Dayanand founded the reform association called Arya
Samaj and also supported widow remarriage
•He also felt education for girls was necessary in order to improve
the condition of women
•Mumtaz Ali reinterpreted verses from the Koran to argue for
women’s education
•Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started school for Muslim girls
in Patna and Calcutta
•Tarabai Shinde started publishing books and criticising social
difference between men and women
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PANDITA RAMABAI
•She was a great scholar of Sanskrit, felt that
Hinduism was oppressive towards women
•She wrote a book about the miserable lives of
upper caste Hindu women
•She founded a widow’s home at Poona to provide
shelter to widows who ha d been treated badly
by their husbands relatives
•Here women were trained so that they could
support themselves economically
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CASTE AND SOCIAL REFORM
•Rammohun Roy translated an old Buddhist text that was
critical of caste
•Prarthana Samaj adhered to the tradition of Bhakti that
believed in spiritual equality of all castes
•In Bombay, the Paramhans Mandali was founded in 1840
to work for the abolition of caste
•Christian missionaries began setting up schools fro tribal
groups and lower caste children
•There was great demand for equality and justice
•In second half of the 19th century people from within the
Non-Brahman castes began organising movements against
caste discrimination
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GULAMGIRI - JYOTIRAO PHULE
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BHIM RAO AMBEDKAR
•Ambedkar was born into a Mahar family
•As a child he experienced caste prejudice meant in everyday
life
•In school he was forced to sit outside the classroom on the
ground
•He was not allowed to drink water from taps that upper-caste
children used
•In 1927, Ambedkar started a temple entry movement
•In which his Mahar caste followers participated
•He led three such movements for temple entry between 1927
and 1935
•His aim was to make everyone see the power of caste
prejudices within society
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NON BRAHMAN MOVEMENT
•In the early 20th century the Non-Brahman movement
started
•They argued that Brahmans were heirs of Aryan invaders
from the north who had conquered southern lands
•E.V Ramaswamy Naicker or Periyar convinced that
untouchables had to fight for their dignity
•He founded self respect movement
•He argued that untouchables were the true upholders of an
original Tamil and Dravidian culture
•He felt that all religious authorities saw social divisions
and inequalities as God-given
•Periyar was an outspoken critic of Hindu scriptures
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