Jignasa Journal Of History Of Ideas And Culture Part 02

Author(s): Vibha Upadhyaya and Others
Publisher: University of Rajasthan

Page 58

274 /
Jijñāsā
• 37. Dayanand Saraswati: Campaign for Social Regeneration
Sangeeta Sharma
The imperialist critique of the Indian society and religion especially the visibly low status of Indian women provoked the exponents of Indian Renaissance in the 19th century to launch campaigns against inhuman practices and to emphasize the urgent need for social and religious reform. In its initial stages, the movement was largely concerned with changes affecting the structure of Indian society and family. The specific causes that engrossed the attention of the reformers were evils and malpractices that affected women's status and position in society. Roy's incessant campaign against sati coupled with the initiative of the Christian missionaries and the British government marked the beginning of a movement that subsequently dealt with ill-treatment of widows, ban on remarriage of widows, child marriages, polygamy and absence of educational opportunities for women. Disabilities associated with the caste system also attracted the attention of the nineteenth century reformers. Raja Rammohan Roy, in addition to his well-known tracts on sati, displayed a very mature and insightful understanding of the abject subordination that characterized women's lives in the 18th and 19th centuries. In one of his tracts against sati, he recounted with rare sensitivity the deprivations and sufferings of women in a patriarchal society. The manner in which Roy empathized with women's privations and distress was indeed commendable as he questioned practices that were considered extremely acceptable in those times.
The vision articulated by Roy was, however, a partial one as he did not formulate any concrete programme for removal of these disabilities. While he applied himself rigourously as far as discourse on sati was concerned, he offered few practical options to relieve the misery and dependence of widows. He neither recommended widow remarriage nor any educational or economic programme for their rehabilitation. Quite significantly, Roy did not question the regressive nature of the caste system as far as women's subordination was concerned. He did not have any programmes to redefine structures of institutions like caste and marriage that ensured and perpetuated the subordination of women. Significantly, while Roy pioneered the use of tradition in campaign against sati and his views on polygamy, he did not use scriptural authority for carving out any comprehensive and alternative model of womanhood. Similarly, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar devoted most of his energies to the widow remarriage movement.?
Dayanand Saraswati's major objective in critiquing tradition was to create a new social ethos for creating a social order that was based on ethical, moral and rational principles. It is seldom emphasized that apart from searching for a distinctive and glorious cultural identity for Indians and counteracting the Christian challenge, his primary concern was social regeneration. In his magnum opus, Satyartha Prakash and his subsequent lectures and writings Dayanand is consistently focusing on urgency of