The 19th century is remembered for many reasons. It is the century when industrialisation gathered steam, and when the more powerful, richer nations of the West established colonies for themselves in Asia and Africa.

But the 19th century was in very many ways also the ‘age of women’. The struggle for women’s rights in every sphere began from this period, whether it was for rights related to education, as citizens, rights that aimed to improve women’s role in the domestic sphere, etc. The struggle was influenced greatly by the radical thoughts that spread in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789.

In the 19th century things were changing in India too, especially in two provinces -- Bengal and the Bombay Presidency, as Maharashtra was then called.

With British rule came the spread of English education and the birth of a new middle class of people who worked in offices in the British set-up. A group of radical, new-thinking reformers arose, who, conscious of the backward ways of Indian society, were determined to change things.

The changes that began from this period were to have a huge impact on later decades. For instance, the movement against caste in Maharashtra had its roots in the state when the Peshwas, who represented the dominant Brahmins, were forced to retreat. The well-known reformer from Bengal, Ram Mohun Roy, who fought for reform, was influenced greatly by Sufi ideas of religious reform. 

Indeed, it was in Bengal that advances towards a women’s movement were first noted. These were two-pronged -- the advancement of women’s education and the pressing campaign for the abolition of sati. The movement to improve the condition of widows also had a lot of support, but progress in this area was limited.

This column will look at the development of women’s rights in India. It will try and fill in the colour and details that your school textbooks leave out. In the rest of this article we will look at the practice of sati and how it was defeated by Ram Mohun Roy.

The abolition of sati

In 1815, a pamphlet written in Bengali caused quite a stir in Calcutta. It was on the evil custom of sati and was written by Ram Mohun Roy who had already made a name for himself by speaking up for reforms in society, the need to improve the condition of women especially, and, equally important, to ensure that women received an education. Roy was based in Calcutta, a city that was growing rapidly because of new opportunities that followed in the wake of the new rulers.

Ram Mohun Roy was born in 1772. He came from an educated, enlightened and wealthy family with trading links. Roy grew up with an awareness of the world around him. He realised that Indian society needed reform, that people needed to be made aware of their ignorance and backwardness, and that such improvements in society were essential, especially in the sphere of women.

The story goes that Ram Mohun Roy was moved to act against sati when, in 1815, he was witness to a most horrifying scene. His brother had just died and Roy saw his sister-in-law, the widow, being dragged to her husband’s funeral pyre where she was burnt alive. It was this first-hand experience of the custom of sati that moved him to raise his voice and embark on a lifelong campaign to ensure that the practice was abolished. 

Roy petitioned the government, published pamphlets, and even travelled to England -- a long journey in those days -- to appeal before the British Parliament to ensure the ban on sati. The more conservative groups in society were opposed to what they thought was an intrusion into the traditional customs and ways of people.

Roy attempted to beat these conservative elements at their own game; when they insisted that sati had the sanction of religion, he quoted the scriptures too, to emphasise that none of the ancient Hindu texts ever sanctioned sati. He underlined the fact that the occurrence of sati showed how much society had ‘degenerated’. In response to this, 128 pundits published a manifesto arguing that Roy’s opinion was only that of a minority, and that the government could not defy religion and ban sati.

Roy wasn’t one to give up. He gathered a lot of evidence, especially from the ancient Hindu scriptures and law books called the shastras, to show that sati was not obligatory and was in fact the least virtuous act a widow could perform. And that it had meaning only if it was done voluntarily. 

Roy later translated the 1815 pamphlet into English. While conservative, orthodox elements argued that sati allowed women who lacked virtuous knowledge to acquire such knowledge and gift it to their families (who would be blessed by their act!), Roy argued that women anyway possessed virtuous knowledge, for their lives showed that they were infinitely more self-sacrificing than men. This motif of the ‘self-sacrificing and virtuous’ woman would feature again and again whenever issues relating to women’s rights came into focus.

The pathetic condition of women: Excepts from Roy’s writings

At marriage, the woman is recognised as half of her husband but they are later treated worse than inferior animals. She is generally employed to do the work of a slave. Clean the place early in the morning, whether hot or cold, to scour the dishes, to wash the floor, to cook night and day, to prepare and serve food for her husband, father and mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law and friends and connections. If in the preparation or the serving up of the victuals they commit the smallest fault what insult do they not receive from their husband and their mother-in-law and the younger brothers of their husband? …In the afternoon they fetch water from the river or tank and at night perform the office of menial servants in making the beds. In case of any fault or omission in the performance of these labours they receive injurious treatment. (When) the husband is poor she suffers every kind of trouble and when he becomes rich she is altogether heart-broken. All this pain and affliction their virtue alone enables them to support. Where a husband takes two or three wives to live with him, they are subjected to mental miseries and constant quarrels.

These are facts occurring every day and not to be denied. What I lament is that seeing the women thus dependent and exposed to every misery, you feel for them no compassion that might exempt them from being tied down and burnt to death.

The abolition of sati in 1829

In 1817, Mritunjaya Vidyalamkara, chief pundit of the Supreme Court (as the position was then called) in Calcutta announced that sati had no sanction in the ancient texts and, in 1818, William Bentinck, who was then governor of Bengal, banned the practice in Bengal. It took another 11 years before the Sati Abolition Act was passed in 1829 when Bentinck was governor general of all of British-ruled India. Passed on December 4, 1829, the sati regulation declared the practice of sati, or suttee, or of burning or burying alive the widows of Hindus, illegal and punishable by the criminal courts.  

(Anu Kumar is an independent writer and researcher based in New Delhi. This is the first part of a series of articles on how the lives of women changed in India from the 19th century onwards)

Infochange News & Features, August 2009