Monday, March 24, 2014

Modern Indian History - Social and Cultural Awakening(1800-1850)



Rammohun Roy



Derozio (1809-1831)


  • Young Bengal Movement
  • More radical
  • taught at Hindu College from 1826 to 1831
  • inspiration from French Revolution
  • inspired his students to
    • think rationally and freely
    • to question all authority
    • liberty, equality and freedom
    • to worship truth
  • attacked old and decadent customs, traditions and rites
  • advocated women's rights and education
  • failed because
    • society was not yet ripe
    • lost contact with masses, farmers
    • radicalism was bookish
  • succeeded in
    • Rammohun's tradition of educating people in social, eco and political spheres through newspapers, pamphlets and public associations
  • carried out agitations on public issues such as
    • revision of company's charter
    • freedom of press
    • trial by jury
    • protection of ryot's from oppressive zamindars
    • better treatment of Indian labourers in British colonies
    • employment of Indians in higher grades of public services

Debendranath Tagore

  • 1839 - Tatvabodhini Sabha to propagate Rammohun's ideas
  • 1843 - Reorganized Brahmo Samaj

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

  • great champion of widow remarriage --> law was enacted
  • child marriage, women education
  • great humanist
  • sanskrit scholar
  • opened sanskrit education to all
  • wrote a Bengali primer
  • helped in evolution of modern prose style in Bengali

Bal Sastri Jambekar

  • attacked Brahminical orthodoxy
  • tried to reform Hinduism
  • 1832 - weekly Darpan

Paramhans mandali in 1849

  • believed in one god
  • tried to break caste rules

Jotiba Phule

  • girls school in 1851
  • widow remarriage
  • Vishnu Shastri Pandit founded Widow remarriage Association
  • karsondas Mulji started the Satya Prakash in Gujarati to advocate widow remarriage

Lokhitwadi - Gopal Hari Deshmukh

  • advocated reorg. of Indian society on rational principles and modern humanistic and secular values like that of Jyotiba Phule

Dadabhai Naoroji

  • Reform in Zoroastrian religion 
  • agitation for equal rights to women in inheritance and marriage

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