AP Board 8th Class Social History Notes 8th Lesson Women, Caste and Reform
→ All women, like all men, can vote and stand for elections. Of course, these rights are not actually enjoyed by all.
→ Poor people have little or no access to education, and in many families, women cannot choose their husbands.
→ Two hundred years ago things were very different. Most children were married off at an early age. Bigamy was present there in all the religions.
→ Women who died in this manner, whether willingly or otherwise, were called “sati”, meaning virtuous women.
→ Women’s rights to property were also restricted. Besides, most women had virtually no access to education. In many parts of the country people believed that if a woman was educated, she would become a widow.
→ Differences between men and women were not the only ones in society. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of these norms and perceptions slowly changed.
→ From the early nineteenth century, we find debates and discussions about social customs and practices taking on a new character.
→ One important reason for this was the development of new forms of communication.
→ For the first time, books, newspapers, magazines, leaflets and pamphlets were printed,
→ Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833 founded a reform association known as the Brahmo Sabha (later known as the Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta.
→ Rammohan Roy was particularly moved by the problems widows faced in their lives. He began a campaign against the practice of sati.
→ One of the most famous reformers, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, used the ancient texts to suggest that widows could remarry.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, the movement in favour of widow remarriage spread to other parts of the country.
→ Many of the reformers felt that education for girls was necessary in order to improve the condition of women.
→ VidyasagaNn Calcutta and many other reformers in Bgmbay set up schools for girls.
→ In aristocratic Muslim households in North India, women learnt to read the Quran in Arabic, They were taught by women who came home to teach.
→ From the early twentieth century, Muslim women like the Begums of Bhopal played a notable role in promoting education among women.
→ By the 1880s, Indian women began to enter universities. Some of them trained to be doctors, some became teachers.
→ Pandita Ramabai, a great scholar of Sanskrit felt that Hinduism was oppressive towards women, and wrote a book about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women.
→ By the end of the nineteenth century, women themselves were actively working for reform.
→ In the twentieth century, leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose lent their support to demands for greater equality and freedom for women.
→ In 1929 the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed without the kind of bitter debates and struggles that earlier laws had seen. According to the Act no man below the age of 18 and woman below the age of 16 could marry. Subsequently these limits were raised to 21 for. men and 18 for women.
→ During the course of the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries began setting up schools for tribal groups and “lower”-caste children.
→ Some of the social reformers we have been discussing also criticised caste inequalities.
→ In Bombay, the Paramhans Mandali was founded in 1840 to work for the abolition of caste: Many of these reformers and members of reform associations were people of upper castes.
→ A number of Mahar people, who were regarded as untouchable, found jobs in the Mahar Regiment.
→ Gradually, by the second half of the nineteenth century, people from within the Non¬Brahman castes began organising movements against caste discrimination, and demanded social equality and justice.
→ The Satnami movement in Central India was founded by Ghasidas who worked among, the leatherworkers and organised a movement to improve their social status.
→ One of the most vocal amongst the “low-caste” leaders was Jyotirao Phule. Born in 1827, he studied in schools set up by Christian missionaries.
→ This movement for caste reform was continued in the twentieth century by other great dalit leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar in western India and E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker in the south.
→ Ambedkar 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.
→ In the early twentieth century, the non-Brahman movement started. The initiative came from those non-Brahman castes that had acquired access to education, wealth and Influence.
→ The forceful speeches, writings and movements of lower caste leaders did lead to rethinking and some selfcriticism among upper-caste nationalist leaders.
→ Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), whose original name was Narendra Nath Dutta, combined the simple teachings of Sri Ramakrishna with his well founded modern outlook and spread them all over the world.
→ Established in 1867 at Bombay, the Prarthana Samaj sought to remove caste restrictions, abolish child marriage, encourage the education of women, and end the bqn on widow remarriage. Its religious meetings drew upon Hindu, Buddhist and Christian texts.
→ Established in Madras (Chennai) in 1864, the Veda Samaj was inspired by the Brahm Samaj.
→ The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, founded by Sayyid Ahmed Khan in 1875 at Aligarh, later became the Aligarh Muslim University.
→ Reform organisations of the Sikhs, the first Singh Sabhas were formed at Amritsar in 1873 and at Lahore in 1879.
→ From the time that European explorers and traders landed in Africa in the seventeenth century, a trade in slaves began. Black people were captured and brought from Africa to America sold to white planters, and made to work on cotton and other plantations – most of them in the southern United States.
→ SATI : The woman who burns herself, willingly or unwillingly, on the funeral pyre of her dead husband.
→ MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES : The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education or social status.
→ PERCEPTIONS : The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
→ MANUSCRIPTS : A book, document, or piece of music written by hand rather than typed or printed.
→ PERSUADING : Induce (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument.
→ INTELLECTUALS : A person possessing a highly developed intellect.
→ CONSERVATIVE : Of or constituting a party of the United kingdom advocating support of established institutions.
→ REFORMERS : A person who makes changes to something in order to improve it. .
→ HINDU NATIONALISTS : A person who is Hindu and strongly identifies with their own nation and vigorously supports its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.
→ FEMALE SUFFRAGE : The right of women by law to vote in national or local elections.
→ SPIRITUAL EQUALITY : The Divine is equally present in all.
→ MISSIONARIES : A person sent on a religious mission, especially one sent to promote Christianity in a foreign country.
→ HUMILIATION : The action of humiliating someone or the state of being humiliated. –
→ CASTE DISCRIMINATION : Caste discrimination is referred to as discrimination on the basis of descent and work because each caste is restricted to one kind of work.
→ PROVOKE : Stimulate or incite (someone) to do or feel something, especially by arousing anger in them.
→ GULAMGIRI : Servanthood
→ CONTEMPORARY : Contemporary things are modem and relate to the present time.
→ CASTE PREJUDICES : The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, feelings towards people or a person because of their sex, gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, beauty, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other.
→ ASCETIC : Characterized by severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons,
→ ASSERTIONS : a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.
→ VAISHYAS : Traders and moneylenders.
→ SHUDRAS : Peasants, artisans like weavers and potters.
→ POLLUTING : Uncleaned, dirty.
→ ORTHODOX : Fanatic, fundamentalists.
→ SUFFRAGE : Right to vote