Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India

Socio-religious reforms in British India were felt necessary due to three reasons:

(1) the selection of texts from various commentaries on the code of Manu had not always been enlightened;

(2) the reliance on law courts for interpretation had resulted in greater conservatism; and

(3) the law, as applied by the law courts and British judges, was a combination of ancient Hindu and Victorian English conservatism, particularly in regard to women, inheritance, marriage and the rights of married women.


The right to property of individual members in a joint family or the granting of property right to women took many years from their acceptance in letter to their actual acceptance. The joint family, caste and Hinduism have always been the pivotal institutions and have discouraged any legislations which would weaken them manifestly or even latently.

Besides these reasons, there were several socio-cultural and economic problems which demanded mass mobilisation, awakening and action against the British Raj, feudals and upper sections of society. There was a need to attack the institutional mechanisms, which had made society rigid and exploitative.

A.R. Desai considers religious reform movements as an expression of national awakening due to contradictions between the old value system and new socio-economic realities. The aim of these movements was to revive the old religion in the context of nationalism and democracy as the cardinal principles for the emergence of modern India.

Desai (1976) writes: “Modern society established liberty, freedom of competition, contact and freedom of the individual to own and manipulate property at will. Individu­alism was its keynote in contrast to the pre-capitalist society which was authoritarian in character, maintained social distinctions based on birth and sex, and subordinated the individual to caste and the joint family system.


The new society demanded, as the very condition of its development, the abolition of privileges based on birth or sex.” The reform movements were against medievalism in socio-cultural realms. They attacked the caste system and its allied institutions, polytheism, superfluous religious rites and dogmas.

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