Colonial Rule, Reform Movements and Key Figures

Overview

Recall questions on colonial pressures and secularisation, the Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission, Neo-Vedanta and Hindutva, and Ram Mohan Roy, Ramakrishna, Dayananda Saraswati and Gandhi.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What pressures was Hinduism under during the colonial period?

   Model answer

   Several at once. Centuries of Muslim rule had already produced both conflict and exchange, including the devotional currents that drew Hindus and Muslims together. British rule then added Christian missionary preaching, English-medium education that trained an Indian elite in European categories, orientalist scholarship that told Hindus what their own tradition was, printing that fixed and circulated texts, and law courts that codified Hindu practice into rules. Educated Hindus found themselves having to explain and defend their tradition in terms set by others.

2. 2

   What specific criticisms did reformers accept, and what changed as a result?

   Model answer

   Missionaries and colonial officials attacked image worship as idolatry, caste as inhumane, and practices affecting women, notably sati, child marriage and the treatment of widows. Some Hindu reformers accepted the substance of these criticisms while rejecting the conclusion that Hinduism should be abandoned, arguing instead that the abuses were later corruptions of a purer teaching. Sati was outlawed in 1829 after campaigning in which Ram Mohan Roy was prominent, and widow remarriage and age-of-consent legislation followed later in the century.

3. 3

   How does secularisation present a challenge to Hinduism?

   Model answer

   In the familiar form of urbanisation, scientific education and consumer life loosening ritual observance, especially among the young and in diaspora settings. But the Indian case has its own shape: secularism there has generally meant the state treating all religions even-handedly rather than removing religion from public life, so religious festivals, symbols and disputes remain intensely public. Hindus disagree about whether that arrangement protects their tradition or disadvantages the majority, and that disagreement drives much contemporary politics.

4. 4

   Outline the aims and teaching of the Brahmo Samaj.

   Model answer

   Founded in Calcutta in 1828 by Ram Mohan Roy, it advocated worship of one formless God without images, drawing its authority chiefly from the Upanishads, and it rejected polytheistic ritual, priestly mediation and caste restriction alongside campaigning against sati. It absorbed elements of Unitarian and Islamic monotheism and held congregational services with readings and hymns. Under Debendranath Tagore and then Keshub Chandra Sen it developed and split, and though its membership remained small it shaped the outlook of the Bengali educated class out of all proportion to its size.

5. 5

   Outline the aims and teaching of the Arya Samaj.

   Model answer

   Founded by Dayananda Saraswati in Bombay in 1875, it called Hindus back to the Vedas, which it held to be infallible and to contain all necessary truth. It rejected image worship, puranic mythology, pilgrimage, and hereditary caste, holding that varna should follow merit, and it opposed child marriage while promoting women's education. It was assertive rather than accommodating: it founded schools, criticised other religions directly, and developed the shuddhi rite to bring converts back into the Hindu fold, which made it influential in the Punjab and controversial elsewhere.

6. 6

   Describe the Ramakrishna Mission and the principle behind its work.

   Model answer

   The organisation founded in 1897 by Vivekananda in the name of his teacher Ramakrishna, combining a monastic order with large-scale public service. Its distinctive principle is that service to human beings is worship of the divine present in them, and it runs hospitals, schools, relief work and publishing. It also carried Vedanta abroad, following Vivekananda's appearance at the Chicago World's Parliament of Religions in 1893, establishing Vedanta Societies in the West and doing much to shape how Hinduism came to be presented internationally.

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