The Indian National Congress makes moderate demands for political reforms. The British make laws or attempt to make laws dealing with practices that some identify with religious traditions and others fee it is up to Indians to address. Some measures that are considered suppressive of free speech and participation in the system are. overturned. Particularly troublesome is the question whether Indians can sit on juries that try British citizens.

1. Political, Social and
Religious Reform
Bharat mata
Rabindranth Tagore, 1905
भारत माता

2. In Which of These Countries Does
Sharia Have Legal Status?
• India
• Israel
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• UK
• United States

3. Lord Lytton
• Considered himself independent of London
and the “the six second-rate men” in his
council or “the coalesced stupidities” of the
advisers of the Secretary of State.

4. Lord Ripon (1880-1884)
• Ended Second Afghan War
• Repeal Vernacular Press Act
• Supported Ilbert’s Bill
• Financial Decentralization, 1882

5. Ilbert’s Bill - Background
• Attempt to abolish judicial disqualification
based on race
• Native magistrates had criminal jurisdiction
over European subjects in India only in the
high courts of the Presidency towns, and not
at the lower district levels.
– Often gave effective immunity to European

6. Ilbert’s Bill
Criminal Procedures Amendment

7. Ilbert’s Proposal

8. Ilbert’s Bill
‘White Mutiny’
Compromise: Require a jury of 50% Europeans if
an Indian judge was to try a European

9. Judicial Discrimination
• British subjects
– privileges of appeal and habeas corpus.
– Indian judges could not impose death sentences

10. Congress Objectives
Financial Decentralization
• Imperial: Customs, Posts and Telegraphs,
Railways, Opium, Salt, Mint, Military Receipts,
Land Revenue
• Provincial: Jails, Medical services, Printing,
Roads, General Administration and part of
Land Revenue
• Divided: Excise, Stamps, Forests, Registration,
etc.

11. Ripon’s Principle and Practice
• Development of local self-government should be an effort to
promote self-confidence among the educated classes of India
and to train them for participation in government.
• In all local bodies, non-officials should constitute at least two-
thirds of the total number and should preferably be elected.
• They should exercise considerable initiative with regard to
matters transferred to them
• Resisted by London and local officials

12. Local Self-government
• Traditionally had been by nomination
• Replace most by people elected by rent-
payers
• Local boards to manage elementary schools

13. Indian National Congress
Aim and Objectives
• Follow up to Ripon proposed reforms and their disregard by
his successor, Dufferin
• Promotion of the friendship among the countrymen.
• Development and consolidation of feeling of national unity
irrespective of race, caste, religion and provinces.
• Consolidation of sentiments of national unity
• Record of the opinions of educated classes on pressing
problems.
• Training and organization of public opinion. Petition the
government based on popular demands.
• Laying down lines for future course of action in public
interest.

14. London Concerns
• Possible Russian aggression in Afghanistan
• Possible French aggression in Burma
• Military needs in Egypt
• All to be countered with the British Indian
Army at Indian expense

15. Congress 1890
“We have survived ridiculed abuse and
misrepresentation. We have survived the charge
of sedition and disloyalty. We have survived the
charge of being a macroscopic minority. We
have survived also the charge of being guilty of
the atrocious crime of being educated and we
have been managed to survive the grievous
charge of being babus in disguise.”
Mehta, Congress President

16. What Did the Moderates Get?
• Continued taxation
• No protective tariff against English
manufactures
• High exchange rate that discouraged
investment
• Little infrastructure assistance for agriculture

17. What Else did the Moderates Oppose
• Punjab Land Alienation Act which restricted
land transfers
• Mining Bill to improve conditions of women
and children
• Labor reforms

18. Social Reforms
(May have religious implications)
Women

19. Anandmath
1882 Novel of famine and
monks’ rebellion
Becomes symbol of
nationalism

20. Religious Reform
• Brahmo Samaj
– Appeal to intellect
– Use of Western ideas
• Ramakrishna Movement
– Appeal to emotion
– Rejection of values of Western education
– Philanthropic
– Embrace of Hindu glory w/o dogma

21. Sati
• Custom, social pressure or
forced
• Banned by Mughal
Aurangzeb, Portuguese,
French and Dutch
• Primarily in Bengal
• Banned by EIC after pressure
from English Baptist, William
Carey, and Bengali reformer,
Ram Mohan Roy.
William Skelton, Widow being Led to
Husband’s Funeral Pyre

22. Widow Remarriage
1856 Permitted by Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act
Promoted by Vidyasagar
Opposed by petition and practice
1931 Census

23. Kulinism
• Vidyasagar survey of 133 kulin Brahmans
– Man age 50: 107 wives; age 55, 80 wives; age 64,
72 wives

24. 1872 Special Marriage Act
• Marriages between persons neither of whom
professes the Christian or the Jewish, or the
Hindu or the Muslim or the Parsi or the
Buddhist, or the Sikh or the Jaina religion, or:
– Non bigamous
– Male over 18; female over 14
– Father’s permission if under 21

25. 1881 Census
Proportion of Hindu girls under 10 who are
married or widowed
• Bengal 14%
• Bombay 10%
• Madras 4.5%

26. 1887 National Social Conference
• M.G. Ranade, founder
– Educated in history and economics at University of
Bombay
– Served as judge
• Excluded religious reform to avoid divisions

27. Evils of Child Marriage – London Times
Girl-wife aged 11 branded with hot iron by mother-in-law
A girl, aged 11, of good position, was found dead, her throat cut.
Her husband alleges suicide.
September 17, 1888
“The British government sits by with folded hands while a father
is permitted to sell in marriage and infant daughter of eight years
to a man of 47, already notorious by his marital tyranny”
Raganatha Rao, quoted April 29, 1889

28. Court Cases
1886, Dadaji, the consumptive husband of Rukhmabai, brought a
court case against his wife for restoration of conjugal rights. She
refused and the Court threatened her with jail.*
1890, Phulmoni, aged 10, died of injuries resulting from sexual
intercourse with her 35 year-old-husband.
Charged with manslaughter, Hari Mohan defended himself in
terms of the age of consent fixed by law in 1860.
When he was sentenced to 12 months' hard labor, the orthodox
community protested
*Her husband did give up. She went to England and became a
doctor and died single in 1955.

29. Arousing Public Opinion
Notes on Infant Marriage . . . gets
responses from Indian intellectuals
and religious leaders
1890 Malabari goes to England and
lobbies reform organizations,
aristocrats, intellectuals, religious
officials, etc
K.T. Telang, reformer and later Bombay
high court judge, in his reply to the
"Notes" in 1884 argued that "reform is
most urgently called for in regard to
the time of consummation and not so
much in regard to the time of
marriage.”

30. Age of Consent Act 1891
• Raises age of consent from ten to twelve
• Two of three Indian members of Council spoke in
support
• The dissenter thought that existing law gave enough
physical protection
– The change would alienate many
– It would create a dilemma for religious husbands; would
create a new crime of wife rape

31. Arguments against the Act
"It is the injunction of the Hindu shastras that married
girls must cohabit with their husbands on the first
appearance of their menses . . . ”
Bengali newspaper
Raising the age of consent would violate the
garbhadhan ritual.
Boys would be unable to make ritual offerings; girls would be
widows. “The Hindu family is ruined” [Bangabashi, newspaper]
Some would substitute puberty for a defined age
Sarkar, Tanika. "A prehistory of rights: the age of consent debate in colonial
Bengal." Feminist Studies 26.3 (2000): 601-622.

32. Akbar’s Dream
Well, I dream'd
That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred fane [shrine],
A temple, neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-door'd
To every breath from heaven, and Truth and Peace
And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein;
But while we stood rejoicing, I and thou,
I heard a mocking laugh "the new Koran!"
And on the sudden, and with a cry "Saleem"
Thou, thou — I saw thee fall before me, and then
Me too the black-wing'd Azrael overcame,

33. But Death had ears and eyes; I watch'd my son,
And those that follow'd, loosen, stone from
stone,
All my fair work; and from the ruin arose
The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even
As in the time before; but while I groan'd,

34. From out the sunset pour'd an alien race,
Who fitted stone to stone again, and Truth,
Peace, Love and Justice came and dwelt therein,
Nor in the field without were seen or heard
Fires of Suttee, nor wail of baby-wife,
Or Indian widow; and in sleep I said
"All praise to Alla by whatever hands
My mission be accomplish'd!" but we hear
Music: our palace is awake,and morn
Has lifted the dark eyelash of the Night
From off the rosy cheek of waking Day.
Our hymn to the sun. They sing it. Let us go.’
Tennyson (1809-1892), 1892

35. Shortcomings of Reform
• Did not seek women’s opinions
• Did not seek to mobilize women
• Exception: Female education where literate
women were
• 1929 Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA)

36. Festivals
• 1892 Public worship of Ganesh
• 1893 Enhanced by B.G. Tilak
• God Ganesha: political obstacle remover
• Why shouldn't we convert the large religious festivals
into mass political rallies?
– Tilak, Kesari, 8 September 1896

37. Ganesh Chaturthi

38. Shivaji
• Hindu leader of the Marathas who in the early 1700s
led a successful revolt against the Mughals
• 1896 Festival established by Tilak
• Festivals accompanied by political songs

39. Shivaji Festival

40. 1896 Bombay Plague
• Probably came from Hong Kong
• British India Government response
Plague Commission
• Assume localized to slums with overcrowding, poor
sanitation, poor ventilation

41. Fighting Plague
• Inspection and
disinfection of houses
• Quarantine
• Travel restrictions
• Native medical practice
restrictions

42. 1897 Fight Plague, Pune
• Inspection ordered to be carried out with respect for
religious groups
• Carried out by British India Army
– Allegations of forced entry, destruction of property,
stripping of women
• C. W. Rand, plague administrator and his guard are
assassinated by Chapekar brothers
• Tilak arrested and convicted for sedtious articles that
provoked the assassinations