Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader - Softcover

[This book] brings together a very fine selection of scholarship on an important topic. . . . many of the essays collected in this volume continue to have an immense impact on our understanding of gender, and the changes wrought in gender relations by both the state and indigenous actors and organizations, in colonial India.Vol. 10.2 Fall 2009 -- Farina Mir * Journal of Col. & Colonial History e-jrnl * Written in easily accessible language . . . [this book is an] invaluable research and teaching [text] that can be put to very good effect. * Feminist Formations * [A]n outstanding volume of first-rate scholarship on women and social reform in colonial India. * Journal of Contemporary Asia * Essays by Lata Mani, Sumit Sarkar, Madhu Kishwar, Tanika Sarkar, and others, along with the original writings of Ram Mohan Roy, Tarabai Shinde, and others make this volume a rich one that students of cultural studies, women's studies, and history should possess.July, 2010 * H-Asia, H-Net Reviews *

Social reforms aimed at changing the social, political, or economic status of women in India were important both to British colonial rule and to nascent nationalist movements. Debates over practices such as widow immolation, widow remarriage, and child marriage, as well as those governing marriage and property within different religious communities, continued to exert profound influence on Indian society and politics throughout the 20th century. In this collection, eminent historians Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar bring together some of the most important scholarly articles and primary source documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries.