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

"In order to illuminate the social and cultural contexts obscured by such shortcuts, Sarkar and Sarkar suggest using nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reform to analyze concurrent shifts in gendered systems of social regulation, especially through religious orthodox and revivalist movements, and gendered engagements with the state, especially through law ...The Sarkars' project, however, is much larger than creating a more accurate narrative of social reform in late-colonial India." Feminist Formations, Fall 2012

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.