Explore the key factors that led to socio-religious reforms in 19th century India, including British influence, social conditions, and new awareness.

Middle Class Base: The Rise of a New Intelligentsia

• Social Base of Regeneration: The social base of the regeneration seen in the nineteenth century was the newly emerging middle class and the educated (both traditionally educated and the Western educated) intellectuals, but there was a significant contrast between the broadly middle class ideals derived from a growing awareness of contemporary developments in the West, and a predominantly non-middle class social base.
• Nineteenth Century Intelligentsia: The nineteenth century intelligentsia searched for its model in the European ‘middle class’, which, as it learnt through Western education, had brought about the great transformation in the West from medieval to modern times through movements like the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and democratic revolution or reform.
• Intelligentsia's Roots: However, the intelligentsia of nineteenth century India did not grow from trade or industry (which were firmly under the control of British agencies); their roots lay in government service or the professions of law, education, journalism or medicine—with which was often combined some connection with land in the form of the intermediate tenures.

The Intellectual Criteria: Rationalism, Universalism, and Humanism

• Ideological Unity: What gave these reform movements an ideological unity were rationalism, religious universalism and humanism.
• Raja Rammohan Roy's Beliefs: Rationalism was brought to judge social relevance. Raja Rammohan Roy firmly believed in the principle of causality linking the whole phenomenal universe and demonstrability as the sole criterion of truth.
• Akshay Kumar Dutt's Perspective: Akshay Kumar Dutt, while declaring that “rationalism is our only preceptor”, held that all natural and social phenomena could be analysed and understood by purely mechanical processes.
• Rational Approach: They thus used a rational approach to study tradition; they evaluated the contemporary socio-religious practices from the standpoint of social utility and aimed to replace faith with rationality.
• Brahmo Samaj: As a consequence, in the Brahmo Samaj the infallibility of the Vedas was repudiated, while the Aligarh movement emphasised reconciliation of Islamic teachings with the needs of the modern age.
• Syed Ahmed Khan's View: Syed Ahmed Khan went to the extent of emphasising that religious tenets were not immutable.
• Religious Authority and Reason: Many of the intellectuals set aside the authority of religion and evaluated truth in any religion by the criteria of logic, reason or science.
• Swami Vivekananda's Approach: According to Swami Vivekananda, the same method of investigation which applies to sciences should be the basis on which religion must justify itself.
• Rational and Secular Outlook: Although some reformers tended to appeal to faith and ancient authority to support their appeal, on the whole, a rational and secular outlook was very much evident in putting forward an alternative to prevalent social practices.
• Akshay Kumar Dutt on Child Marriage: Akshay Kumar Dutt, for instance, brought medical opinion to support his views against child marriage.
• Use of Tradition: Reference to the past was to be used only as an aid and an instrument. Neither a revival of the past nor a total break with tradition was envisaged.

Universalistic Aspect: Finding Common Ground Among Religions

• Religious Perspective: Though the reformers tried to reform their religions, there was a universalistic aspect to their religious perspective.
• Raja Rammohan Roy's Universal Theism: Raja Rammohan Roy considered different religions as national embodiments of universal theism.
• Defending Universal Principles: He defended the basic and universal principles of all religions—such as the monotheism of the Vedas and unitarianism of Christianity—while attacking the polytheism of Hinduism and trinitarianism of Christianity.
• Syed Ahmed Khan's Beliefs: Syed Ahmed Khan said that all prophets had the same ‘din’ (faith) and every country and nation had different prophets.
• Universalist Perspective: The social reformers used the universalist perspective to contend with the influence of religious identity on the social and political outlook of the people, which was indeed strong.

New Humanitarian Morality: Focus on Human Progress and Worldly Existence

• Human Progress: A new humanitarian morality was embodied in the social reform movements which included the notion that humanity can progress and has progressed, and that moral values are ultimately those values which favour human progress.
• Humanist Aspect: The humanist aspect of the religious reform movements was to be seen in the emphasis on the individual’s right to interpret religious scriptures in the light of human reason and human welfare and in a general attack on priestly domination of religious practices.
• Worldly Existence: Religious reformation was an important but not the exclusive concern of these movements. Attention was focussed on worldly existence and not on issues of salvation or other worldliness.
• Engagement with Religion: Because of the strong religious element in social practices and the fact that religion was the dominant ideology of the times, it was not possible to undertake any social action without coming to grips with it.
• Cultural Ideological System: These movements took into their ambit the entire cultural existence, the way of life. The evolution of an alternative cultural-ideological system and the regeneration of traditional institutions were two concerns of these movements.
• Reconstruction of Traditional Knowledge: These concerns were manifest in the attempts to reconstruct traditional knowledge, the use and development of vernacular languages, creation of an alternative system of education, defence of religion, efforts to regenerate Indian art and literature, the emphasis on Indian dress and food, attempts to revitalise the Indian systems of medicine and to research the pre-colonial technology for its potential.

Two Streams: Reformist vs. Revivalist Movements

• Classification of Reform Movements: The reform movements could broadly be classified into two categories—the reformist movements like the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Aligarh Movement, and the revivalist movements like Arya Samaj and the Deoband movement.
• Appeal to Lost Purity: The reformist as well as the revivalist movement depended, to varying degrees, on an appeal to the lost purity of the religion they sought to reform.
• Difference Between Reform Movements: The only difference between one reform movement and the other lay in the degree to which it relied on tradition or on reason and conscience.