Women and Social Reform in Modern India A Reader [Paperback]

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.

Sumit Sarkar is Retired Professor of History at the University of Delhi. His books include Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History (IUP, 2002) and Writing Social History.

Tanika Sarkar is Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is author of Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (IUP, 2001) and co-editor of Women and Right-Wing Movements.

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[A]n outstanding volume of first-rate scholarship on women and social reform in colonial India.Written in easily accessible language . . . [this book is an] invaluable research and teaching [text] that can be put to very good effect.

Introduction TANIKA SARKAR AND SUMIT SARKAR

PART A: HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Whose Sati?: Widow Burning in Early-Nineteenth-Century India ANAND A. YANG

Production of an Official Discourse on Sati in Early-Nineteenth-Century Bengal LATA MANI

Education for Women GERALDINE FORBES

Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu Widows' Remarriage lS¨