Marriage of Hindu widows

The present work is a summary of Iswarchandra Vidya sagara's two tracts in Bengali on the much-debated question of the marriage of Hindu widows. The first of these tracts was published in January, 1855, and the second in October of the same year, the latter being a well-documented, fervently argued reply to his academic adversaries who sought to ridicule him into silence.
For a full realization of the impact of these tracts on Bengali society a peep into history is needed. It will help to have a view of the milieu that brought the problem to surface and necessiated governmental action for its solution. All innovations and changes arise, as the social scientists point out, from a shift in the collective situation, or from a change in relationships between groups or between individuals and groups. The commercial invasion of India by European trading companies and its ultimate conquest by England saw the tradition-bound, closed, and usually introvert Indian society terribly shaken in its foundations. This caused a great stir and an irresistible shift in the collective situation, leading to new assimitative efforts, to a new mode of perception. The Europeans who came to India in the 18th and early 19th centuries had the heritage of the Renaissance behind them and also of two centuries of scientific progress. People who came in their contact, as agents, interpreters, assistants or servants, could not but be impressed by their way of life and secularized thinking. Imperceptible radiation of ideas was bound to occur, even when there was no intentional tutoring. And tutoring began with the start and spread of English education, which brought into existence a large number of colonial intellectuals, mostly converts to westernism. The colonial economic system which tied the Indian plough to the wheels of capitalist development in England, broke the isolated character of the Indian village, and the spell of introvert world outlook was definitely lost. In course of time, the gradual dawning of the cosmopolitan sense of human reality became perceptible.