Dharma Sabha
Dharma Sabha was formed in 1830 in Calcutta by Radhakanta Deb. The organization was established mainly to counter the ongoing social reform movements led by protagonists such as Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Henry Derozio. More specifically, the impetus of forming the organization came from a new law enacted by the colonial British rule which banned the practice of burning widows alive (sati) in the country; the focus of the new association was to repel the law which was seen as an intrusion by the British into the religious affairs of the indigenous people by some sections of the Hindu community.[1] The Dharma Sabha filed an appeal in the Privy Council against the ban on Sati by Lord William Bentinck as, according to them, it went against the assurance given by George III of non-interference in Hindu religious affairs; however, their appeal was rejected and the ban on Sati was upheld in 1832.[2][3] It published a newspaper called Samachar Chandrika.
The Dharma Sabha campaigned against the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, 1856 and submitted a petition against the proposal with nearly four times more signatures than the one submitted for it by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. However [4][5] Lord Dalhousie personally finalized the bill despite the opposition and it being considered a flagrant breach of Hindu customs as prevalent then, and it was passed by Lord Canning.[6][7]
The organization soon morphed into a 'society in defense of Hindu way of life or culture'.[8]
That the Dharma Sabha of the early nineteenth century was a group of bigoted orthodox Brahmans meeting periodically to conspire against modernity in India is, in large part, untrue. Most of them were not Brahmans, and they were certainly not orthodox for they were the same people who worked with Orientalists in promoting syncretic schemes.[8] And if they were bigoted, their hostility was not directed necessarily against modernization as such but against what they came to fear as intrusive forms of Westernization. Since they were organized and led by Bengalis who had worked with the English for as long as twenty years, the institution was extremely Western in orientation.[8] The executive body of the Dharma Sabha included a president, a board of directors, a secretary, and a treasurer, and the members regularly organized committees for special purposes. It might be added that the Dharma Sabha conducted its meetings according to strict rules of parliamentary procedure, a form of Westernization acquired from contact with the British.[8]
References
[edit]- ^ Ahmed, A.S (1976). Social ideas and social change in Bengal, 1818-1835. Ṛddhi.
- ^ S. Muthiah (2008). Madras, Chennai: A 400-year Record of the First City of Modern India. Palaniappa Brothers. pp. 484–. ISBN 978-81-8379-468-8. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
- ^ Crispin Bates (26 March 2013). Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857: Volume I: Anticipations and Experiences in the Locality. SAGE Publications. pp. 48–. ISBN 978-81-321-1336-2. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
- ^ H. R. Ghosal (1957). "THE REVOLUTION BEHIND THE REVOLT (A comparative study of the causes of the 1857 uprising)". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 20: 293–305. JSTOR 44304480.
- ^ Pratima Asthana (1974). Women's Movement in India. Vikas Publishing House. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-7069-0333-1. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
- ^ Amit Kumar Gupta (5 October 2015). Nineteenth-Century Colonialism and the Great Indian Revolt. Taylor & Francis. pp. 30–. ISBN 978-1-317-38668-1. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
- ^ Belkacem Belmekki (2008). "A Wind of Change: The New British Colonial Policy in Post-Revolt India". AEDEAN: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-americanos. 2 (2): 111–124. JSTOR 41055330.
- ^ a b c d Kopf, David (1969). British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773-1835. University of California Press. p. 271.
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