WOMEN AND SOCIAL LAWS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY INDIA: Bengal and Maharashtra

This book aims to discuss the laws passed in nineteenth-century India in the realm of social matters involving women’s conditions. The enactments of Sati Abolition, legalising marriages of widows, Native Marriage, Age of Consent, and Contagious Diseases triggered many reactions from different sections of society especially in Bengal and Maharashtra. Hence, the book focuses on the impact of these laws on these two provinces given the different contemporary strands of social reform about women. The reactions and responses expressed in several newspapers, pamphlets, petitions, and articles are the source materials to analyse the pace of social reform about women in the nineteenth century. An analysis of the success and limitations of the enactments is made with a comparative approach regarding the two provinces. The ideas of reform towards women’s emancipation were initiated in Bengal and spread to other parts of India. Though the reformers of Maharashtra took the ideas from the reformers of Bengal they created their distinct identity while resorting to gradualism. The book is based on Bengali, Marathi, Sanskrit, and English sources.