Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader - Paperback

by Sumit Sarkar (Editor), Tanika Sarkar (Editor)

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.

Author Biography

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.