Today marks the death anniversary of the pioneering social reformer and educationist, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (Bandyopadhyay). He is known to have legalised widow remarriage in Hindu society through enactment of the Hindu Widow Remarriage Bill in 1856. A thread. (1/n)
Vidyasagar's concerns on the plight of widows of Bengal revolved around the faulty practice of Kaulinya Pratha or Kulinism. With this social system in place, Hindu men as old as 80, could marry adolescent or prepubescant girls. With the death of those men, (2/n)
their child and youthful widows were isolated inside their homes, who were expected to live a life of austerity and abnegation. Restrictive codes were harsher for Brahmin widows. Restraining the widows of reproductive and marriagable age as young as 20, was deemed unjust and(3/n)
brute. It was seen against the very Hindu ethos which gave due prominence to garhasthashrama. Isolation of widows into a world of celibacy was adjudged to be a Buddhist adulteration. The Hindu men of intellect vowed to dismantle this very system. Vidyasagar led the campaign.(4/n)
He quoted a verse (4.30) from the Parasara Dharmashastra that ordained widow remarriage in these five ocassions- in case the husband
has gone missing/
has died/
has renounced/
has fallen ill/
has become impotent.
Vidyasagar collected signatures from all renowned (5/n)
has gone missing/
has died/
has renounced/
has fallen ill/
has become impotent.
Vidyasagar collected signatures from all renowned (5/n)
litterateurs, Sanskrit scholars, businessmen and zamindars of Bengal at that time, and petitioned before the Governor-General. Sanskrit scholars like Taranath Tarkabachaspati, Prasanna Kumar Sarbadhikary and Kaliprasanna Sinha; Zamindars like the Maharajas of Nadia, (6/n)
Burdwan, Uttarpara, Hatkhola, Pathuriaghata and Paikpara; jurists like Justice Dwarakanath Mitra and physicians like Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar put their weight behind legalising widow remarriage.The Dharma Sabha,a group of Bengali conservatives, led by the Maharaja of Sovabazar(7/n)
made a counter-petition garnering four times more the number of pro-remarriage signatories and presented it before the Governor-General. Despite all odds the pro-remarriage petition was finally accepted and the Hindu Widow Remarriage Bill was passed in the Bengal Legislative(8/n)
Council (Act XV) on July 19, 1856. It was the second most path breaking legislation passed in Bengal after the Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829. However, it was a challenge on the fearless crusader, Vidyasagar's part to implement the law into a social reality. (9/n)
The first widow remarriage in Calcutta was fixed to be on November 27, 1856. The bridegroom, Pandit Srischandra Vidyaratna, was the younger son of the famous kathak (village bard), Ramdhan Tarkavagish of Khantura, in 24-Parganas, while the bride, Kalimati Debi was(10/n)
a child-widow who hailed from the Palasdanga village in Burdwan district. The marriage was duly solemnised. However that was not the first instance of widow remarriage in Bengal. Two decades earlier, Raja Dakshinaranjan Mukhopadhyay of Shankarpur married (11/n)
Rani Basanta Kumari (Kapoor), the widow of the late Maharaja of Burdwan Tej Chandra Ray Khatri. Their marriage had created a sensation in Bengal as it was not only the first widow remarriage, but also an intercaste and interethnic marriage. (12/n).
