How Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar used an ancient Hindu text to make widow remarriage legal in the 19th century
“With a courage which has seldom been excelled in the history of social reforms, he, a Brahman of Brahmans, and a Pundit of Pundits, proclaimed in 1855 that the perpetual widowhood of Hindu women, who had lost their husbands, was not sanctioned by the shastras; and that the marriage of Hindu widows was permitted,” wrote Subal Chandra Mitra in his sprawling biography of the 19th century Hindu Brahmin (upper caste) reformer, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, in the eastern Indian region of Bengal who took on the the most immutable orthodoxy, striking at its gnarled foundations, not from outside, but from within, using the very texts and traditions against their malignant use.
It is easy to forget today the degeneration of society in the late 18th and 19th century in Bengal — plagued by invasions and tyrannical nawab rule. As society turned inwards, it became mired in what the revolutionary monk Vivekananda complained about, “Give up this filthy vamachara that is killing your country.” The reference to vamachara is to empty ritualism full of meaningless superstitions and enforcement of ingrained untouchability and prejudice against women.
In such a world Vidyasagar was what would be called a feminist today; an educationist and literrateur who has so excelled in his studies at Sanskrit College that he came to be known as Vidyasagar. Barely in his twenties, he became the head pundit at the venerable Fort William College. A few years later Vidyasagar had not only a professor but also the first principal of Sanskrit College, throwing open education in the ancient Indian language, the language of much of Hindu scripture, to many more people than would traditionally be allowed to access it. His appointment came, as Mitra wrote in Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar: a story of his life and work, “full discretion to remodel, reform, and simplify Sanskrit education”.
A life-long lover and practioner of literature, Vidyasagar was a pioneering architect of the modern Bengali language as the author of a definitive primer Barnaparichoy used even today to learn Bengali. His other seminal works include Sakuntala and Sita’r Banabas.
But his greatest social contribution was in taking on entrenched patriarchy on the issue of widow remarriage. In this it is first pertinent to put Vidyasagar’s role in context.
Amit Kumar Gupta has described it precisely in his Nineteenth-Century Colonialism and the Great Indian Revolt:
“Though conventionally considered a blessing, the institution of marriage seems to have been the greatest bane for Hindu women in the 19th century. Some were burnt alive when widowed, and a significant number were killed immediately after birth because of their families’ anxiety about the costs of marrying them off. Many were given in marriage soon after they started walking and and long before puberty. The Brahmins especially in the Bengal Presidency, were keen to marry their daughters to the kulins, or the highest stratum among them, so as to move up the social and piestical ladder. The kulins on their part would take — ostensibly as an act of service to society and religion — as many such wives as they could during their lifetime. (Since these wives stayed mostly in their parental homes, they were free from the liability of maintaining them.) On their deaths, kulins would leave a large number of young and child widows. The ranks of child widows were further inflated on account of the popular craze for child marriage, and also occassionally due to the death of child husbands. Hindu widows were subjected to disdain, utter neglect and ill-treatment for the remainder of their days, presumably because of being held fatalistically responsible for their husbands’ deaths.
The only reasonable way out of the young and child widows’ plight appeared to be their remarriage, which was conventionally forbidden. Enlightened Hindu opinion in India was favourably disposed towards the issue of widow remarriage in the Presidencies of Bengal and Bombay: the Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta and the press in and outside the city were advocating it from the 1830s. The issue was referred in Calcutta to such religious bodies as the Dharma Sabha and the Tattva Bodhini Sabha, but the matter did not make much progress till it was taken up by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.”
Vidyasagar’s efforts created a furore as numerous powerful orthodox groups rose against him. On one hand, powerful patrons like Raja Radha Kanta Deb fought against the reform, but Vidyasagar received support from some of the finest minds of the time — Pratap Chandra Sinha, Prasanna Kumar Tagore and Ram Gopal Ghose.
He might still have stumbled but for the fact that he used his enormous Sanskritic knowledge to find support in the texts for his argument. As Mitra writes, “After infinite toil and pains, one night, he suddenly bounced up in ecstacy and cried out loudly: — ‘I have, at last, found it.’ The cause of his so excessive delight was a passage of the Parasar-Sanhita, which is given below for the edification of the readers: —
“নষ্টে মৃতে প্রব্রজিতে ক্লীবেচ পতিতে পতৌ।
পঞ্চস্বাপৎসু নারীণাং পতিরন্যো বিধীয়তে॥
মৃতে ভর্ত্ররি যা নারী ব্রহ্মচর্য্যে ব্যবস্থিতা।
সা মৃতা লভতে স্বর্গং যথাতে ব্রহ্মচারিণঃ॥
তিস্রঃ কোট্টোর্দ্ধকোটী চ যানি লোমানি মানবে।
তাবৎ কালং বসেৎ স্বর্গং ভর্ত্তারং যানুগচ্ছতি॥”
পরাশরসংহিতা।
He gave the following interpretation to this passage: —
“On receiving no tidings of a husband, on his demise, on his turning an ascetic, on his being found impotent, or on his degradation, — under any one of these calamities, it is canonical for women, to take another husband. That woman who on the decease of her husband, observes the Brahmacharyya (leads the life of austerities and privations), attains heaven after death. She who burns herself with her deceased husband, resides in heaven for as many Kalas or thousands of years as there are hairs on the human body or thirty-five millions.”
He then commented on the above as follows: —
“Thus it appears that Parasar prescribes three rules for a widow; marrige, the observance of the Brahmacharyya, and burning with the deceased husband. Among these, the custom of concremation has been abolished by order of the ruling authorities; only two ways, therefore, have now been left for the widows; they have the option of marrying or observing the Brahmacharyya. But in the Kali Yuga, it has become extremely difficult for widows to pass their lives in the observance of the Brahmacharyya; and it is for this reason, that the philanthropic Parasar has, in the first instance, prescribed marriage. Be that as it may, what I wish to be clearly understood is — that as Parasar plainly prescribe marriage as one of the duties of women in the Kali Yuga under any one of the five above enumerated calamities, the marriage of widows in the Kali Yuga is consonant to the Sastras.”
Essentially, Vidyasagar was making an argument so simple and sophisticated that it would have devastating impact — the options for widows according to the texts were to remarry, live in celibacy or kill themselves in the pyre of their dead husband. Due to the efforts of earlier reformers like Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the third option was already banned by the British government. And living a celibate life was tough in the Kali Yuga or the age of spiritual degeneration.
Therefore the best option — as prescribed in the scripture is remarriage!
As always there was a material aspect to the pious indignation — along with the passing of legal rights for remarriage of Hindu widows, a legal right for sons of remarried widows to be declared rightful inheritors of property also had to be passed.
With this one reform battle, Vidyasagar changed the discourse and climate on women in Bengal, and subsequently across the country. By bringing together his scholarship with his desire to bring real change within society, and indeed within his own faith, Vidyasagar paved the way for an enlightened gender discourse that illuminates us even today.
~
