Reforms In India Research Articles

Girls’ education in Colonial India: a critique on the trajectory of Savitribai Phule in the twenty-first century India

ABSTRACT Savitribai Phule, the first female school teacher in India, with the support of her husband and mentor, Jyotirao Phule pioneered a pivotal role in educating Indian girls in the nineteen-century Colonial India. Her philosophical underpinnings and activism for the education of the girls and the oppressed classes in India are still relevant and inspiring even today. This article primarily intends to reassess the trajectory of her philosophy, policy reforms and pedagogical practices towards girls’ education in the nineteen-century Colonial India even when the demand for compulsory primary education was not raised in India, in the light of twenty-first century India. Before delving into the whole spectrum of her trajectory, it retraces the British Colonial policies pertaining to the provision of girls’ compulsory schooling in Colonial India against which the missionaries, British philanthropic and Savitribai together with other Indian reformers made a series of efforts towards girls’ education in Colonial India.

The Devadasi System and Intersectional Feminism

The devadasi system, originating in medieval India, began to serve the temple in the form of dance and rituals. Eventually, they served as sacred sex workers for the diety's sexual needs. The Devadasi were typically Dalits (the lowest caste), and thereby face a unique struggle as both Dalits and women in a religiously rooted system. Due to the lack of published works detailing the implications of overlapping identities and feminism on the Indian reform movement legislation, this paper aimed to examine the extent to which the introduction of intersectional feminism influenced South Indian postcolonial legislation regarding the devadasi system. It found the hypothesis to be supported. Thematic analysis was conducted as part of the initial research. Then, the results were quantified, through individual connotation scores that considered separate thematic elements and an overall score. The overall intersectionality score, a weighted average of the elements, for all prohibition legislation was significantly different from the control Panel Code, based on error bar analysis. Therefore, it can be concluded that the influence of intersectional feminism on the acts quantitatively supports the conclusion that the development of intersectional feminism in post-colonial South India influenced Devadasi legislation significantly.

India's Reforms Through the Lens of Dr. Rangarajan

A book review of Forks in the Road: My days at RBI and Beyond by C. Rangarajan

US retreat, Indian reform: multilateralism under Trump and Modi

ABSTRACT From early 2017 to early 2021, Donald J. Trump’s disengagement of the United States from international institutions, later amplified by the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, produced a weakening of multilateralism at the global level. The overlapping leadership of Narendra Modi diverged on the issue of multilateralism, producing a dynamic of US retreat and redoubled Indian efforts at reform. Despite their common recourse to populism in their respective countries, the United States and India present disparate cases of how populist leaders engage with multilateralism. Trump prioritized national sovereignty and framed international institutions as an imposition on US freedoms, while Modi envisioned international institutions as an avenue through which to remake multilateralism, elevate India’s reputation, and reap domestic political dividends. Trump’s protectionist and inward-looking policy narratives appealed to communities disadvantaged materially and socially by hyperglobalisation and financial crisis, while Modi’s efforts at elevating India’s profile and engagement in multilateral forums resonated with long-standing elite desires for India to enact leadership in global governance. They drew popular support, too. Finally, China’s rising global influence encouraged India to increase its own influence within existing multilateral institutions and develop new avenues of multilateral action, while Trump’s nationalist response was to turn away, and inward.

Amelia Stone Quinton and the Women’s National Indian Association: A Legacy of Indian Reform. By Valerie Sherer Mathes

As Valerie Sherer Mathes points out in this scholarly biography, Amelia Stone Quinton (1833–1926) was the most prominent female leader within the Indian reform movement and yet she is not well known to women’s historians in part because this social movement has been cordoned off to the realm of Indian history, but also because the Women’s National Indian Association, which she cofounded with Mary Lucinda Bonney, embraced assimilationist doctrines (pp. 1–2). As Lori Jacobson explains in an excellent preface: “In Quinton’s view, the way to overcome hatred of Indians and inspire a sense of moral culpability in powerful white Americans was to transform native people, eliminating their cultural traditions and inculcating them with white, middle class, Protestant values” (p. vii). Thus, the WNIA was dedicated both to alleviating poverty and to preparing Indians for U.S. citizenship-- through the building of missions, churches, schools, hospitals and homes. To further both ends, Quinton advocated for the breaking up of reservations into smaller individual parcels—a policy that materialized with the passage of the General Allotment Act of 1887. By 1908, Quinton had established fifty-three mission stations and had organized numerous chapters across the country. Every year, Quinton travelled thousands of miles, gave hundreds of speeches, wrote dozens of articles, sent numerous petitions to Congress and raised substantial monies. Even after her retirement in 1909, Quinton remained the face of the WNIA, having created an organization that outlived her by twenty-five years when it disbanded in 1951.

Anti-imperialism, ambiguity and the emergence of the sherwani-topi style in Hyderabad state, 1860–1900

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Indian ‘princely state’ of Hyderabad became strongly associated with a particular form of male dress based around the long sherwani coat and fez or rumi topi. Although often dismissed as a mere Indian frock coat by colonial commentators and historians, by 1890 the sherwani was widely recognized within India as a distinctively Hyderabadi garment, symbolizing the state’s continued autonomy and claims to civilized, modernizing legitimacy. Yet the sherwani encompassed many influences, from colonial European to Ottoman Turkish and regional Deccani, and was a product not of deliberate design, but gradual and often haphazard evolution within the specific social context of 1860–90s Hyderabad. Popular resentment of the soberly clad colonial and western-educated North Indian outsiders who predominantly staffed the newly reformed state administration, for example, drove a return to bright patterning, greater length and use of local fabrics like himroo. Using archives of photography, memoir and costume to trace the sherwani’s development, this article shows this era as one defined by a creative multiplicity of visions for identity and self-fashioning, engaging not only hegemonic-colonial constructs of civilized masculinity but also emergent North Indian reform movements and localized changes of sociopolitical structure, urban space and consumer opportunity.

Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA ed. by Valerie Sherer Mathes

Reviewed by: Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA ed. by Valerie Sherer Mathes Jessica O’Rourke Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA. Edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. 284 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $65.00 cloth. Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement is a collection of nine essays aimed at evaluating the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA) through the broader lenses of intersectional gender, race, identity, and power. The WNIA has historically been criticized for being “too narrowly Christian and middle-class in its ambitions.” Mathes’s collection complicates this oversimplified criticism by acknowledging the “dedicated, practical, and hardworking citizens” within the WNIA who pushed for positive reforms in the late nineteenth century (xii–xiii). In addition to Mathes, Albert L. Hurtado, Jane Simonsen, John M. Rhea, Curtis M. Hinsley, Phil Brigandi, David Wallace Adams, and Lori Jacobson also contribute essays which examine the trends and examples of the WNIA’s history, including its key members and their personal contributions to the Indian reform movement and the role of the WNIA in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. In one excerpt, Mathes also examines the relationship between the WNIA and Californian Indians in their joint endeavor to secure land sovereignty. This text utilizes power as a lens for evaluating gender history. Collectively, these authors argue that deeper understandings of the WNIA—as well as the field of gender studies—can be obtained through “reuniting the history of the WNIA and the individuals connected to it to broader themes of intersectionality, relational history, and intimacy” (20). This anthology also seeks to provide agency to Indigenous women by privileging their perspectives, which are often overshadowed by the Euro-American presence in the WNIA. Contributing authors also emphasize the agency demonstrated by women across the racial divide while still being subject to male-dominated reform movements. Mathes’s essay, titled “A Place at the Table: The Women’s National Indian Association in the Indian Reform Arena,” observes cross-gender interactions between WNIA women and their male counterparts who largely maintained control over the political sphere (98). Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement successfully contributes to scholarship that rejects traditional identity binaries and embraces the intersection of gender and race. This collection is an important read for audiences with a foundational knowledge of Indigenous history but will be especially helpful to readers seeking information on the gendered and racialized experience of Indigenous women during the late nineteenth century. It is an especially beneficial text for students and scholars alike looking to better understand the role of the WNIA in shaping Indigenous reforms. [End Page 358] Jessica O’Rourke Department of History Washington State University Copyright © 2023 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

PATTERNS OF EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGY: SMALL MACHINES IMPACTING LIFE IN COLONIAL PUNJAB

Colonial Punjab in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by considerable socio-economic changes brought up by mostly due to the introduction and adoption of new everyday life technologies which impacted the life of the average person in both urban and rural areas. This research article elaborates the impact of novel technology of electricity and associated items like the electric fan and bulb and everyday machines of bicycle, sewing-machine and typewriter on the colonial Punjabi society. The article reveals that within a short span of time, electricity and everyday machines successfully perforated all sections and made life easier and comfortable for the general public in colonial Punjab. The bicycle and sewing machine and typewriter empowered people in general and women in particular, making them move freely and also helping them to earn livelihood. The Indian reform organizations started advocating sewing machine for Indian women’s upliftment. The successful assimilation of everyday western technologies was perhaps one of the best positive outcomes of colonialism which gives credibility to the fact that technology when used for welfare is always progressive.

Charles C. Painter: The Life of an Indian Reform Advocate

An 1895 memorial by the Indian Rights Association (Ira) lauded Charles C. Painter for his Indian reform work, describing it as being “as valuable as [it] was inconspicuous,” notes Valerie Sherer Mathes (p. 225). In this “memoir of a career,” Painter is presented as an overlooked figure whose story pulls together multiple threads of late nineteenth-century Indian affairs (p. x). Painter engaged leading politicians and reform organizations and touched on significant topics, including treaty rights, land issues, and questions of assimilation and education. Accurately describing Painter as an “unapologetic assimilationist” who believed that American education and Christianity would solve the “Indian problem,” Mathes highlights Painter's contributions (ibid.). His “extensive field investigations and well-written reports” showcased his ability to communicate effectively with the many reform organizations of the time (p. 1). She credits Painter's “intuitive grasp of the broader picture” for his ascent to leadership roles in these organizations (p. 3). Painter's advocacy for Native American education led him to become the Ira's first paid employee in 1883. He skillfully worked with other Indian affairs groups, including the Women's National Indian Association, the Board of Indian Commissioners, and the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indians. Mathes's careful study illuminates the differences between these groups' policies and approaches.

Competitiveness of Indian Agricultural Exports: A Constant Market Share Analysis

The 1991 Indian reforms aimed at economic liberalization, as a part of its economic structural adjustment, and transformed the nation’s economy into a more global market-based and service-oriented system, which revolutionized its agricultural trade facet. The new regime paved the way for self-reliant Indian agriculture to expand its roots into the spheres of global competitiveness and export orientation. India enjoys a competitive advantage in the international market and considering the growth in India’s exports of major agricultural commodities. This study employed the Constant Market Share model to analyze the export performance of its various facets such as diversification, instability, elasticity, competitiveness, etc. The findings revealed that India’s growth performance of major agricultural commodities’ exports both in terms of quantity and value was found satisfactory (except wheat and cashew nuts, shelled (quantity)) during 1991-2020. During the recent past decade, i.e., 2011-2020, World Demand Effect (WDE) is the main source of India’s agricultural export performance (due to the general rise/fall in world demand given a constant market share of India, unlike Market Distribution Effect (MDE), Commodity Composition Effect (CCE) and the Residual Competitiveness Effect (RCE) due to high inconsistency arising out of changes in the external environment). Both MDE and RCE with respect to commodity-wise exports and CCE and RCE with respect to country-wise exports are found negative for the majority of commodities and countries (markets) respectively. Consistently negative CCE for exports of agricultural products, total and across major export destinations were found more disheartening and this should deserve special attention. So, it is imperative to boost the export competitiveness of agricultural commodities from India and the future prospects of exports depend on how much the latest surge in COVID-19 infections in India affects its agricultural production and global demand conditions.

Impact of COVID-19 and increase of patient turnover in Indian medical tourism and its reforms

Covid -19 is the deadliest word for all over the world and leads to loss of economy and human lives. India also suffers a lot in all aspects. This paper highlights the impact of Covid -19 in Indian medical tourism and service reforms. India is the preferred destination for international patients on various aspects of qualified and experienced doctors, excellent nursing services, best pricing, right treatment, culture and hospitality, famous tourism places etc., In India Covid -19 leads to several lockdown issues and restrictions in airlines transportation between countries. But this leads to identify the gaps and opportunities in Indian Medical Tourism to increase the patient turnover in hospitals and country. Various opportunities like elevation of primary health centres to the standard one, partnership between public and private hospitals, awareness and importance of AYUSH treatment to the foreign countries, targeting the underdeveloped and developing countries to promote the medical services and proper healthcare services to the needy patients with affordable cost.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s Image and Thought as Perceived in Thailand From 1975 to 2017

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), popularly known as Babasaheb Ambedkar, was an Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer who inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement and campaigned against social discrimination against untouchables (Dalits) while supporting the rights of women and labourers. This article examines how Ambedkar is characterized in Thai language academic and general writings published between 1975 and 2017. The paper is based on textual analysis that interprets the books and articles on Ambedkar in Thai language as primary sources for understanding his image and thought as portrayed in Thailand. Ambedkar’s forward-thinking ideas on democracy impressed Thai writers because Ambedkar attempted to dispense with the caste system and promote liberty, equality and fraternity among underprivileged communities in India. Ambedkar also served as chairman of drafting committee of Constitution and leader of the Dalit movement and community. Furthermore, Thai writers see Ambedkar’s ideas about Buddhism as qualifying him as a messiah or bodhisattva who revived a neo-Buddhist movement in India. Thai monks have served as significant intermediaries in narrating Ambedkar’s interpretation of Buddhism to the Thai Buddhist community because they have direct experience such as studying and staying in India. Academics and famous writers have also conveyed Ambedkar’s ideas about Buddhism and democracy, which qualify him as a modernist and maha manav [great man].

Restructuring family production and reproduction on the Rocky Boy's Reservation, 1916–1934

During the early reservation era federal policies were crafted and implemented with the overarching objective to progress Native peoples along the social evolutionary ladder toward self-sufficiency and societal integration into the fabric of Euro-American civilization. A central area of directed social change among reservation communities was American Indian families and households. Federal bureaucrats and Indian reformers believed that the home was the keystone of political, economic, and social order. A civilized home, policymakers believed, was a cornerstone to living in a civilized society. Thus, American Indian societies must be structurally reorganized, economically and socially, to model targeted attributes of Euro-American society. The ideal familial household was nuclear, composed of a husband, wife, and children. Using primary documentation, in concert with the ethnohistorical record, this paper examines the manner in which federally imposed political policies and socio-economic forces affected Chippewa-Cree family structure and fertility during the early twentieth century reservation period.

Review: Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA, edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes

Book Review| November 01 2021 Review: Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA, edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes Valerie Sherer Mathes, Ed. Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. 284 pp. Hardcover $65.00. Khal Schneider Khal Schneider Khal Schneider is associate professor of history at California State University, Sacramento. His articles on California Indian history have appeared in several journals, most recently The Public Historian Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2021) 98 (4): 133–135. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2021.98.4.133 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Khal Schneider; Review: Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA, edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes. California History 1 November 2021; 98 (4): 133–135. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2021.98.4.133 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The Regents of the University of California2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

India’s Labour Agreements with the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries: An Assessment

Despite the Indian government's proactive initiatives and reforms in the labour laws in the host countries, the welfare of Indian workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries remains compromised. The Indian workers continue to face exploitation, often left stranded or forced to return home penniless. In line with best global practices, India’s Bilateral Labour Agreements (BLAs) and Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with all the GCC countries need to make specific reference to the host countries' labour laws and facilitate bilateral coordination in the governance of the full migration cycle. Special focus is needed in the construction sector, where a vast majority of low-skilled Indian workers are employed. The article examines the effectiveness of India’s BLAs and MoUs with the GCC countries in protecting the low-skilled Indian workers in the region.

Rajnarayan Basu and His “Science of Religion”: The Emergence of Religious Studies through Exchanges between Bengali and Christian Reformers, Orientalists, and Theosophists

Abstract This article explores the genealogy of the “science of religion” developed by the Bengali intellectual Rajnarayan Basu (1826–1899). One of my central aims is to demonstrate that a “science of religion,” or Religionswissenschaft in the sense of Friedrich Max Müller, has emerged within a global context that was actively shaped by “non-Western” actors. To this end, I will focus on exchanges between the Indian reform movement of the Brahmo Samaj, Christian Unitarians, Transcendentalists, orientalist scholars, and members of the Theosophical Society. All these actors were concerned with the origin of religion, its modern meaning, and its function in shaping the future of society. Building on an analysis of the global exchanges revolving around these issues, special attention is paid to the inherent tensions between religious universalism and a nationalist insistence on “true religion,” which directly pertains to contested demarcations between reform and revival, or modernity and tradition.

Charles C. Painter: The Life of an Indian Reform Advocate by Valerie Sherer Mathes (review)

Charles C. Painter: The Life of an Indian Reform Advocate by Valerie Sherer Mathes (review)

Between Ancestry and Belief: “Judaism” and “Hinduism” in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract This article argues that thinking about disputed conceptions of religious conversion helps us understand the emergence of both Jewish and Indian nationalism in the nineteenth century. In today’s world, Hindu nationalism and Zionism are most often understood to be in conflict with various forms of Islamism, yet the ideological formations of both developed in the context of Christian colonialism and, from the perspectives of Jewish and Indian reformers and nationalists, the remaking of Hinduism and Judaism in the image of Christianity. Even as they internalized some aspects of Protestant criticisms of “Judaism” and “Hinduism,” nineteenth century Jewish and Hindu reformers opposed definitions of “Judaism” and “Hinduism” based upon what they regarded as a one-sided emphasis on individual belief at the expense of ancestry and national identity. In making arguments about what constituted “Judaism” and “Hinduism” respectively, Jewish and Hindu reformers also rejected what they claimed was the false universalism of Christianity, as epitomized by Christian missionizing. For Jewish and Hindu reformers of the nineteenth century, “Jewish” and “Hindu” ties to ancestry marked not a parochial intolerance of others, as many Christians had long maintained, but a true universalism that, unlike Christian missionizing, allowed, promoted and embraced human difference. In these ways, contested characterizations of “Judaism” and “Hinduism” in the nineteenth century set in motion a series of arguments about conversion that became central to Jewish and Indian nationalism, some of which remain relevant for understanding conversion controversies in Israel and India today.

Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA ed. by Valerie Sherer Mathes

Gender, Race, and Power in the Indian Reform Movement: Revisiting the History of the WNIA ed. by Valerie Sherer Mathes

К ИСТОРИИ ВОЗНИКНОВЕНИЯ ИНДИЙСКОГО ПАРЛАМЕНТСКОГО КОМИТЕТА В БРИТАНСКОЙ ПАЛАТЕ ОБЩИН

The aim of this article is to study the history of the formation of the Indian Parliamentary Committee (IPC) in the British House of Commons in 1893. To achieve this aim, the following objectives are envisaged: determination of reasons for establishing the IPC; analysis of the activities of the Indian National Congress and British liberals; analysis of the election campaign of Dadabhai Naoroji, which enabled him to get a seat in the House of Commons in 1892. The sources of the study are the pamphlets of the Indian National Congress members, which explain the need for Indian representatives to participate in the British Parliament; records of parliamentary hearings on the Indian issue; materials of the press describing the course of the election campaign of 1892 and the tasks of the Indian Committee in Parliament. In the course of the study, the author came to the following conclusions. The moderate branch in the Indian liberation movement considered the British Rule in India to be a progressive phenomenon in the Indian life. The defects of the British administration were due to the fact that the English people and Parliament did not understand the problems that the Indian population faced under the British Rule. The Parliamentary Committee dealing exclusively with the Indian issue could contribute to solving this problem. The main conductor of this idea in India was the National Congress, which, since its inception, began work on the formation of the IPC. In the late 1880s, an Indian political agency, which intensified attempts to organize an Indian committee in Parliament, was established in London. The interests of the Indians in the House of Commons at that time were defended by the Liberal MP Charles Bradlaugh. On the basis of the proposals of the National Congress, he prepared a bill on Indian councils, which came into force in 1892. Nevertheless, the creation of the Indian Parliamentary Committee became possible only in 1893, when Dadabhai Naoroji and William Wadderburn (founders of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress) were elected to the House of Commons as Liberal MPs. In general, the creation of the IPC was a progressive step in the development of the Indian liberation movement because the IPC gave the moderate nationalists and their British liberal supporters new tools of fighting for the rights of Indian subjects of the British Empire. The appearance of supporters of Indian reforms in Parliament was the evidence of the success of the IPC’s course of expanding political agitation in England, although it did not guarantee significant achievements in solving of the Indian question.