Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader (review)

Women and Social Reform in Modern India, edited by India's eminent modern historians Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar, is a wonderful asset that will be of immense value to a wide range of scholars and students of gender, empire, and more specifically, those interested in the history of gender in colonial India. The volume is comprised of two distinct parts: the first is a collection of twenty-three scholarly essays and the second contains five primary source documents. While all of the materials included here have been published before, the value of this volume lies in the editors' selections. They have collected a diverse range of materials that together provide a comprehensive picture and considered analysis of social reform and its impact on women and gender relations in colonial India. This is a noteworthy achievement for any book, but particularly so for a collection bringing together essays that were not originally conceived as part of a shared project.

Part A, "Historical Research," has twenty-three essays. Some of these were initially published as journal articles, while others are excerpts from books. The majority are by (eminent) historians and focus on the nineteenth century. Included here are some seminal essays—such as Lata Mani's "Production of an Official Discourse on Sati in Early-Nineteenth-Century Bengal"—that pushed historical inquiry on gender in colonial India in new directions, opening up in the process important questions about the impact of the colonial state on Indian society and women's agency. The collection also includes valuable contributions by literary critics (Gauri Viswanathan and C.M. Naim) and interdisciplinary feminist scholars (Madhu Kishwar, for example). Some of the essays engage pre-1800 events and Reba Som's contribution considers postcolonial developments. While most of the essays address histories of north India, it is a signal contribution that this collection brings this work together with studies of south India (John and Karen Leonard on social change in Andhra, S. Anandhi on the Dravidian Movement, and G. Arunima on matrilineal kinship in Malabar). Similarly, the volume brings Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh reform, often treated as separate phenomena, into the same frame. At the same time, some of the essays do not fit neatly into such a religious typology. Gauri Viswanathan's essay on conversion explores the difficulty—and varying expectations of those involved in the process—of transitioning from one religious identity to another, while Mrinalini Sinha's contribution engages issues of nationalism and gender.

Part B, "Contemporary Documents," is significantly shorter than Part A, comprised of only five excerpts. These are from the writings of Rammohan Roy, Kailashbasini Devi, Tarabai Shinde, M.G. Ranade, and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. The selection once again emphasizes intellectual breadth, bringing together a very diverse range of thinkers who span a long nineteenth century. Each of these excerpts is historically significant, as suggested by the fact that these individuals surface in the essays in Part A. It would have been helpful, however, if the editors had included in Part B brief biographical sketches of the authors and introductions to their excerpts. This would have provided those less familiar with South Asian history an important context for these primary sources.

The volume opens with a short introduction by the editors. Their framing focuses on the issue of how the history of social reform has been taught in Indian curricula, and the place of this volume in providing important correctives to traditional approaches. This seems fitting as Women and Social Reform in Modern India was first published in India. While the introduction made for both informative and engaging reading, a slightly different framing, one that addressed the state of the field, perhaps, or the editors' considerations in republishing these particular authors and essays may have been more appropriate for a North American or European audience. This is a very minor point, however, one overshadowed by the fact that this collection will be an asset to students and scholars, a valuable resource for having brought together...