Reformers

Story hook

On the evening of 4 December 1829, Lord William Bentinck signed Regulation XVII outlawing sati (widow burning) across Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Most colonial regulations took years to draft; this one moved from official notification to enacted law in less than four months. The reason for the speed sat in a three-hundred-petition campaign spearheaded by a single man: Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a former East India Company official whose Sambad Kaumudi newspaper had been arguing the case since 1821, and whose careful theological arguments had convinced both Bentinck and the Court of Directors in London that abolition was a Hindu reform, not a colonial imposition.

When the law passed, orthodox Hindus filed counter-petitions through the Dharma Sabha. Roy travelled to London in 1830 as the ambassador of the Mughal emperor Akbar II to defend the abolition before the Privy Council — and to lobby for renewal of the Company's Charter. He won both fights. He never returned. Roy died in Bristol on 27 September 1833, aged 61, and is buried at Arnos Vale Cemetery. The grave is still maintained by the Brahmo Samaj and is visited every September on his death anniversary.

What Roy began — a self-organising Hindu reform tradition that worked with the colonial state where useful and against it where not — was carried forward through the 19th century by a gallery of reformers whose names every UPSC syllabus lists in one breath: Vidyasagar, Phule, Ranade, Periyar, Sayyid Ahmad Khan.

Why this matters for UPSC

The 19th-century reformers are a certain Prelims topic (every year asks at least one matching question — name ↔ contribution, or name ↔ year), a strong Mains topic (Mughal-era reformers vs colonial-era reformers; Brahmo vs Arya; Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the two-nation thesis), and routine Interview material ("Who is your favourite reformer and why?"). It is also the conceptual bridge between socio-religious reform (Unit 31) and INC foundation (Unit 33) — without the reformers, the moderate phase of the Congress has no intellectual backbone.