Cleaning the House or Demolishing It? **A Layman’s Reflection on the Reform Movements in Hindu Society**

Out of curiosity, I picked up a book on Modern Indian History by Bipan Chandra. Incidentally, the chapter that opened before me, without any plan or prior intention, was “The Reforms after 1858.”

The chapter dealt with the major reform movements and their advocates—the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the reforms associated with Debendranath Tagore, Vivekananda, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, Dayanand Saraswati, the Theosophists and several others.

The issues they raised were largely concerned with the social evils and practices prevalent among Hindus, which, in their view, had rendered Indian society unfit for a dignified life. The belief they inherited and chiefly attacked was idolatry. Almost all of them, in one way or another, criticised idolatry on the ground that it encouraged or sustained evils such as superstition, discrimination, child marriage and the plight of widows.

Without any prejudice to their erudition or to the immense contribution they made to contemporary India, I am left wondering: despite such vehement attacks, supported by scholarly reasoning and logic, what was it that enabled Hinduism to survive and continue even today?

I do not understand how idolatry can be held responsible for all such evils that Hinduism may have suffered from because of the falsehood propagated by some priests or the mistaken interpretation of certain religious texts, such as the Puranas and others.

I strongly feel that, instead of addressing these issues from within the tradition, they often proceeded by repudiating the very house in which they had lived for centuries.

If our house is dirty, do we demolish the house in the name of cleaning it?

Are other religions without any of the other evils that were enumerated in the context of contemporary Hindu society? Do Christianity, Islam and other religions not have their own shortcomings and social evils?

And does Hinduism not teach love, compassion, brotherhood, tolerance and patience? With my limited knowledge and understanding of the subject, I can still quote dozens of shlokas from reputed Hindu texts that uphold precisely these values.

I hold that, in the name of initiating reform, the movement later remained unduly inclined towards Western thought. Everything was there in our own texts, but it was not properly brought before the masses in their struggle against social evils. Instead, Western philosophy was often imitated and advocated as the means of reform.

In the process, did the reformers inadvertently allow the masses to feel that their wretched condition was caused by the very religion they professed? If so, could this have contributed to people gradually distancing themselves from their inherited faith?

Perhaps the reformers were also ambitious in seeking their own interpretations and explanations of religious teachings in the name of social reform.

I realise that I should not perhaps have expressed such ideas without being an authority on the subject. Yet, as a layman, these are simply the thoughts that arose in my mind while reading the chapter—and I felt compelled to put them down.