The Intellectual Criteria

What gave these reform movements an ideological unity were rationalism, religious universalism and humanism. Rationalism was brought to judge social relevance. Raja Rammohan Roy firmly believed in the principle of causality linking the whole phenomenal universe and demonstrability as the sole criterion of truth. Akshay Kumar Dutt, while declaring that “rationalism is our only preceptor”, held that all natural and social phenomena could be analysed and understood by purely mechanical processes. They thus used a rational approach to study tradition; they evaluated the contemporary socio- religious practices from the standpoint of social utility and to replace faith with rationality. As a consequence, in the Brahmo Samaj the infallibility of the Vedas was repudiated, while the Aligarh movement emphasised reconciliation of Islamic teachings with the needs of the modern age. Syed Ahmed Khan went to the extent of emphasising that religious tenets were not immutable.

Many of the intellectuals set aside the authority of religion and evaluated truth in any religion by the criteria of logic, reason or science. According to Swami Vivekananda, the same method of investigation which applies to sciences should be the basis on which religion must justify itself. Although some reformers tended to appeal to faith and ancient authority to support their appeal, on the whole, a rational and secular outlook was very much evident in putting forward an alternative to prevalent social practices. Akshay Kumar Dutt, for instance, brought medical opinion to support his views against child marriage. Reference to the past was to be used only as an aid and an instrument. Neither a revival of the past nor a total break with tradition was envisaged. Though the reformers tried to reform their religions,

there was a universalistic aspect to their religious perspective. Raja Rammohan Roy considered different religions as national embodiments of universal theism. He defended the basic and universal principles of all religions—such as the monotheism of the Vedas and unitarianism of Christianity—while attacking

the polytheism of Hinduism and trinitarianism of Christianity. Syed Ahmed Khan said that all prophets had the same ‘din’ (faith) and every country and nation had different prophets.

The social reformers used the universalist perspective to contend with the influence of religious identity on the social and political outlook of the people which was indeed strong.

A new humanitarian morality was embodied in the social reform movements which included the notion that humanity can progress and has progressed, and that moral values are ultimately those values which favour human progress. The humanist aspect of the religious reform movements was to be seen in the emphasis on the individual’s right to interpret religious scriptures in the light of human reason and human welfare and in a general attack on priestly domination of religious practices.

Religious reformation was an important but not the exclusive concern of these movements. Attention was focussed on worldly existence and not on issues of salvation or other worldliness. Because of the strong religious element in social practices and the fact that religion was the dominant ideology of the times, it was not possible to undertake any social action without coming to grips with it.

These movements took into their ambit the entire cultural existence, the way of life. The evolution of an alternative cultural-ideological system and the regeneration of traditional institutions were two concerns of these movements. These concerns were manifest in the attempts to reconstruct traditional knowledge, the use and development of vernacular languages, creation of an alternative system of education, defence of religion, efforts to regenerate Indian art and literature, the emphasis on Indian dress and food, attempts to revitalise the Indian systems of medicine and to research the pre-colonial technology for its potential.