Direction of Social Reform

The humanistic ideals of social equality and the equal worth of all individuals which inspired the newly educated middle class influenced the field of social reform in a major way. The social reform movements were linked to the religious reforms primarily because nearly all social ills like untouchability and gender-based inequity derived legitimacy from religion in one way or the other. In later years, though, the social reform movement gradually dissociated itself from religion and adopted a secular approach. Moreover, earlier the reform movements had a rather narrow social base, being limited to the upper and middle classes and upper castes who tried to balance their modernised views and the existing social conditions. But later on, the social reform movements penetrated the lower strata of society to revolutionise and reconstruct the social sphere.

In the beginning, organisations such as the Social Conference, Servants of India Society and the Christian missionaries were instrumental in social reform along with many enlightened individuals like Jyotiba Phule, Gopalhari Deshmukh, K.T. Telang, B.M. Malabari, D.K. Karve, Sri Narayana Guru, E.V. Ramaswami Naicker and B.R. Ambedkar. In later years, especially with the onset of the twentieth century, the national movement provided the leadership and organisation for social reform.

To reach the masses, the reformers used the Indian languages to propagate their views. They used a variety of media—novels, dramas, poetry, short stories, the press and, in the 1930s and later on, the cinema—to spread their opinions.

Broadly, the social reform movements had a two-point agenda—fight for the betterment of status of women in

society and fight to remove disabilities arising out of untouchability.