History: Womens' Conditions During 19th Century in India

History
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October 5, 2020
To first provide context for this discussion on women's conditions during 19th century India, it would be helpful to pinpoint a prevalent practice among Indian women during that time: Sati. Sati is a practice among Hindus wherein a widow sacrifices herself through immolation by sitting atop her husband's funeral pyre. Yang argues that Sati was born as a practice due to the warrior caste of Hinduism—that in order to preserve the honor of the women whose husbands have been slain, they were to burn themselves in their husband's funeral pyre to prove themselves.[Sophie Gilmartin. "The Sati, the Bride, and the Widow: Sacrificial Woman in the Nineteenth Century," Victorian Literature and Culture 25, no. 1 (1997): 141.] [Anand Yang. “Whose Sati? Widow Burning in Early 19th Century India,” Journal of Women's History 1, no. 2 (1989): 21-23.]
Chatterjee's thesis on the "woman's question" during 19th century India focused on the question of social reform and its other many intrinsically related matters such as political, cultural, and economic related aspects. Chatterjee observes that most of the historical documentation and critique of Indian culture, particularly most of its social practices, beliefs, and norms that heavily draw their basis from the Hindu religion during the 19th century, was from a western lens. Thus unavoidably, most of the western scholars criticized these practices as "barbaric."[See Partha Chatterjee. "Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized see Women: The Contest in India.” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (Nov. 1989): 622-633.] [Ibid.]
The significance of the women's question during these times display a critical aspect of feminist history—of how the women's question evolved and adopted in one of the most challenging and oppressive conditions, that is, a heavily patriarchal society justified by religious texts and anecdotes, practices established through caste systems, and the hegemonic power of Western colonialism. Chatterjee, for example, cites education during that specific timeframe where even the social norm of what an "educated woman" was supposed to be included "womanly virtues" such as "chastity, self-sacrifice, submission, devotion, kindness, patience and the labors of love" Thus even though education was given available to women, it was still laced with heavily patriarchal concepts.[Chatterjee (1989), at 623.]
The condition of women during 19th century India
What do the primary sources we examined tell us about the different forces at work in nineteenth-century India? Do they provide any insights into the condition of women during that time?
Primary sources in 19th century India mostly, if not solely, came from the pens and eyes of Western scholars and historians. Inevitably, sociocultural practices in India during that time were viewed as counterproductive and barbaric. This is a natural result of colonialism, where western values, concepts, and norms are forced upon a colonized country.[Ania Loomba. "Dead Women Tell No Tales: Issues of Female Subjectivity, Subaltern Agency and Tradition in Colonial and Post-colonial Writings on Widow Immolation in India." History Workshop...