Modern Religious Movements in India

The condition of South Indian Hinduism at the end of the eighteenth century is very vividly reflected in l'Abbe Dubois' famous work and the Hinduism of the North at the beginning of the nineteenth in the writings of Ram Mohan Ray. [...] The two forces are the British Government in India as it learned its task during the years at the close of the eigheenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries and Protestant Missions t as they were shaped by the Serampore men and Duff ; and the third force is the work of the great Orientalists. [...] Their study of Hinduism and the Hindu community convinced them that for the health of the people many social and religious reforms were necessary for example the total abolition of caste the prohibition of widow-burning of child-marriage of polygamy and of infaticide the granting to widows of the right to remarry the prohibition of human sacrifice of the torturing of animals in sacrif [...] Apart from the completion of the empire the whole activity of the Government throughout this section might be dscribed as one long programme of reform ; and this aspect of its work is of more importance for our subject than the extesion of the frontiers and the wars that shook down the old rulers. [...] We take the beginning of the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bcntinck as the date of the opening of this section of our period because he initiated the policy of reform and began to apply in serious earnest the conviction which had taken hold of the best minds at home that Britain must govern India for the good of India.