Social Policies and Social Changes

The Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act of 1856, also referred to as Act XV, 1856,which was approved on July 16, 1856. The Widow Remarriage Act legalises widow remarriage under East India Company rule. Before the Indian Rebellion of 1857, it was prepared by Lord Dalhousie and passed by Lord Canning.

Hindu culture has long prohibited the remarriage of widows, especially child and teenage widows, in order to maintain what it deemed family honour and property. All widows were supposed to live a life of penance and sacrifice. The Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act offered legal protection against the loss of some types of inheritance when a Hindu widow remarried, however the widow decided to abandon any inheritance due to her from her deceased husband under the Act.

Introduction on Sati Abolition

Following a fierce onslaught led by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and other enlightened Indian reformers, the government declared the practice of Sati, or the burning alive of widows, to be unlawful and punished by courts as culpable murder.

Sati, often written Suttee, is a Hindu tradition in which a newly bereaved lady immolates herself on her dead husband’s pyre, willingly or by coercion.

On December 4, 1829, the then-Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issued the Bengal Sati Regulation, which outlawed the practice of Sati in all British Indian territories.

The regulation or rule of 1829 was initially only applicable to the Bengal Presidency, but it was subsequently extended to the Madras and Bombay Presidencies in somewhat modified versions in 1830.

Widow Remarriage:

Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-91), the principal of Calcutta’s Sanskrit College, was largely responsible for this law to be included in the constitution. He pushed tirelessly to establish a widow remarriage culture in the nation.

Even though the widow was a minor and the marriage had not been consummated, remarriage was not allowed. In certain regions of India, widows are expected to live and stay unmarried till they die. They were not permitted to live like ordinary people. They need to follow the norms dictated in the ancient times.

They were supposed to live a life of austerity and extremes, which includes a simple and holistic lives devoted to lord that precluded them of no new and colourful clothing, no excellent food, a festival boycott, and even reprimand from all family and social members. Widows were required to wear a coarse white saree.

Vidyasagar used Vedic literature to demonstrate that the Hindu faith permitted widow remarriage. The Widow Remarriage Association, which was created in 1856, which was started by Vishnu Shastri Pandit. Karsondas Mulji, a prominent figure in this field, started the ‘Satya Prakash’ in Gujarati in 1852 to promote the remarriage of widows. On July 16, 1856 widow remarriage act, enacted during Governor-General Lord Canning’s administration, legalised the remarriage of Hindu widows.

Features of Remarriage Act

• Validating and regulating Hindu widows’ marriages
• Recognizing a remarried widow’s rights and inheritance as if she had married for the first time
• Forfeited the rights, duties, and inheritances from her former marriage, which she had hoped to collect from her late spouse
• The males who dared to marry a widow were legally protected
• The statute also gave males who married widows legal protections

The Provision of Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act, 1856:

It made it permissible for Hindu widows to remarry. This was mostly a Hindu habit followed by wealthy Hindu households.

“Any tradition or interpretation of Hindu Law to the contrary notwithstanding, no marriage made between Hindus shall be unlawful, and no such marriage’s child shall be illegitimate because the lady was previously married or engaged to another person who was deceased; at the time of such marriage.”

The statute also gave males who married widows legal protection and protections.

The widow was permitted to give up whatever inheritance she could have received from her late spouse.

All of their rights and inheritances to all of the windows they had during her previous marriage.

The first marriage took place in north Calcutta on December 7, 1856, when the Hindu widow remarriage act was passed. The groom was Ishwar Chandra’s close friend’s son.

Child Marriage:

In 1872, the Native Marriage Act (or Civil Marriage Act) signalled the beginning of a governmental movement to prohibit child marriage. It had a limited effect since the Act did not apply to Hindus, Muslims, or other well-known religions.

In the aftermath of the Rukhmabai case, the efforts of a Parsi reformer, B. M. Malabari, were rewarded with the passage of the Age of Consent Act (1891), which barred the marriage of girls under the age of 12.

The Sarda Act of 1929  raised the marriage age for males and girls to eighteen and fourteen, respectively.

The Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act of 1978 in independent India increased the age of marriage for females from 15 to 18 years and for boys from 18 to 21 years.

Infanticide Abolition:

The practice of killing female children shortly after birth was widespread among upper-class Bengalis and Rajputs who saw women as a financial burden.

Infanticide was considered criminal and comparable to murder in Bengal ordinances issued in 1795 and 1804.

The 1870 Act made it mandatory for all parents to register their children’s births and allowed for the verification of female children for a while after birth.

Factors that Undermined Caste Rigidities:

The British presence in India released various forces, sometimes directly via governmental actions and sometimes indirectly through favourable circumstances. The establishment of private property in land and the free sale of land, for example, threw caste equations into disarray.

Caste and vocation cannot exist if the village’s economy is being destroyed. Furthermore, contemporary commerce and industry spawned a slew of new business opportunities, while urbanisation and modern modes of transportation aided in the mobility of people.

The British government established equality under the law through a systematically administered set of regulations, thus eliminating social and legal disparities. Meanwhile, caste panchayats’ judicial duties were removed. Administrative services were made available to all castes, and a new secular education system was implemented.

During the British reign, however, the fight against caste was unsuccessful. The foreign government had its constraints—it couldn’t risk provoking a negative response from the religious right by making drastic reforms. Furthermore, there could be no social progress without political and economic progress. Only a free Indian government could bring all of this to fruition.

Laws under Widow Remarriage Act

Legalised Marriage

A marriage between consenting Hindus is genuine, legitimate, and acceptable, according to Section 1 of the Act. If a lady was previously married and is now a widow, the marriage will not be nullified unless Hindu Law or tradition dictates otherwise.

Cessation of Widow’s right in property

A widow’s entitlement to her deceased husband’s property is terminated under Section 2 of the Act. For the sake of natural justice, the legislation eliminates the widow’s entitlement to maintenance and inheritance conferred on her by her second marriage’s will or testamentary disposition. In such cases, the Act declares the widow dead and transfers the property to the deceased husband’s next heir.

Custody of the dead husband’s children

Section 3 of the Act deals with the children’s care once the widow remarries. In the absence of express instructions regarding the care of the deceased husband’s children, the section stipulates the following:

• The deceased husband’s father, paternal grandpa, mother, paternal grandmother, or any male relative of the deceased husband might petition the court for the appointment of a guardian for the children
• If the Court thinks it appropriate, such guardians shall have the right to care for and have custody of the abovementioned children throughout their minority rather than their mother
• No such appointment shall be made without the permission of the mother unless the designated guardian agrees to provide security for the sustenance and appropriate education of the abovementioned children while they are minors