All that you mean by your social reform is either widow remarriage, or female
emancipation, or something of that sort... And again these are directed within
the confines of a few of the castes only. (Viveka ̄nanda 1972–8: 5, 333).The issue of widow remarriage did not affect the lower castes, among whom
widows traditionally remarried; while interdining and intercaste marriage, as
well as female education, were mainly concerns of the bhadralok. Viveka ̄nanda
considered that effective social reform could only be built on a spiritual basis of
Advaita Veda ̄nta. The identity of the self and Brahman, he said (echoing Paul
Deussen, the German interpreter of Advaita), was “the basic metaphysical truth
underlying all ethical codes” (Viveka ̄nanda 1972–8: 1, 385; cf. Hacker 1995:
292–8; Killingley 1998: 145–9). Hindus did not need alien moral norms.
Re-presenting the Past
We have seen how Rammohun and I ̄s ́varcandra questioned prevailing customs
by reference to ancient Sanskrit texts. In 1891, during the age of consent con-
troversy, M. G. Ranade (1842–1901) and R. G. Bhandarkar (1837–1925), both
members of the Pra ̄rthana ̄ Sama ̄j, opposed the early marriage of girls by showing
how the age prescribed for a girl’s marriage had been progressively lowered in
the course of history (Ranade 1902: 26–52; Bhandarkar 1928: 538–83). We
have also seen how Daya ̄nanda used texts to argue that the ancient A ̄ryans prac-
ticed nonhereditary varn.a. Those who opposed reform also appealed to the past;
but as Ranade (1902: 170) put it, “When we are asked to revive our old insti-
tutions and customs, people seem to me to be very much at sea as to what it is
they seek to revive.” Ranade and others used a consciously selective approach to
the past, guided by “the voice of God in us” (Ranade 1902: 174). Bhandarkar
saw the past as a progressive revelation to which the Vedic sages, Buddhism, the
Gı ̄ta ̄, and the bhakti tradition had each contributed (Bhandarkar 1928: 615f.).
Another Chitpavan Brahman, B. G. Tilak, used textual study, astronomy, and
geology to argue that the Vedas were composed in 4,000 or even 8,000 bce
(Wolpert 1962). His reading of history, like Daya ̄nanda’s, pointed to the Vedas
as records of an ancient and divinely ordained culture. Unlike him, however, he
presented the Brahmans as the heirs and guardians of that culture. Tilak also
extolled the seventeenth-century Maratha king S ́iva ̄jı ̄ as a Ks.atriya protector and
patron of the Brahmans, and hinted that resistance to British rule was a duty
which Hindus owed to his memory.
A very different history of Brahman and Ks.atriya was presented by Jotirao
Phooley (or Phule, 1827–90), a member of the non-Brahman Maratha peas-
antry. In Phule’s narrative the Brahmans had invaded India, seized the land from
its rightful owners the ks.atriyas, and attempted to destroy them as recorded in
the myth of Paras ́ura ̄ma (see Matchett’s chapter 6 above). They enslaved the sur-
vivors by inventing the caste system, classifying them as S ́u ̄ dras. S ́iva ̄jı ̄ was the
522 dermot killingley