which had followers among the Company’s officials (including Bentinck and
Grant, already mentioned), often worked together. The missionaries put much of
their effort into secular education, believing that the enlightened mind would
naturally gravitate to Christianity (Laird 1972). They also supported campaigns
for legislation in social matters. Most notably, the Baptist missionary William
Carey was one of the foremost advocates of legislation banning sahamaran.a, the
burning of wives on the funeral pyres of their husbands, and his arguments,
together with those of the Hindu pandit Mr.tyuñjay Vidya ̄lam.ka ̄r, the Hindu
reformer Rammohun Roy, and numerous officials, led the utilitarian Governor-
General Lord Bentinck to introduce such legislation in 1829. (The woman who
so burns herself, in principle voluntarily, is not regarded as a widow in the ter-
minology of dharma. By accompanying her husband into the other world, she
becomes a satı ̄, meaning a true or good woman. The term satı ̄, often in the older
spellingsuttee, was applied in English to the practice as well as the person; the
Sanskrit term is sahamaran.a“death together.”)
Thus groups which differed widely in their credal foundations could cooperate
on issues of social reform. A practice such as sahamaran.acould appear to an evan-
gelical as evidence of the Hindus’ need of the gospel, to a utilitarian as calling for
punitive legislation, and to a pandit as calling for a more accurate interpretation
of the S ́a ̄stras, while to Rammohun it showed the evil effects of idolatry. Social
reform became a topic for debate throughout the nineteenth century; its targets
ranged from the fate of wives on the death of their husbands, to the proper form
of dress for women. The agenda of social reform was set by an interaction
between the actual state of Hindu society and the various ideologies of the
reformers. It therefore changed in the course of its history, as we shall see. The
movements which are loosely called orthodox or conservative arose as conscious
responses to particular reform movements: the first such movement, the Dharma
Sabha ̄ in Calcutta, was formed to oppose legislation prohibiting sahamaran.a,
while the Bha ̄rat Dharm Maha ̄ Man.d.al (“great society for Indian dharma”) was
formed in the Panjab in 1887 to defend image-worship and the position of Brah-
mans against the A ̄rya Sama ̄j (Jones 1976: 109–11). Orthodoxy or conser-
vatism, like reform, was a construct formed in a historical context.
Early Nineteenth-century Calcutta
The new influences first took effect in Calcutta, the capital. The British presence
had encouraged the growth of a class known as bhadralok(literally “good
people”), who gained their wealth from new opportunities for employment and
commerce, and came to dominate education and the professions. The ethnically
diverse population of Calcutta included incomers from many parts of India and
beyond, outnumbering and marginalizing its indigenous population (Sinha
1978; Killingley 1997); the bhadralok, who were equally incomers, were Bengali
Hindus of high caste. Besides Brahmans, they comprised Vaidyas, traditionally
514 dermot killingley