GS Paper I 2017 · Q18
15 marks · 250 words Women, population, poverty & urbanisation X-Ray · Core #64The women’s questions arose in modern India as a part of the 19th century social reform movement. What were the major issues and debates concerning women in that period ?
Approach · directive: “what”
What it asks · List the main issues (sati, widows, child marriage, education, infanticide) and the debates around them: reform versus tradition, law versus persuasion and social reform versus politics.
It asks 2 things — answer each
- List the major issues concerning women: sati, widow remarriage, child marriage and age of consent, female infanticide, education
- Bring out the debates around them: scripture and reason, law and persuasion, social reform and politics, women's own voice
Open with · Rammohun Roy attacked sati by appealing both to humanitarian and natural rights doctrines and to the Hindu shastras; that double appeal, to reason and to scripture, shaped every women's question of the century.
Cover
- Sati: Rammohun Roy's campaign; Bentinck's regulation of 1829 banned it.
- Widows: Vidyasagar's use of ancient texts and the 1856 Act; Ranade's tracts on shastric sanction; Karve's widow home (1896).
- Child marriage and consent: Native Marriage Act, 1872 (14 and 18); Phulmoni Dasi case (1889); Age of Consent Act, 1891 (10 to 12).
- Female infanticide: Act of 1870 for Punjab, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh.
- Education: Phules' girls' school (1848), Bethune School (1849), later Arya Samaj schools in Punjab.
- Debates: scripture versus reason, law versus persuasion (Ranade and Malabari versus Tilak), social reform versus politics.
- Women's own voice: Tarabai Shinde, Pandita Ramabai and Rashsundari Debi's Amar Jiban (1876).
Close with · Rashsundari Debi, who learnt to read in secret in her kitchen, published Amar Jiban (1876), the first full-length autobiography in Bengali: women were already turning from objects of reform into its authors.
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2017, GS Paper I — paper ↗. Approach: Minimalist IAS, checked 16 Oct 2026 (how we verify) — UPSC publishes no model answers. ·
Model answer· 328words · Minimalist IAS
Rammohun Roy attacked sati by appealing both to humanitarian and natural rights doctrines and to the Hindu shastras. That double appeal, to reason and to scripture, shaped every women's question of the century and the controversies around it.
- 1829: Sati banned
- 1856: Widow remarriage legalised
- 1872: Native Marriage Act
- 1882: Stri Purush Tulana
- 1891: Age of Consent Act
Major issues
- Sati: Rammohun Roy's campaign led to Bentinck's regulation of 1829 banning widow immolation.
- Widowhood: Vidyasagar cited ancient texts to show widows could remarry, and a law followed in 1856; Ranade's tracts set out the shastric sanction for remarriage, and Karve opened a widows' home in 1896.
- Child marriage and consent: the Native Marriage Act, 1872 fixed 14 for girls and 18 for boys marrying under it; after the Phulmoni Dasi case (1889), the Age of Consent Act, 1891 raised the age from 10 to 12.
- Female infanticide: the Act of 1870, first applied in Punjab, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, targeted the killing of girl infants.
- Education: the Phules' school for girls (1848) and the Bethune School (1849), followed by Arya Samaj schools for girls in Punjab.
The debates
- Scripture versus reason: reformers argued from sacred texts as well as reason, while the orthodox defended custom as religion and boycotted Vidyasagar.
- Law versus persuasion: Ranade and Malabari sought legislation; Tilak objected to a colonial government legislating on Hindu custom, as the 1891 controversy showed.
- Reform versus politics: whether social change should precede political freedom divided reformers from many early nationalists.
- Whose women: the agenda centred on upper-caste women, and reformers were mostly upper-caste men who treated women as objects of reform.
- Women's own voice: Tarabai Shinde's Stri Purush Tulana (1882) protested male double standards, and Pandita Ramabai wrote with anger about the lives of upper-caste widows.
Rashsundari Debi, who learnt to read in secret in her kitchen, published Amar Jiban (1876), the first full-length autobiography in Bengali: women were already turning from objects of reform into its authors.
Prepared by Minimalist IAS to the answer standard of Shivam Singh (mentor, 7 years) · facts checked against official sources (how we verify) · updated 16 Oct 2026. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.
