• The Indian subcontinent witnessed significant social changes during the 18th and 19th centuries. The onset of British rule, increasing urge for social and religious reform, rise of a middle class, rapid growth of newspapers in both English and Indian languages, change in physical infrastructure and semi political unification of the country were partly responsible for these changes. The end of the Moghal rule was followed by the strengthening of many regional kingdoms during the 18th century. The gradual expansion of British rule in this vacuum signified an entirely unfamiliar system of governance with long term repercussions.

Objectives

• Trace the broad outlines of cultural policies of British rulers in India;
• Examine the nature of the conflict between the orientalists and the Anglicists;
• Assess the impact of British rule on educated classes in India;
• Explore the evils in the social and religious life;
• Explain the background of the rise of a modern Indian intelligentsia.
• The reform movements and the issues raised by reformers ;
• Identify the stages of the growth of Western education in India and
• Identify the stages of the growth of press in India.

Social movement in South India

• In the South of India a leading light of the social reform movement in the early stages was Kandukari Veeresalingam (1848-1919).
• Unlike many of his contemporaries in the social reform movement in Calcutta or Bombay, Veeresalingam was born in a poor family; by profession he was a school teacher for the major part of hk life.
• prolific in writing, he produced a large number of tracts and pamphlets on social reform in the Telugu language.
• Hence he is claimed to be the father of modern Teluguprose literature. His missionary zeal on issues like re-marriage of widows, female education and generally on the upliftment of women and removal of social vices, made him the father-figure of the later generation of Andhra social reformers.
• In what was then called the Madras Presidency the response to the all-India wave of social reform was given a distinctive hue by the presence of caste associations and caste mobility movements of various kinds.
• By the turn of the century a number of caste association began to play a significant role in ‘reform movements’ which were often not unconnected with the social elevation of the caste concerned.
• This was to be observed in the case of, for example, the Kongu Vellala Sangam of the Grounder Caste in Tamil Nadu, the Vokkaliga and Lingayat Associations in Mysore, the S.N.D.P. Yogqm of the Iravas of Kerala, etc.
• The caste leaders of the caste movements formed an elite, often in non-traditional careers, who stressed a common heritage of caste members and pushed forward changes in social and ritual practices.
• A notable feature was hat caste associations, originally concerned with internal reforms, slowly gradated into the form of strong poetical forces.
• We cannot pursue here this course of development which matured in the 20th century