Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act

Also called: Widow Remarriage Act 1856 · Topic: Europeans in India and the Rise of Company Rule · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Rebels and the Raj"

Meaning

The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 was a law of the Company government. It made the remarriage of Hindu widows legal and said the children of such a marriage were legitimate (lawful heirs). Social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was its main supporter.

It matters for two reasons:

• It is a landmark of 19th-century social reform.
• It came just before 1857. Many people in North India saw it as the Company interfering in their religion and family customs, and that fear fed into the Revolt.

Explanation

Background: why the law was demanded

• Upper-caste custom did not allow widows to remarry. Many girls were married as children, so many became widows while still very young. After that they lived a life of strict rules, poor food and no social standing.
• Not every community followed this ban. Among many lower castes, widow remarriage was already allowed by custom. So the ban was mainly an upper-caste rule.
• Vidyasagar argued from scripture, not just from feeling.
• He was a Sanskrit scholar in Calcutta.
• He used ancient Hindu texts to show that they permitted widows to remarry.

• This allowed him to answer orthodox critics in their own language of religion.

• Petitions to the government (c. 1855).

• Vidyasagar and his supporters sent petitions to the Company government asking for a law.
• Orthodox Hindu leaders, among them Radhakanta Deb, sent counter-petitions against it. These reportedly carried many more signatures.

Main features of the Act

• Remarriage made legal. A Hindu widow's second marriage could no longer be treated as invalid just because she was a widow.
• Children made legitimate. Children of the new marriage could inherit like any other lawful children.
• A loss built into the law. On remarriage, the widow lost her rights in her dead husband's property. This is a common exam trap.
• It allowed but did not force. No one was required to remarry. The law only removed the legal block.

How it was passed

• The Act was drafted while Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General.
• It was passed in 1856, after Lord Canning had taken over. It is usually dated 26 July 1856 and numbered Act XV of 1856.
• It used the Company's central law-making machinery. The Charter Act, 1833 had strengthened this machinery and also provided for a Law Commission to consolidate and codify Indian laws [4].

Results

• Few widows actually remarried. Social pressure was stronger than the law. Families who held such marriages were often shut out by their caste.

• Vidyasagar personally arranged early remarriages. According to standard accounts, the first took place in Calcutta in December 1856.

• The reform spread slowly through later movements. Veerasalingam Pantulu worked for widow remarriage in the Madras Presidency. The Arya Samaj of Dayanand Saraswati also supported it.

• The political cost. In North India, the Act joined a list of measures that looked like an attack on religion and custom: the abolition of sati (the burning of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre) in 1829, Christian missionary activity, and new laws. When the Revolt broke out in 1857, rebels claimed that the British meant to destroy the religion of both Hindus and Muslims.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: late Company rule, just before the Revolt of 1857.
• Rulers: the East India Company's government. Drafted under Governor-General Dalhousie and passed in 1856 under Canning.
• Place: the campaign was centred in Calcutta, Bengal. The law applied across British-ruled territory.
• Key people: Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (supporter), Radhakanta Deb and other orthodox leaders (opponents).
• How we know about it:
• the official text of the Act in the government's law records
• the petitions and counter-petitions sent to the government
• Vidyasagar's own writings arguing from the shastras (Hindu sacred texts)

• the proclamations and rumours of 1857, which show how the reforms were seen in North India (Class 12 NCERT, "Rebels and the Raj")

• Link to the wider story: the Company had been building a central law-making and court system since the Regulating Act, 1773 [2] and the Cornwallis Code, 1793 [3]. Through that system it could now change family custom by a single law. Earlier, this was the area of customary law (the unwritten local rules on marriage and inheritance).

Don't confuse with

• Abolition of Sati (Regulation XVII, 1829): passed under William Bentinck, with Raja Rammohun Roy as the leading reformer. It banned a practice. The 1856 Act permitted one, and it is linked with Vidyasagar.
• Age of Consent Act, 1891: raised the age at which a girl could be married. It dealt with child marriage, not with widows. It came after the Crown took over, not under the Company.
• Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 (Sarda Act): fixed minimum marriage ages for girls and boys. It is a 20th-century law, not part of the pre-1857 reforms.
• Indian Penal Code (drafted 1837, enacted 1860): a general criminal code from Macaulay's First Law Commission [5][6]. The 1856 Act was a social-reform law on Hindu marriage, not part of the criminal code.

Prelims Hooks

• Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act — 1856 — main supporter Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.
• Drafted under Dalhousie and passed under Canning. A common trap: "passed by Bentinck" is wrong. Bentinck is linked with sati (1829).
• On remarriage, the widow lost her rights in her first husband's property. Children of the remarriage were legitimate.
• Chronology: Abolition of Sati (1829) → Widow Remarriage Act (1856) → Revolt (1857) → Age of Consent Act (1891) → Sarda Act (1929).
• Vidyasagar argued from ancient Hindu texts that widow remarriage was allowed. He did not base his case on Western law.
• Other names linked with widow remarriage: Veerasalingam Pantulu (Madras Presidency) and the Arya Samaj (Dayanand Saraswati).

Mains Points

• Law ahead of society. The Act removed a legal block, but very few widows remarried, because caste pressure and family honour were stronger than the court. It is a good example of the limits of reform by law alone. Social change needed later movements and education to follow it.
• Reform as a cause of revolt. Upper-caste North Indians, including many sepoys, saw the Act together with the sati ban, missionary activity and new laws. To them it looked like a plan to destroy their religion. Use this to show that 1857 had social and religious causes, not only economic and military ones.
• Colonial law and customary law. The Company had pushed aside customary law through a centralised legal system (Regulating Act 1773 [2], Cornwallis Code 1793 [3], the Law Commission under the Charter Act 1833 [4]). The same system now let Indian reformers change custom from above. Discuss this double edge: the colonial state alienated people by overriding custom, but it also became a tool for reformers like Vidyasagar.

Related concepts

• Charles Metcalfe
• Warren Hastings
• Regulating Act 1773
• Supreme Court at Calcutta 1774
• Pitt's India Act 1784
• Impeachment of Warren Hastings
• Cornwallis Code 1793
• Charter Act 1793
• Covenanted civil service
• Fort William College

Read more

• Dismantling traditional governance and law