How Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar used an ancient Hindu text to make widow remarriage legal in the 19th century

“With a courage which has seldom been excelled in the history of social reforms, he, a Brahman of Brahmans, and a Pundit of Pundits, proclaimed in 1855 that the perpetual widowhood of Hindu women, who had lost their husbands, was not sanctioned by the shastras; and that the marriage of Hindu widows was permitted,” wrote Subal Chandra Mitra in his sprawling biography of the 19th century Hindu Brahmin (upper caste) reformer, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, in the eastern Indian region of Bengal who took on the the most immutable orthodoxy, striking at its gnarled foundations, not from outside, but from within, using the very texts and traditions against their malignant use. <a href="https://grin.news/radical-kindness-ishwar-chandra-vidyasagar-in-the-19th-century-a557bc71b4a0">Read More</a>