Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader.
Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar, eds. Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. vii + 550 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22049-3; $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35269-9. Reviewed by Sushumna Kannan (Centre for the study of culture and society) Published on H-Asia (July, 2010) Commissioned by Sumit Guha Reader on Social Reform Women and Social Reform in Modern India is a two-part book that contains twenty-eight essays. The first part presents research in the field of social reform with twenty-three essays; the second part allows five texts from the period to speak. The introduction discusses the common lopsided textbook view of social reform and questions this view while pointing to work that shows another approach. Reform in the textbook view, the editors write, has always been about upper castes, women, and customs but never about lower castes, Muslims, or the limitations law places on reform. The introduction raises many