Women - In the Eyes of Dayananda

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Women has always been the pivot of the family, of the society, of the whole human race, as she has devoted herself in each and every relationship, profession and above all in curing the ailments of the society but has remained herself ignored and suppressed by the male dominating Indian society. I do not say she was not given a respectable position ever in the society as she was given much significance in the Vedic-age in each and every aspect whether it was political, social and religious whatever it had been. But with the passage of time her condition degraded so much so that during Muslim attack she had to be protected like commodities from the vagaries of Muslim invaders' intentions.

The British period also witnessed such degraded condition of the women she had to suffer from evils which were most seriously made to practice by her female counterparts/relations in most of the cases.

I had been associated with various social institutions and NGOâs working for women and noticed that although many Legislations have been enacted for the legal safety of women, her conditions still sometimes defines to be secondary and she's still under the shackles of suffrage, exploitation, domestic violence and mental/psychological direction less ness. She still does not practice the right of decision making and leading the family, in most of the cases.

This scenario forced me to think upon the condition of women since I came across a name which had initiated to bring enormous social change by thinking upon the degrading condition of women as the basic reason of social downfall in Indian society.

Events in the life of such creative men, floating down the current of time, become, at a gap of years and centuries, a sort of tradition, a heritage, a treasure for the community.

Dayanandâs life and work brings out in distinguishing features, firstly, love, truth and absolute rejection of untruth, secondly, his love and dedication to the service of mankind. Dayanand's initiatives in introducing women based reforms were the need of the hour in the nineteenth century India, his approach towards social upliftment of the women could be better understood through the institutions related to Arya Samaj, along with its letters and journals, which blew the bugle of feminist reforms in nineteenth century Rajasthan.

Dayanand had a concept of uplifting women through education; therefore he took fruitful measures for spreading the thought of female education by introducing many such institutions which advocated similar thoughts all over India. Then was the crucial role played by the letters and journals advocating feminist reforms as part of their movement. In the current work the author has made a deep study to categorize the whole period into three eras of arya-journalism.

The messages of Dayanand attained success perhaps through its very ambiguity, for it combined sharp criticism of many existing Hindu practices like idolatry and polytheism, child marriage and the taboos on widow remarriage etc.

**Contents and Sample Pages**