42 SOCIAL SCIENTIST up as an alternative programme to define women's role in the nation-building process. Before an analysis of Lajpat Rai's views on issues relating to women can be taken up, it is important to outline his other concerns, and see how he arrived at them. For the growth and development of his thought on other issues was reflected in his changing perceptions of women's issues. Lajpat Rai came into public life, and found his political doctrine in the famous reformist movement of Punjab, the Arya Samaj. The strength of the Arya Samaj in the late nineteenth century in Punjab can be gauged from the change it wrought in young Lajpat Rai's life. Bom in an Agarwal Baniya family in Dhudhike in Ferozpur District. Lajpat Rai was an inheritor of an eclectic tradition. His grandfather belonged to a sect of Jainism, and followed the rituals prescribed therein. His father, a brilliant student in a Farsi madarsa established by the British, was greatly influenced by Islam to the extent that he read the namaaz and kept rozas, and often threatened to convert to that faith. Lajpat Rat's mother came from a Sikh family, and carried on 'Hindu' traditions after her marriage. Young Lajpat Rai, taught by his teacher father, grew up to be proficient in Persian and Urdu, and was attracted to the Brahmo Samaj in his early years. Yet it was in the Arya Samaj that he found the political philosophy that changed the direction of his life. It was the Urdu-Hindi controversy that led Lajpat Rai to reflect on the 'needs' of the Hindu community and he chose to support Hindi, though as yet he was unfamiliar with its script or alphabet.4 Lajpat Rai's paid tribute to the Arya Samaj and expressed his sense of gratefulness to the organisation in these words, STPfe^M ^ ^ Wpft ^n^t ^ ^ ^TT RKSWWI, 3ll4wiv3l ^ ^ <^a W^ ^)T W Twswiqi. . . .1 (Arya Samaj taught me the love of my community, Arya Samaj taught me the path of sacrifice. Arya Samaj inspired in me the spirit of truth and independence. Arya Samaj taught me the lesson of the consolidation of the community... .)5 Thus, Hindu men of Lajpat Rai's generation, in middle class urban Punjab, grew up by rejecting a part of their legacy, and by nurturing a feeling of indignation at the 'Muslim wrongs'. In his autobiographical writings, Lajpat Rai noted how it was books like Vakayat-i-Hind and Kasas Hind that made him aware of Muslim atrocities against Hindus in history, and almost made him begin to hate the Islamic faith.6 The roots of Hindu glory were traced to Aryan civilization, and in its constructed resplendence a deep sense of pride was felt and shared by Arya Samaj men. Like a number of other Arya Samajists, Lajpat Rai