2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST of the great social reformer's brother, these widows too were forced by their relatives to immolate themselves in the pyres of their husbands. Unlike in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, of course, sati is recognized as a crime today and the persons concerned were duly arrested and proceeded against. It is however shocking that 146 years after the abominable custom was declared illegal by the then British government, the practice is still continuing in parts of a country over whose government a distinguished lady is presiding. No more graphic an example is necessary to show the extent to which tradition harasses, humiliates and oppresses the women in this country of whose "ancient heritage" so much is proudly claimed by our misguided "patriots". Social Reforms Movement Striking a personal note and recalling the conditions of the women of the community I was born into, polygamous marriages were the rule and bigamy the exception half a century ago. My own father had two wives, while only one of his five daughters who grew up to the age of marriage escaped the fate of being one of two or more wives of their husbands. My stepmother, the younger of the two wives of my father, was the daughter of the "bridegroom" to whom my father's younger sister was married! This was true also of every family related to ours as well as the entire community, the only modification being that, instead of two wives as in my father^ case, most men had three. Combined as this was with enforced widowhood, the husbands having innumerable concubines over and above the two or three lawfully wedded wives, the absence of education for the women, observance of purdah and other customs of half-a-century ago roused my social conscience. The campaign against these outmoded practices launched by my elders was in fact what initiated me into the service of the people. The social reform movement launched by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in Bengal, as is well known, stirred the conscience of successive generations all over India. Step by step it flowered ioto^ the movement for the allround (social, cultural and economic) reconstruction of Indian society and finally developed into the political movement for freedom. The social reform (including the women's liberation) movement and the struggle for India's freedom from the foreign yoke were thus interrelated, strengthening each other. Although there were many social reformers who looked down upon the struggle for political freedom, and although conversely there were several fighters for political freedom who were hostile to social reforms, the fact remains that every advance in the movement for political freedom brought Indians womanhood several steps further in their own struggle for emancipation. Organized womanhood on the other hand has always been a tower of strength for the freedom movement. Subsequently, when the freedom movement embraced the organized working class and the rural poor and with the emergence of the socialist, the communist and other left democratic forces within the womb of the