🤝 Society through the ages
Family and kinship, villages, guilds and work, the reformers who questioned inequality, and the equality promised by the Constitution — as NCERT tells it.
👪 Family and kinship
What the early texts prescribed — and NCERT’s caution that real life was more varied.
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c. 1000 BCE onwards
Gotra rules
Each gotra was named after a Vedic seer; members of the same gotra could not marry.
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c. 500 BCE – 200 CE
Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras
From c. 500 BCE social norms were compiled in Sanskrit texts, the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras; the Manusmriti was compiled between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE. NCERT notes that real social relations were more complicated.
🌾 Villages, guilds and work
Who worked the land, how crafts were organised, and how the peasant was seen by the state.
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Sangam age
Groups in the Tamil village
Sangam texts name large landowners (vellalar), ploughmen (uzhavar) and slaves (adimai).
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Early historic period
Guilds (shrenis)
Guilds of craft producers and merchants probably procured raw materials, regulated production and marketed the finished goods.
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13th–17th centuries
Jati and shreni continue
The jati and shreni system for arts, crafts and trade continued.
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Mughal period
Raiyat: the peasant
Indo-Persian sources most often called a peasant raiyat; the Ain-i Akbari recorded how the state arranged cultivation and revenue.
✊ Questioning inequality
Saints, reformers and the laws that followed.
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Twelfth century
Basavanna and the Virashaivas
Basavanna’s vachanas questioned empty ritual; his followers were known as Virashaivas.
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1772–1833
Rammohun Roy and the Brahmo Sabha
Raja Rammohun Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha (later the Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta, believing unjust practices had to be done away with.
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1829
Sati banned
After Rammohun Roy’s campaign, sati was banned in 1829.
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1840
The Paramhans Mandali
Founded in Bombay to work for the abolition of caste.
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1856
Widow remarriage made legal
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar used the ancient texts to argue that widows could remarry; a law of 1856 permitted it.
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1873
Jyotirao Phule and Gulamgiri
Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj propagated caste equality; in 1873 he wrote Gulamgiri, meaning slavery.
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1875
The Arya Samaj
Founded by Dayanand Saraswati to reform Hinduism.
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Late 19th – early 20th century
Schools for girls
The Arya Samaj in Punjab and Jyotirao Phule in Maharashtra set up schools for girls; Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain started schools for Muslim girls in Patna and Calcutta.
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1927
Ambedkar: “We are also human beings”
In 1927 Ambedkar said Hindu society should be reorganised on two principles — equality and absence of casteism.
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Periyar and the Self Respect Movement
Convinced that the untouchables had to fight for their dignity, E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) founded the Self Respect Movement.
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1929
The Child Marriage Restraint Act
No man below 18 and no woman below 16 could marry; the limits were later raised to 21 and 18.
⚖ Equality in the Republic
What the Constitution and later amendments did.
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Constitution of India
Untouchability abolished
Untouchability is abolished under the Right to Equality, which also forbids discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.
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73rd amendment
One-third of panchayat seats for women
Under the 73rd amendment, one third of the positions in all panchayat institutions are reserved for women.
How we check: every entry is from an NCERT textbook, in neutral wording; our build fails unless its key phrases are found in the chapter itself. Where NCERT notes that the texts describe norms rather than how people actually lived, so do we.