YESTERDATE
The Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act 1856 had been passed on July 16, 1856, after an exceptionally bold and astute campaign by Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, but the battle was far from over, as this report proves.
Published in the newspaper The Englishman on November 25, 1856, the report says: “We regret to hear that Pundit Shreesh Chunder Nyruteen, Judge’s Pundit in the Moorshedabad circle, who had openly expressed his intention of marrying a young widow in her teens, has been dissuaded from his laudable purpose. The venerable lady, his mother, distinctly told him that it would be impossible for her to remain in the same house with him if he took to his wife a widow, and that in obtaining a wife, he must be prepared to lose a mother. The Pundit was compelled at last to abandon his intention.”