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Against High-Caste Polygamy offers a complete, annotated translation of Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar's influential social-reform tract from 1871. Crafted by one of the nineteenth century's most prominent voices for social change, Against High-Caste Polygamy demonstrates Vidyasagar's ability to call upon the classical discourse and argumentation of the Sanskrit legal tradition while engaging the norms of modern historical and social criticism. In this work, Vidyasagar utilizes both a kind of "imaginative sociology" geared at capturing the suffering of Kulin women and a kind of proto-statistical analysis aimed at opening the eyes of readers to the extent and ramifications of polygamous practices that left Hindu women ostracized, neglected, and abused.

Before the passage of the Hindu Widow's Re-marriage Act of 1856, Hindu tradition required a woman to live as a virtual outcast after her husband's death. Widows were expected to shave their heads, discard their jewelry, live in seclusion, and undergo regular acts of penance. Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar was the first Indian intellectual to successfully argue against these cruelties. A Sanskrit scholar and passionate social reformer, Vidyasagar was a leading proponent of widow marriage in colonial India, urging contemporaries to reject a ban that caused countless women to suffer needlessly.Vidyasag