15. Emancipation of Women

Shri Swaminarayan can be easily described as a pioneer of programmes aimed at the emancipation of women in those days. He launched a literacy drive to educate women and gave them dignity by imparting them social, moral and spiritual knowledge. He produced great women scholars. He founded separate institutions for them and appointed women preceptors to educate other women and to run and manage their institutions by themselves. He considered them worthy of receiving spiritual knowledge and of practising it to attain moksha -salvation. He gave them equal rights in the matter of renunciation and diksha -initiation. He asked the widows to follow the Samkhya Dharma (the Yoga which helps us to liberate the soul from the bonds of worldly existence.)