Bengal witnessed dramatic changes in its fortunes through the latter half of the 18th century and the first four decades of the 19th century. The advent of the East India company rule transformed the political, economic and social landscape of the region in significant ways. The ravages of the aftermath of the Battle of Plessey, 1757 led to a devastating Famine in 1770. The East India Company administration and its misrule were responsible for the chaos and sufferings during these years. A regular pattern of socio-cultural exchange and interaction between the new English rulers and the Indians emerged during this century. As a colonialist ruler, the East India company administration extracted resources from Bengal on a rapine scale. But the new rulers also brought in Westernization and modernization in a number of ways. How would the Bengalis respond to the currents of westernization and modernization triggered by the arrival of the English rule in the region? Some remarkable Bengalis were to answer this question through their remarkable lives and careers. Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) was one such remarkable Indian.
Gifted polyglot, man of letters, scholar, educationist and a social reformer, the list of Raja Ram’s attainments and contributions is diverse, long and an impressive one. He was among the pioneers of the Bengali reformers and activists who were to settle the rules and terms of engagement between the English rulers and the Indian subjects in British India.
Mohan Roy was raised in the cosmopolitan, eclectic, Hindu-Muslim socio-cultural milieu of the last quarter of the 18th century Bengal. He learnt Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic during his early education in Bengal and Patna and Banaras. The man had an impressive gift for learning languages as he was to learn English and Greek a little latter in his life. His language proficiency in these important languages meant that he soon became an excellent ambassador of cross cultural communications between the Indians and the Europeans. Within India he was an excellent model of Hindu-Muslim hybrid culture, He was among the authors Maha Nirvana Tantra, a treatise that was widely used by the English jurors as they laid out the basic structure of the law courts for administering Justice in Bengal. Alongside that he wrote a good book Tuhfat-ul-Muwahideen, a scholarly work promoting monotheism.
Ram Mohan Roy followed a syncretic religious tradition that believed in the universal acceptance of the noblest and the best in all religions. It put great stock in reason, logic and a variety of progressive social and cultural values. It was humanitarian and open to all who wanted to enter its fold. This religious tradition was evolved by Ram Mohan Roy and his friends under the ambit of a Hindu Reform Movement called the Brahmo Saba (1828). He was in association with the versatile Tagore family during the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj. The Brahmo Saba was to evolve into a vigorous religious reform movement, Brahmo Samaj, under the remarkable scions of the Tagore family such as the Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905) and his son, the dazzling renaissance man, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to win a Noble Prize for literature in 1913. The chief influences on the Brahmo Samaj are Hinduism, Unitarian Christianity and European rational Philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a humane and a highly committed social reformer. He advocated against social ills of his times from the platform of the Atimya Sabha (1814), a debating society that stood for eradication of superstitions, inhuman cultural and social practices and exploitation in all its forms. The Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829 criminalized Sati. Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s advocacy went a long way in the passing of this legislation. He targeted the feudal elite of his native Bengal in order to discourage their exploitation of the poor and humble people of the region.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy believed that education was an essential prerequisite for empowering and protecting the Indians. He correctly realized that the struggle for the rights of the common people cannot make much headway as long as the Indians stay illiterate. In order to impart modern Education to the Indians he supported his friends and associates to establish the Hindu School of Bengal in 1817. It became a college in 1855. Now the Presidency University of Bengal, it is one of India’s oldest educational institutions imparting modern education. Ram Mohan Roy also advocated for press freedoms in India in order to promote learning, information access and education. The Hicky’s Bengal Gazette was the first English language magazine to be published in India. Established in 1780, it was stopped by the East India Company administration in 1782. The Bengalis noticed the importance of the free press for the struggles for freedoms and rights, early on.
People such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy rubbed shoulders with the elite. He went to Britain in 1830 in order to plead the case of the Mughal King Akber Shah II (1806-37) for a better treatment by the East India Company administration in India. The Qila-I-Mualla or the Mughal Royal Household in Delhi bestowed the title of Raja on him for these services. He came into contact with some very influential people during his visit to Britain. The locals in Bengal called men such as him with the term Bhadralok or the westernized, British-connected locals of Bengal. They stood at some remove from the locals and the working people of India. No doubt, Raja Ram Mohan Roy too was a Bhadrilok. He was elitist but his heart lay in the right place when it came to the struggle for the rights and freedoms of the Indians. He was among the earliest Indians to point out the extraction of the Indian resources by the East India Company rulers on a loot scale. Men such as him must be assessed within the context of their historical settings in order to understand what they did or did not do. When viewed from this perspective Raja Ram Mohan Roy emerges as a great well-wisher and benefactor of all Indians through the testing times of the early years of the British colonial rule in India.
