REMEMBERING RAMMOHAN

REMEMBERING RAMMOHAN 

We are in the 250th year of Raja Rammohan Roy. On the 22nd of May this year he will complete the 250th year of his advent. Born on this day in 1772 at Radhanagar in the Bengal Presidency, Rammohan, a polymath, grew up to be India's first modern man who in alliance with the English East India Company brought about the end to the practice of Sati in 19th century Bengal. In 1829 Lord William Bentinck passed the Anti-Sati Bill to ban Sati. This saved hundreds of would-be victims from this nefarious practice. Rammohan's own sister-in-law had perished to the flames when he was sixteen and the horrifying shrieks of the unwilling young widow rent his soul. The trauma of the tragedy left an indelible mark on him and he vowed to seek its redress which he did after a lifelong struggle against orthodoxy.

Rammohan was educated in Patna in Persian and Arabic, and in Varanasi in Sanskrit. He grew up to learn English at the age of twenty-four, and thereafter Latin, Greek and Hebrew as well. Besides these languages he knew of course his mother tongue Bengali. Thus, equipped with an armoury of multiple indigenous and foreign languages he launched himself into the study of the scriptures of the world's major religions, namely, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. He studied the Holy Bible in Hebrew, the Holy Qur'an in Arabic and the Vedanta and the Tantras in Sanskrit. This facilitated his understanding of the essence of these religions and inspired him to formulate a novel monotheism which later was modified somewhat and codified into the Brahmo Dharma by his successor Maharshi Devendranath Tagore. Earlier in 1815 Rammohan had set up the Atmiya Sabha, a congregation of monotheistic followers of the creed that he preached. In 1828 he founded the Brahmo Samaj at Chitpur Road in Kolkata. Thereafter, following the 1829 Anti-Sati legislation he sailed for England in November, 1830 to represent the case of Indians at the discussion of the East India Company's prospective charter, to plead on behalf of the Mughal Emperor Akbar II before the authorities in England regarding encroachment of regal rights by the Company and to ensure that the Anti-Sati Legislation was not overturned and annulled by the Privy Council following an appeal made by orthodox Indians to that effect. The Mughal Emperor bestowed on him the title 'Raja' prior to his departure as the former's emissary. In England he met eminent intellectuals like Bentham and was generally well received. However, he contracted brain fever there and died in Stapleton village near Bristol in 1833. He was buried there. Later in 1843 he was reburied at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Brislington, East Bristol which has ever since remained a pilgrimage for all followers and admirers of Rammohan.

In life Rammohan faced much torment. When at the age of sixteen he declared that he did not subscribe to idol worship, he became estranged from his father and left home for Tibet to study Buddhism. There he gradually incurred the wrath of the Lama's followers for protesting against their raising the Lama to the level of the Lord incarnate. Fortunately, he met with protection from the Tibetan women folk and could return home after four years, unharmed in body, when his father recalled him to his favour. However, soon grave religious differences arose between father (Ramkanta Roy) and son, and Rammohan left home again to chalk out his own career amidst straightened circumstances and newfound association with the Europeans. He acquainted himself fairly with their law and form of government and gave up previously held prejudice and unconcealed aversion against these alien settlers, finding them moderate in conduct, amenable to reason and generally progressive in their views. Rammohan now progressively rose in life by sheer dint of merit and application. He became a 'bania' (moneylender) and prospered. He served as 'pandit' (Hindu scholar) in the English courts of law. Then he took up service with the English East India Company, first as 'Munshi' (private clerk) to Thomas Woodroffe who was the Registrar at the Appellate Court at Murshidabad and then as employee to John Digby, a Collector of the East India Company. He amassed a fortune through diligence and befriended the British to advance India's socioeconomic and religious causes.

Rammohan was a prolific writer. He published in Persian his monotheistic treatise 'Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin' (A Gift to Monotheists) in 1804. Subsequently he wrote 'The Precepts of Jesus' in English which encouraged Christian missionaries to believe that he would convert to Christianity and would be of great help in converting the heathens of India to the Christian fold. But they were belied in their expectations. Rammohan's affinity was towards the Unitarian Church rather than the Trinitarian Church. Rammohan was the father of Bengali prose. He translated into Bengali the Upanishads. He wrote text books in different subjects for students. He composed songs and poems and wrote prose in Bengali to set up the future literary course for his mother tongue.

Rammohan's commitment to Indian education was also deep. In 1817 he donated a sum of one lac rupees towards the building of the Hindu College (now Presidency University) anonymously, fearing that his philanthropy was liable to be rejected by the orthodox section of Hindu society on account of his repudiation of idolatry. In 1830 he helped Rev. Alexander Duff establish the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College). In 1822 he founded the Anglo-Hindu school followed by the Vedanta College in 1826. He was a pioneer of the Press and a vociferous advocate of its freedom. He started the 'Sambad Kaumudi' journal which pressed on with contentious issues of the day such as freedom of the Press, induction of Indians into the higher ranks of the civil service and of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.

Rammohan was instrumental largely in the introduction of English education in India in place of continuance of the age-old indigenous system of Sanskrit education. He was a visionary and understood the far-reaching modernising impact that western science and other academic disciplines conducted in English would have on the nation's destiny. In this he shaped India's future history for sure but saw to it that indigenous education flourished as well through his founding of the Vedanta College, the Brahmo Samaj and the copious literature that he authored. But his fundamental idea was that unless emerging India caught up with the West in science and technology through mastery of the universal language that English was, she could never make her way in the comity of nations. Rammohan was way ahead of his times and wished that Indians should benefit from both indigenous and western education.

ADDED INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS:

Rammohan arrived on the scene at a time when India was going under colonial occupation at its early onset. The English East India Company was establishing its hegemony over Indian affairs beginning with the East. The Bengal Presidency had come under its sway and it was just a matter of decades before the whole of India would buckle. As was in vogue in nineteenth century Bengal, the colonisers had a carefully crafted plan in carrying out their economic, cultural and political conquest. This was succinctly summed up in the adage: ''First send the merchants. Next send the missionaries. Last send the army." The merchants would first gain an economic foothold in the prospective colony. With economic power bolstered the Christian missionaries would launch their slow religiocultural conquest. Once the foundation had thus been laid and the country's socioeconomic system had been subverted and the country internally weakened, the army would be sent in masses to deal the coup de grace.

India, for all her fabled wealth, was the focus of the depredating European powers. Portugal had colonised her first. Then came the English, the French and the Dutch. They all vied with each other for the control of India and her resources and had the common objective of draining her wealth and altering her culturally through imposition of Christianity and allied European culture so as to be better equipped to colonise her for good. Out of this feud the English emerged triumphant majorly while the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese held onto small portions of the vast subcontinent. Never in her history had India seen such drainage of national wealth, although Islamic invasions preceding it had subverted her culturally for long and hindered the growth and flow of the Hindu culture. Thus, Rammohan arrived at a time when India was at her lowest ebb with culture threatened and commerce passing onto the hands of the avaricious British. The world had already entered into the Industrial Age in Europe and it was an hour of reckoning for India as to how she would adjust to the altering affairs of the emerging modern world. Rammohan stood out at this critical juncture of national life as the harbinger of hope, the messiah of modernity and the voice of a subjugated and suppressed race in every phase of its life. He had to battle against horrendous iniquities and lay the foundation for the future emergence of India as a modern nation state.

Rammohan came as the precursor to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda. He saved Hinduism from destruction at the hands of proselytising Christianity. Though he befriended the Europeans and was on cordial terms with the Unitarian Christians, he never ever contemplated converting to Christianity nor did he ever wholly subscribe to the tenets of the Abrahamic religions. His philosophical monotheistic standpoint was based on the Upanishads, although it may be argued that he had been influenced into it by his early exposure to Islamic studies in Patna. But the monotheism Rammohan practised was very different from that of the Islamic creed and derived its substance and sustenance from the Vedanta. Hence, his monotheistic revival of the Vedanta came as a saviour of the Sanatan Dharma as it attracted the intelligentsia of the Bengal Presidency and in consequence that of different parts of India to its fold. This is turn prevented mass conversion of the Hindus to the fold of Christianity as the masses invariably follow the ways of the leaders of society. It was but a step away now from where Ramakrishna-Vivekananda took over the reins of the revival movement and the Sanatan Dharma was in its flight once more as it penetrated the heart of America and England with the arrival of Vivekananda in the West.

Written by Sugata Bose