Raja Ram Mohan Roy (; 22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was an Indian social reformer and writer who was one of the founders of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the precursor of the Brahmo Samaj, a socio-religious reform movement in the Indian subcontinent. He has been dubbed the "Father of the Indian Renaissance." He was given the title of Raja by Mughal emperor Akbar II ().
His influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration, education, and religion. He was known for his efforts to abolish the practices of sati and child marriage. Roy wrote Gaudiya Vyakaran, which was the first complete Bangla grammar written book.
Early life (1772–1796) Ram Mohan Roy was born in Radhanagar, Hooghly District, Bengal Presidency. His great-grandfather Krishnakanta Bandyopadhyay was a Rarhi Kulin (noble) Brahmin. Among Kulin Brahmins descendants of the five families of Brahmins, migrated from Kannauj by Ballal Sen in the 12th century as per popular myththose from the Rarhi district of West Bengal were notorious in the 19th century for living off dowries by marrying several women. Kulinism was a synonym for polygamy and the dowry system, both of which Ram Mohan campaigned against. His father, Ramkanta, was a Vaishnavite, while his mother, Tarini Devi, was from a Shaivite family. He was a great scholar of Sanskrit, Persian and English languages and also knew Arabic, Latin and Greek. One parent prepared him for the occupation of a scholar, the Shastri, while the other secured for him all the worldly advantages needed to launch a career in the laukik or worldly sphere of public administration. Torn between these two parental ideals from early childhood, Ram Mohan vacillated between the two for the rest of his life.Sharma, H. D. (2002). Raja Ram Mohan Roy: The Renaissance Man. Rupa & Co. p. 8. .
During his childhood Ram Mohan Roy witnessed the death of his sister-in-law through sati. The seventeen-year-old girl was dragged towards the pyre where Ram Mohan Roy witnessed her terrified state. He tried to protest but to no avail. She was burned alive. The people chanted "Maha Sati! Maha Sati! Maha Sati!" (great wife) over her painful screams.
Ram Mohan Roy was married three times. His first wife died early. He had two sons, Radhaprasad in 1800, and Ramaprasad in 1812 with his second wife, who died in 1824. Roy's third wife outlived him.
The nature and content of Ram Mohan Roy's early education is disputed. One view is that Ram Mohan started his formal education in the village pathshala where he learned Bengali and some Sanskrit and Persian. Later he is said to have studied Persian and Arabic in a madrasa in Patna and after that he was sent to Benares to learn the intricacies of Sanskrit and Hindu scripture, including the Vedas and Upanishads. The dates of his time in both these places are uncertain. However, it is believed that he was sent to Patna when he was nine years old and two years later he went to Benares.
Ram Mohan Roy's impact on modern Indian history was his revival of the pure and ethical principles of the Vedanta school of philosophy as found in the Upanishads. He preached the unity of God, made early translations of Vedic scriptures into English, co-founded the Calcutta Unitarian Society and founded the Brahmo Sabha, precursor to Brahmo Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj played a major role in reforming and modernising the Indian society. He successfully campaigned against sati, the practice of burning widows on their husband's funeral pyre. He sought to integrate Western culture with the best features of his own country's traditions. He established a number of schools to popularise a modern system of education in India. He promoted a rational, ethical, non-authoritarian, this-worldly views and social reforms in Hinduism. His writings also sparked interest among British and American Unitarians.
Christianity and the early rule of the East India Company (1795–1828) In 1797, Raja Ram Mohan reached Calcutta and became a bania (moneylender), mainly to lend to the Englishmen of the Company living beyond their means. Ram Mohan also continued his vocation as pandit in the English courts and started to make a living for himself. He began learning Greek and Latin.
In 1799, Carey was joined by missionary Joshua Marshman and the printer William Ward at the Danish settlement of Serampore.
From 1803 until 1815, Ram Mohan served the East India Company's "Writing Service", commencing as private clerk (Munshi) to Thomas Woodroffe, Registrar of the Appellate Court at Murshidabad (whose distant nephew, John Woodroffe—also a magistrate—and later lived off the Maha Nirvana Tantra under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon). Roy resigned from Woodroffe's service and later secured employment with John Digby, a Company collector, and Ram Mohan spent many years at Rangpur and elsewhere with Digby, where he renewed his contacts with Hariharananda. William Carey had by this time settled at Serampore and the old trio renewed their profitable association. William Carey was also aligned now with the English Company, then head-quartered at Fort William, and his religious and political ambitions were increasingly intertwined.
While in Murshidabad, in 1804 Roy wrote Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A Gift to Monotheists) in Persian with an introduction in Arabic. Bengali had not yet become the language of intellectual discourse. The importance of Tuhfat-ul-muwahhidin lies only in its being the first known theological statement of one who achieved later fame and notoriety as a Vedantin. His biographer Bruce Carlisle Robinson finds this work unremarkable, perhaps of interest only to a social historian because of its amateurish eclecticism. Roy did not know the Upanishads at this stage in his intellectual development. Tuhfat became available in 1884 in the English translation of Maulavi Obaidullah EI Obaid, published by the Adi Brahmo Samaj.
In 1814, he started Atmiya Sabha (i.e. Society of Friends) a philosophical discussion circle in Kolkata (then Calcutta) to propagate the monotheistic ideals of the vedanta and to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals and other social ills.
The East India Company was draining money from India at a rate of three million pounds a year by 1838. Ram Mohan Roy was one of the first to try to estimate how much money was being taken out of India and to where it was disappearing. He estimated that around one-half of all total revenue collected in India was sent out to England, leaving India, with a considerably larger population, to use the remaining money to maintain social well-being. Ram Mohan Roy saw this and believed that the unrestricted settlement of Europeans in India governing under free trade would help ease the economic drain crisis.
During the next two decades, Ram Mohan along with William Carey, launched his attack against the bastions of Hinduism of Bengal, namely his own Kulin Brahmin priestly clan (then in control of the many temples of Bengal) and their priestly excesses. The Kulin excesses targeted include sati (the co-cremation of widows), polygamy, child marriage and dowry.
From 1819, Ram Mohan's battery increasingly turned against William Carey, a Baptist Missionary settled in Serampore, and the Serampore missionaries. With Dwarkanath's munificence, he launched a series of attacks against Trinitarian Christianity and was now considerably assisted in his theological debates by the Unitarian faction of Christianity.
He wrote Gaudiya Vyakaran which was the first complete Bangla grammar written book. It was published in 1826.
In 1828, he launched Brahmo Sabha with Debendranath Tagore. By 1828, he had become a well known figure in India. In 1830, he had gone to England as an envoy of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, who invested him with the title of Raja to the court of King William IV.
Middle "Brahmo" period (1820–1830) This was Ram Mohan's most controversial period. Commenting on his published works Sivanath Sastri writes:Sastri, Sivanath (1911) History of the Brahmo Samaj. pp. 44–46
"The period between 1820 and 1830 was also eventful from a literary point of view, as will be manifest from the following list of his publications during that period:
Second Appeal to the Christian Public, Brahmanical Magazine – Parts I, II and III, with Bengali translation and a new Bengali newspaper called Sambad Kaumudi in 1821; A Persian paper called Mirat-ul-Akbar contained a tract entitled Brief Remarks on Ancient Female Rights and a book in Bengali called Answers to Four Questions in 1822; Third and final appeal to the Christian public, a memorial to the King of England on the subject of the liberty of the press, Ramdoss papers relating to Christian controversy, Brahmanical Magazine, No. IV, letter to Lord Arnherst on the subject of English education, a tract called "Humble Suggestions" and a book in Bengali called "Pathyapradan or Medicine for the Sick," all in 1823; A letter to Rev. H. Ware on the "Prospects of Christianity in India" and an "Appeal for Famine-smitten Natives in Southern India" in 1824; A tract on the different modes of worship, in 1825; A Bengali tract on the qualifications of a God-loving householder, a tract in Bengali on a controversy with a Kayastha and a grammar of the Bengali language in English in 1826; A Sanskrit tract on "Divine Worship by Gayatri" with an English translation of the same, the edition of a Sanskrit treatise against caste and the previously noticed tract called "Answer of a Hindu to the Question &c." in 1827; A form of divine worship and a collection of hymns composed by him and his friends, in 1828; "Religious Instructions Founded on Sacred Authorities" in English and Sanskrit, a Bengali tract called "Anusthan", and a petition against sati, in 1829.
He publicly declared that he would emigrate from the British Empire if Parliament failed to pass the Reform Bill.
In 1830, Ram Mohan Roy travelled to the United Kingdom as an ambassador of the Mughal Empire to ensure that Lord William Bentinck's Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829 banning the practice of sati was not overturned. In addition, Roy petitioned the King to increase the Mughal Emperor's allowance and perquisites. He was successful in persuading the British government to increase the stipend of the Mughal Emperor by £30,000. While in England, he embarked on cultural exchanges, meeting with members of parliament and publishing books on Indian economics and law. Sophia Dobson Collet was his biographer at that time.
Religious reforms
The religious reforms of Roy contained in some beliefs of the Brahmo Samaj expounded by Rajnarayan Basu are:
Brahmo Samaj believe that the most fundamental doctrines of Brahmoism are at the basis of every religion followed by a man. Brahmo Samaj believe in the existence of One Supreme God—"God, endowed with a distinct personality & moral attributes equal to His nature, and intelligence befitting the Author and Preserver of the Universe," and worship Him alone. Brahmo Samaj believe that worship of Him needs no fixed place or time. "We can adore Him at any time and at any place, provided that time and that place are calculated to compose and direct the mind towards Him." All men are children of the 'one God of all human beings', and therefore equal.
Having studied the Qur’an, the Vedas and the Upanishads, Roy's beliefs were derived from a combination of monastic elements of Hinduism, Islam, eighteenth-century Deism, Unitarianism, and the ideas of the Freemasons.
Social reforms Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Atmiya Sabha and the Unitarian Community to fight the social evils, and to propagate social and educational reforms in India. He was the man who fought against superstitions, a pioneer in Indian education, and a trend setter in Bengali prose and Indian press.
Crusaded against Hindu customs such as sati, polygamy, child marriage and the caste system.