Our past can inform our choices in the future. Indian history is rich and diverse but we are used to reading it through colonial glasses. Past Forward will look at Indian history with a fresh perspective.
An 83-year-old aristocrat stepped out of a horse carriage that had stopped in front of the Adelphi hotel in London. He had learned about the arrival of a person in London that evening and rushed to meet him. That evening in April 1831, the visitor had made a special effort to make this journey as he had stopped going out of his house other than for taking a walk in his garden. It was however, quite late in the night and the man he wanted to meet had retired for the day. A little disappointed, he left a note at the reception that read, “Jeremy Bentham to his friend Rammohun Roy.”
The visitor was the great philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism, whose central philosophical principle that ‘it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong’ still guides the world of politics.
So besotted was Bentham with Roy that he addressed the latter as “intensely admired and dearly beloved collaborator in the service of mankind!”
HIS FAME
Bentham’s first acquaintance with Roy was through one of his books of which he wrote, “But for the name of a Hindoo, I should have ascribed to the pen of a superiorly well-educated and instructed Englishman.” Practically counting his last days, Bentham was extremely keen to meet Roy.
In fact, from the moment that he put his feet in England, Roy was a much sought-after personality. As soon as he landed in Liverpool in early April 1831, he was approached by the two sons of William Roscoe, the English banker, lawyer, former Member of Parliament, historian and art collector, who was on his death bed.
Although Roscoe had stopped receiving guests, he was keen to meet Roy. “I bless God that I have been permitted to live to see this day,” Roscoe murmured on meeting his Eastern visitor. He also wrote a letter of introduction to a Minister of the Crown so that Roy could attend the debate on the Reform Bill in the House of Commons.
When Roy stopped at Manchester on his way to London, the welcome he received from the workers in the factories there was also unexpected. Men, women and children rushed to meet the ‘King of Ingee’ and shake hands with him. He had to be provided police escort to help make his way to the factories and factory gates had to be closed to keep the crowd out.
James Sutherland, later the principal of the Hooghly College, who accompanied Roy to his European tour, recollected the scenes after their arrival in London.
As soon as it was known in London that the great Brahman Philosopher had arrived, the most distinguished men in the country crowded to pay their respects to him; and he had scarcely got into his lodgings in Regent Street, when his door was besieged with carriages from eleven in the morning till four in the afternoon; until this constant state of excitement (for he caught the tone of the day and vehemently discussed politics with every one) actually made him ill…when his physicians gave positive orders to his footman not to admit visitors.
It helped to have powerful friends in London who had in one way or another connected with India. Roy was received well by the royal family too. He was introduced to the House of Lords by Duke of Cumberland, the King’s brother, and he spent a day with the Duke of Sussex. He was also received by the king William IV at the St James’s Palace. The Court Circular recorded that the ‘Rajah wore the costume of a Brahman, viz., the turban and kabah. The latter was composed of purple velvet, embroidered in gold.’
Roy was not only invited to the coronation of William IV, but was seated amongst the ambassadors of the European kingdoms. He was also the only Indian to have been specially invited by the king to the banquet given in celebration of the opening of the new London Bridge. The Directors of the East India Company, too, hosted a huge dinner in his honour at the City of London Tavern, presided over by the chairman of the company.
Roy’s fame had spread not only in England but in the US and in France too. In fact, Roy was extremely keen to visit France. However, his reaction to the fact that as a foreigner he would require a passport from the French ambassador in London provides some insight into the working of his mind. He wrote to the French authorities that “such restrictions against foreigners are not observed even among the nations of Asia”, and therefore he was “at a loss to conceive how it should exist among a people so famed as the French are for courtesy and liberality in all other matters”. Quite ahead of his time, Roy also wrote to the Foreign Minister of France, arguing for the need of a ‘Congress’ for amicable settlement of political and commercial disputes between ‘civilised countries with constitutional governments.’ Roy’s desire to visit Paris was finally fulfilled.
QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE, DOING WHAT IS RIGHT
His hectic political and social activities soon broke his health down, leading to his sudden demise in Bristol on September 27, 1833, at the age of 61. The man of action that he was, Roy had succeeded in achieving most of the objectives of his visit in the two-and-a-half years that he spent in England.
Raja Rammohun Roy is justly venerated as a social reformer, for being a man who with his great intellect and intense passion cleared the way for India’s progress. However, I do not intend to discuss his views on religion and politics, which apart from being enlightening also contained elements that appear bizarre and undesirable in retrospect. Instead, I would like to highlight an often-neglected aspect of the man, a trait that often gets lost in the debate over his ideas.
If the opening passages of this column present a picture of a very successful man enjoying public adulation in foreign land, it is only a very limited picture. It was the result of untiring efforts of a man enormously determined in the face of equally enormous opposition from society in which he lived and worked, to achieve what he felt was good not only for his own people, but also for the larger humanity. The two strands of his personality that remain as unbroken continuity in his entire life story are that of an insatiable thirst for knowledge in his quest for the ultimate truth and his stubbornness to do what he thought was right, without ever being afraid to offend others and its consequences. Moreover, although he wouldn’t allow his detractors affect his life’s journey, he would devote a whole lot of time and effort to engage in debate with them through his newspapers and books. His debates in these writings stand out for being civilised and well-argued, in contrast to the lampooning and abuses by his opponents.
UNDERSTANDING RELIGIONS
A summary of his life and activities, instead of getting lost their minute details, in fact provide a more accurate picture of the man that he was. Born in an affluent family with religious parents (his mother spending the last year of her life as a servant in the Jagannath temple in Puri, and the dying words of his father being ‘Ram’), Roy received his early education in the village school with additional home tuition in Persian under the guidance of a Moulavi. At a very young age, he was sent off to Patna to learn the two languages of the court at that time – Persian and Arabic. The Koran, which he studied in original Arabic, and the writings of the Sufis turned him against idol worship. This becoming a sore point between him and his father, Roy was thrown out of his house in his late teens, following which he travelled largely on food to Tibet to study Buddhism. An altercation with the Lamas made him escape from Tibet with his life under threat. On his return after spending three or four years in Tibet, Roy settled down in Varanasi for some years to learn Sanskrit and study the Hindu scriptures.
As he moved to Murshidabad thereafter, he wrote two books on his religious ideas in Persian. Soon, he was employed by the East India Company and served at various places in different capacities. It was at this time that he started working under John Digby, a revenue officer and moved to Rangpur with him. His quest for knowledge continued through further study and interaction with the learned men of different religions. Apart from taking up the study of Jainism and Tantric works, Roy now began learning English through his own efforts. When Digby left for England in 1814, Roy moved to Calcutta where in the true sense his public life began.
In Calcutta, he started translating the Upanishads in easy to understand Bengali and in English, set up the Atmiya Sabha for discussions on theology, and took up the campaign for abolition of Sati and polygamy and empowerment of women. While a number of rich and influential men such as Dwarakanath Tagore gathered around him, his views advocating monotheism, deriding prophets and criticising many aspects of orthodox Hinduism also attracted organised opposition from men such as Radhakanta Deb. Soon, Roy veered to Christianity by writing an appreciating treatise on the moral and spiritual precepts of Jesus, but removing the narratives of miracles. This annoyed both the orthodox Christian missionaries and the Hindu leaders, drawing scathing criticism from both. The missionaries went on a war path as a Baptist missionary from England converted to Unitarianism under the influence of Roy. For Rammohun, the ultimate truth lay in the pure monotheism contained in the Koran, Christian theology and in the Vedas. A raging debate ensued, in which he ended up offending several influential men in all the religious communities, and not in least, the government of the day. In 1928, Roy set up the Brahmo Samaj for the non-sectarian worship of the One True God. The orthodox Hindu leaders set up a rival organisation called Dharma Sabha to counter his views and influence.
HINDU COLLEGE, SANSKRIT SYSTEM
So antagonistic were his Hindu orthodox opponents that when they learned about Rammohun’s involvement in the setting up of the Hindu College for instruction of the youth in the science and literature of Europe, that despite their own interest, they were ready to stay away from the initiative. Roy withdrew himself instead so that the cause of modern education, so dear to him, didn’t suffer. He set up his own English school in another part of the city. Although he was on one hand making the wisdom of the ancient scriptures accessible to the common people through his Bengali translations, Roy opposed the government’s efforts to set up a new Sanskrit college, arguing that a Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness…But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences.
At the same time, while he wrote a new grammar book for the Bengali language, his Bengali prose was reforming the language too. According to the linguist and historian of Bengali literature Sukumar Sen, Roy elevated Bengali to a new class.
Opposition to Roy came not only from the ones mentioned above, but from the East India Company too. When the Mughal emperor Akbar Shah appointed Roy as his official agent to argue his case in London for increasing the grant that he received from the Company, the Company officials refused to acknowledge the appointment. They also denied the bestowing the title of Raja on Roy by the emperor. As a result, Roy had to travel as a private individual to argue for the emperor. In England, when he ran into financial difficulties and asked for a loan from the Company, their officials refused to grant that loan too. However, Roy succeeded in having the grant to the ruler of Delhi increased. Another objective of Roy’s visit in which he succeeded was in ensuring that the abolition of Sati wasn’t overturned in England.
Thus, the overall personality of Roy was that of a true liberal in the quest of truth, driven solely by rational arguments and without being bound by any sort of restriction, and a fearless campaigner for the betterment of humanity. These are traits that are worth remembering and emulating in the current times, especially due to their rarity.
Chandrachur Ghose is author of Bose: The Untold Story of an Inconvenient Nationalist, published by Penguin. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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