By Jawhar Sircar
The First Modern Indian
Rammohun Roy was the first Indian to make the best use of whatever Western education, philosophy and scholasticism was available to Indians in the opening decades of the nineteenth century with the purpose of applying these imbibed skills and knowledge to articulate the concerns of Indians before the dominant colonial power. A handful of enterprising Indians had, indeed, learnt to gain from European knowledge systems that were made available by missionaries and educators, but they did not demonstrate either the skills or the courage required to articulate and agitate over the issues concerning Indian society so effectively before the British establishment. Roy was the first Indian ‘public intellectual’ who not only excelled in placing critical issues before the English authorities in their own language, with conviction and confidence, but also sought to arouse the concern of his fellow Indians, which sometimes put him at much risk. As we shall see, he held his readers’ attention because he presented well-researched content on several issues with his proven command over the English language. Equally striking was the fact that the English took cognisance of him—even when they disagreed—which implicitly conferred on him a certain degree of ‘relative equality’ of status that colonialists were usually loath to accord to their darker subjects.
To understand the regard with which he was viewed by the British even in London, quite early in his life, let us turn to a notice in the Missionary Register (London) that appeared as early as 1816, when Rammohun had just about begun his lifelong mission to reform the Hindu religion and to secure an honourable place for Indians in the colonial scheme of things. It describes him to a poorly informed British public as ‘a Brahmin…of great consideration and influence, shrewd, vigilant, active, ambitious, pre-possessing in his manners, versed in various languages’. It then goes on to relish his battles against ‘Hindu Idolatry and Superstition…the folly of the vulgar belief of his country, and a subtle but unsuccessful attempt to put a good meaning on the absurd statements of its more ancient and refined creed’.1 We are yet to come across any record of an Indian thinker and public activist who received such high regard in Britain, so soon after the British had secured their paramount position in India.
This is among his several firsts, for we come across many other mentions in the international press and journals of this extraordinary social reformer of India. For example, in the summer of 1818, the American Review speaks of ‘the learned and philosophic Rammohun Roy’ of distant Kolkata, whose mission against idolatry had earned him great respect. He is described as ‘a virtuous and unsophisticated individual who had advocated the cause of truth, amidst obstacles from which any ordinary mind would have shrunk’ (Calcutta Journal, October 1818). He was certainly the first modern social reformer to be awarded such esteem in the West—that habitually looked down upon India and Indians. The next such Indian to earn such handsome praise came full 75 years later—we refer to Swami Vivekananda and his iconic Chicago Address of 1893.
A Rationalist Fights Obscurantism
But it is not just for this extraordinary gift of communication that we remember Roy—we are indebted to him for his unwavering faith in rationalism that he expressed through his writings and campaigns. Rammohun had complete mastery over Sanskrit and Bengali and had skill enough to converse and write well in Persian, Arabic, and English. More important for us is the fact that his dexterity as a polyglot and as a polymath conferred on him a rare adroitness to navigate between different cultures and ideas. He is, indeed, a true maker of a composite India for he drew the finest from each of the civilisations that these languages represented. India benefitted immensely from the masterly cross-cultural exchanges that Rammohun engaged in. As a rationalist, he was uncompromising in his war against superstition. Roy was deeply secular and he constantly reinforced India’s age-old tradition of plurality. He spoke out against idolatry and superstition that had gripped Hinduism and he lashed out against the subjugation of women. As we shall see later, Rammohun was, in fact, the first Indian in modern India to make such a passionate plea for women’s education and rights. He is surely the father figure of the Indian Renaissance. He suffered for his beliefs, not only at the hands of his Hindu brethren but also from his best friends and one-time supporters among the Christian missionaries. Both these groups castigated him publicly. Even as they contested his interpretation of their own texts and arguments, they could hardly ever deny his grasp over both the essential texts and the scriptures of the religions involved in the debate.
And this is a lesson that we tend to ignore in today’s India where the dangers posed by religious obscurantism are as great as they were 200 years ago—in terms of the viciousness of attacks and the trail of death and destruction that follows. We will lose ground to communalism if we fail to grasp either the essentials of religion or the unshakeable hold that it has on our people. It is time to take inspiration from India’s greatest crusader against the perversion of religion and to contest what is done in the name of religion, with facts gleaned from the same religions. The major difference that marks the early decades of this century from those of the nineteenth is that present-day fundamentalism is built more on stoked passions than on scriptures. Two centuries ago, the orthodox lobby was led by scholars and not by the unlettered, as, so unfortunately, is the case at present.
References:
1 Quoted in J.K. Majumdar, Raja Rammohun Roy and the Progressive Movements in India, Calcutta, 1941/1983, p. 4.
First published in Studies in People’s History, 7, 1 (2020): 53–64 (Copyright: Author)