By Jawhar Sircar
Campaign for Modern Education
What marks out Rammohun Roy as the pioneering leader of modern India is his historic success in getting the inhuman practice of sati or burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands banned, and that too, quite effectively. But equally important were his other missions on which we will focus in this article—which strives to highlight the very impressive range of socially relevant subjects that he campaigned for. To begin with, he was among the earliest intellectuals to campaign ceaselessly for conveying advances in Western knowledge to Indian students. In this task, he contested most severely the East India Company’s policy of cultivating and strengthening outdated knowledge systems contained in the classical languages of India. Rammohun wanted to bring in ‘light’ through education in the English language, for the sake of its brilliance—not like Macaulay, who wanted it for the mass production of clerks and loyalists for the colonial-imperial machinery.
When influential Indians, primarily from the rich upper castes of Bengali society, got together with David Hare to set up the Hindoo College (later renamed as Presidency College) to impart English education to Indian students, Rammohun was naturally a part of this initiative. But by then, his unwavering rationalism had antagonised the class of rich orthodox Hindus so much that they had open misgivings about him joining the effort. He had, therefore, no option but to quit this first major enterprise to introduce English education. This episode is reported in detail by Hyde East, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. East presided over the meeting on 4th May 1816 when the proposal to set up the College was finalised with more than fifty Hindu gentlemen of substance, confirming this decision by their donations.2
Rammohun continued, however, to be on the side lines of this initiative, though he is often mentioned in connection with this College. In fact, within a few years, we come across an ironic situation when the most radical group of Hindu students of this College, who were inspired by a maverick teacher, Henry Vivian Derozio, accused Rammohun of not being radical enough to purge their ancient religion of its undesirable elements.
Rammohun continued in his mission to spread Western education, and in 1822, he gave a big grant to start an English high school of the Unitarian Association, that was led by the noted educationist David Hare and Reverend Adam. To prove that he was not intrinsically against traditional education, he also set up a Vedanta College in 1826. In 1830, he encouraged Reverend Alexander Duff to set up his General Assembly institution that was later to metamorphose into the Scottish Church College of Kolkata. Roy utilised his weekly newspaper, Sambad Kaumudi, to air his views on education, and he made repeated pleas to the government to expand English education, free of cost. It is interesting to note that he began a series of articles on popular science in this paper that covered topics like the echo, magnets and their properties, balloons, and the behaviour of fishes. We see yet another ‘first’ from Rammohun, because he was definitely the first Indian to popularise science education in India.
Though he was a Sanskrit scholar of repute, he was genuinely alarmed and he protested most stridently when the government allocated precious funds for setting up the Sanskrit College of Kolkata. He was convinced that it was a retrograde step and, on 11 December 1823, he addressed a letter to Governor General Amherst in which he stated, in unambiguous terms, his deep disappointment that the colonial government had decided to give priority to Sanskrit over English. He was clear that any further extension of education in Sanskrit could only be expected to load the minds of the youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical distinctions of little or no practical use to society and that Sanskrit education would be best calculated to keep this country in darkness. But as the improvement of the native population was avowedly the object of the government, it should promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry and anatomy with other useful sciences.3 This letter was ignored by Amherst and the Committee on Public Education, but it remains an excellent document on the then state of education and the requirements of that age.
Indian Writing in English
Rammohun is noted for being the first Indian to write directly in English to the Governor General of India, Lord Minto, in 1809, and in doing so, he also introduced a new literary genre ‘Indian Writing in English’. For our record, however, we must note that he was not the first Indian writer in the English language, as one Sake (Shaikh) Dean Mohamed had published his travel accounts in 1793, making him the first Indian to publish an English book. But Rammohun’s writing in the English language was much more serious in content than Dean Mohammad’s, and he continued to write several tracts and treatises till his death, a quarter of a century later. Roy’s letter of 1809 was a rather bold complaint against an English official, and he wanted Minto to uphold British justice and the rule of law. As B.S. Cohn has interpreted it, ‘in writing to the Governor General in the language, style, and manner he did, Rammohun was announcing to the British ruling class in India that he possessed command of the very language that was their language of command’.4 This ‘native’ had not set foot on English soil till then—yet he had mastered the language of command and now had the key to the treasure of knowledge acquired by the West, in both humanities and sciences.
Rammohun wrote more significant pieces in English from 1816, when he published a short translation of the Hindu sacred text, the Vedanta, and followed it up with two Sanskrit Upanishads in English. He kept writing in English quite regularly, producing two to three tracts every year, and continued to translate his Bengali pieces into English on many occasions. The year 1823 was a particularly busy one for him as it saw as many as nine English works from his pen. His writings in English cover several critical issues, from the spread of English education and its dire necessity to the rights of women under Hindu law. He published his scathing criticism of the practice of sati in English as well; and he protested most strongly against the Press Regulations. His English shuttled between the logical and the ornate and complex—as was common during the Enlightenment and for decades thereafter. It is strange that Indian writing in the English language became synonymous with fiction literature, which may be a reason that we often fail to include Rammohun among the great Indian writers. He is more remarkable, nevertheless, for his passionate espousal of progressive causes written in eminently readable English and for his clear articulation of his arguments. That is exactly what he needed as a social reformer and that is what made rulers in India and in England take note of what he said.
After all, he was the first Indian who was able to communicate with such supreme confidence and, what is less noted is that he did so from an assumed and uncontested level of equality. Rammohun had to take considerable pains to reach this level and not only learn the English language and customs but also be adept in the use of phrases and idioms. He took to learning English seriously rather late, but once he was determined, he became quite proficient in the language. His usually reliable biographer, Sophia Dobson Collet, believes that he started learning it in 1795, when he was just twenty-one years old, but his employer in the East India Company, John Digby, felt that was not good enough. Digby says that when he ‘became acquainted with him (in 1801), he could speak it well enough to be understood upon most topics, but could not write it with any degree of correctness’.5 According to him, it was only when Roy entered his employment (1805) and started taking charge of his official correspondence and conversing regularly with European men that he began to master the language. His classic letter of complaint to Governor General Minto in 1909 is a landmark, as this is the first proper non-commercial correspondence that we come across in the English language from an Indian’s pen in India—that was perfect in syntax, grammar, logic and style.
References:
2 Saumayendranath Tagore, Raja Rammohun Roy, New Delhi, 1966, p. 29.
3 Ibid., p. 27.
4 Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and the Forms of Knowledge, Priceton, NJ, 1996, pp. 16–56
5 Digby’s Preface to Ram Mohun’s English Works, quoted in D.K. Biswas, ed., The Correspondence of Raj Rammohun Roy, Vol. I, 1809–1831, Calcutta, 1992, pp. 21–23.