Roy, Rammohan
(1772–1833), Indian religious and social reformer. Rammohan Roy was among the foremost religious and social reformers of modern India. Born in an orthodox Hindu family of Calcutta, Roy's education and early travels exposed him to a wide variety of cultural and religious experiences. Between 1786 and 1803, Roy received intensive training in Arabic and Persian from scholars based in the north Indian city of Patna, traveled with a group of Tibetan monks, learned English, and studied Hindu philosophy in Varanasi (Benares). That exposure to the world, his love for books, and his reflections on Hinduism led him as a young man to question the orthodoxy in his own background. It seemed to him that the spirit of the Vedas and the Upanishads—freedom of thought and respect for human dignity—was lost in the mire of rituals that later typified Hinduism. This was to be a central tenet in his beliefs and one that he earnestly wrote on in later life. Religious decadence and social repression thus became connected in his ideas.
While briefly in service of the East India Company (1809–1814), he studied European history and culture and was deeply influenced by the pursuit of freedom and equality in postrevolutionary Europe. After 1814, he devoted himself to popularizing his ideas and putting them in practice, often attracting fierce resistance from influential contemporaries, such as Radhakanta Deb, a powerful landlord and leader of a group of orthodox Hindus. Among his best-remembered contributions are his critical support for laws prohibiting the burning of widows (1829); advocacy of liberal ideals of education; foundation of the Brahma Samaj (1828), a religious order based on Vedic faith; support for Indian participation in the colonial bureaucracy; and popularization of the written version of his own language, Bengali. Roy died during a trip to England and Wales to plead a case of the Mughal emperor. Bristol, where he died, has a memorial and a statue of Roy.
Further Reading
Robertson, Bruce C. (1995) Raja Rammohan Ray: The Father of Modern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
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