How Rammohun Roy Has Been Demonised Through Misinformation to Create a False Narrative

Our previous can inform our decisions sooner or later. Indian historical past is wealthy and numerous however we’re used to studying it by way of colonial glasses. Previous Ahead will have a look at Indian historical past with a contemporary perspective.

A major variety of responses to my earlier article on this column acted as an eye-opener to me. The dominant theme of those reactions was that Rammohun Roy was a stooge of the British and the Christian missionaries. These allegations usually are not new: they had been sensationalised by some celebrities and influencers of the precise wing a few years in the past. What caught my consideration was the extent to which these foolish allegations have been assimilated by way of social media.

As an alternative of going into an in depth rebuttal of all of the allegations, for which this column just isn’t the place, I’ll show by way of a couple of situations how data has been cherry-picked and distorted to power match right into a narrative of perceived grievance. One other facet of this narrative that compounds the issue is a lack of know-how of the Bengal renaissance or an entire denial of it.

Roy is vilified for being an worker of the East India Firm (by extension for not eager to eliminate the British rule) for being an in depth collaborator of the Christian missionaries and even changing to the Unitarian church for ‘de-sanskritisation of training’, and for being a traitor who ‘diluted Hinduism’. It’s alleged Roy was a sycophantic ‘brown sahib’ who was in flip promoted by the evangelical and colonial authorities as a prized catch. His advocacy for abolition of the Sati is proven as a chief instance as a result of, it’s argued, the observe of Sati was nothing however a product of conspiratorial creativeness of the Christian missionaries.

Let me begin by clearing the misinformation that seeks to painting Roy as a life-long worker of the East India Firm. In reality, Roy labored for the Firm for a short while and intermittently in numerous capacities. These employments occurred between 1803 and 1814 when he moved to Calcutta. Thereafter, he was on his personal. Whereas a lot is made about Roy being given the title Raja, you will need to observe that the title (which was bestowed upon him by the Mughal emperor) was not acknowledged by the Firm.

A letter written by Roy in 1823 to the then Governor Normal Lord Amherst by which he argued in favour of a European training system is usually produced to help the allegation that he was chargeable for ‘de-sanskritisation’ of the Indian training system. The Normal Committee of Public Instruction, nonetheless, refused to behave upon his letter on the bottom that it expressed the views of 1 particular person “whose opinions are well-known to be hostile to these entertained by virtually all his countrymen”. The significance of Roy’s views, though appreciated by William Bentinck and Macaulay in 1935, was acknowledged formally almost 60 years later when the Education Fee appointed by Lord Ripon famous in its 1882 report that “It took twelve years of controversy, the advocacy of Macaulay, and the decisive motion of a brand new Governor Normal, earlier than the Committee may, as a physique, acquiesce within the coverage urged by him [Rammohun].”

What’s conveniently ignored is the truth that it was not Rammohun alone who advocated an English training system. Historian RC Majumdar famous in his Glimpses of Bengal within the Nineteenth Century that “Equally faulty is the overall perception that Rammohan Roy was the pioneer of English training and founding father of the Hindu School”. He noticed that lengthy earlier than Roy settled down in Calcutta “we discover a rising appreciation of the worth of English as a medium of tradition on the a part of the educated Bengalis, specifically the Hindus”. This preponderance of the view can also be evident from the assembly held on the residence of Hyde East, the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court docket of Calcutta in 1816, nearly a yr after Rammohun reached Calcutta. Greater than 50 “most respectable Hindu inhabitants of rank and wealth” together with numerous Pandits met at East’s home and raised almost half lakh rupees for organising a university that will impart training within the European system. These current within the assembly had been the conservative Hindus against Roy, who was not current in that assembly. It was this initiative that led to the formation of the famed Hindu School. Though these gents had been agreeable to accepting donation from East who was a Christian, they might not settle for a penny from their adversary Roy.

That, after all, doesn’t take away the substance of allegation in opposition to Roy’s advocacy for English training and induction of European science in addition to morality. Nearly all main intellectuals of the time, nonetheless, might be accused of the identical, together with the poster boys of the Proper Wing, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Swami Vivekananda. This spirit was a response to the sincere acknowledgement of the extraordinarily poor high quality of up to date Sanskrit and Arabic training system, which was drastically totally different from the rosy image of a thriving tradition of Vedic faith and science assumed by the social media movie star critics of Roy. For anybody to know, there are a whole lot of simply obtainable books and papers that show how this new system of training led to Bengal and ultimately India changing into the battleground for progressive concepts over the following hundred years.

Misinformation abounds in portray Roy as a crypto-Christian too. What the critics fail to know is the truth that Roy was a assured one that didn’t undergo from a persecution complicated. His goal was to rid conservative Hinduism of sure practices and propagate his personal understanding of the faith. Not like many others of his time, he didn’t really feel that Hinduism could be at risk for his actions. Quite the opposite, he sought an enchancment of the society by way of debates and arguments. On this, he was neither afraid to make enemies of the orthodox Hindu leaders of the society nor the Christian missionaries or the Islamic leaders. His criticism of the Trinitarian theology and reinterpretation of Christ by discarding the miracles and supernatural parts introduced the Christian missionaries on a warpath in opposition to him.

It’s conveniently ignored by these critics that it was Roy who, by way of his Bengali translation of the Hindu scriptures, introduced extra folks to learn about their spiritual traditions. One has to solely learn Roy’s treatise The Brahmunical Journal or The Missionary and the Brahmun Being a Vindication of the Hindoo Faith Towards the Assaults of Christian Missionaries, printed in 1821 to see by way of the canards unfold in opposition to him. The publication is a scathing condemnation of the Christian missionary efforts at changing Hindus in addition to Muslims to Christianity and a rigorous defence of the varied faculties of Hindu theology.

The final level that I need to contact upon is that of Roy’s function within the abolition of Sati, the place it’s argued by the social media critics that he performed into the fingers of the Christian missionaries by speaking in opposition to the observe. The preferred theorem now could be that the observe of Sati was vastly exaggerated by the Christian missionaries of their effort to current a poor image of India overseas. Though there’s some fact on this argument, my goal is to not debate the entire challenge of the historic customized of Sati in India, however solely to concentrate on the context by which the observe was abolished by the Authorities.

The actual fact stays that even when the numbers of situations of burning of widows might be contested on a number of grounds, no counter-argument difficult the federal government figures has been offered. It’s simply argued that the incidences had been statistically insignificant, primarily based on an estimate that solely 2.3 out of a thousand widows in Bengal took to the observe. Firstly, that is nothing however statistical jugglery which tries to paper over the truth that between 1815 and 1828, in keeping with official figures (totally different from missionary figures), 8,134 widows within the Bengal Presidency had been burnt with their lifeless husbands.

Secondly, though his function in constructing public opinion can’t be disputed, Roy once more wasn’t the one and even the primary Hindu to attraction the federal government to abolish the observe. The motion in opposition to Sati had began a lot earlier than he appeared on the scene, and the federal government had already began enacting stringent guidelines to control the observe. Arguments just like Roy had been forwarded by Mrityunjoy Vidyalankar, a Pandit of the Supreme Court docket, a yr earlier than Roy did so.

Thirdly, if the customized of Sati was not prevalent, what can then clarify the help of the orthodox Hindu leaders in direction of it? After the regulation abolishing Sati was promulgated, two petitions signed by 1,146 members of the orthodox Hindu society had been submitted to the Governor Normal in protest. The protest argued in favour of non-interference in Hindu customs by a overseas authorities but additionally tried to show the scriptural sanction for the customized. If the concern of the conservative leaders was that permitting the federal government to tinker with Hindu customs would open the floodgate of additional interference, they wouldn’t have argued in regards to the scriptural help offered to the observe. When Bentinck refused to rescind the regulation and the attraction was despatched to the Privy Council in England, the place Roy ensured its defeat.

As RC Majumdar has noticed in his lectures on Rammohun Roy printed by the Asiatic Society, “The plain fact is that he was constitutionally averse to any change within the prevalent social practices of the Hindus, although he didn’t like and typically even deplored a few of them”. As an example, though he condemned the caste system, he didn’t begin a motion in opposition to it.

The efforts to vilify Rammohun Roy solely reveals how straightforward it’s for uninformed individuals to use widespread sentiments to create a false narrative. It demonstrates that even on this age of simply accessible data how we really feel extra snug to carry on to our biases fairly than problem them with utilising the wealth of knowledge. A lot of Roy’s concepts had been bizarre and impractical, however that doesn’t and shouldn’t take away even a bit from his monumental contribution to the mental regeneration of the Bengali and the Indian society.

Chandrachur Ghose is creator of Bose: The Untold Story of an Inconvenient Nationalist, printed by Penguin. The views expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t symbolize the stand of this publication.

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