Raja Rammohun Roy: An architect of Asian cosmopolitan modernity

Raja Rammohun Roy was a trailblazer in South Asian and, arguably, Asian culture, literature, journalism, and education. He is often described as the “Father of Modern India,” the “Prophet of Indian Nationalism,” a pioneer of the Bengal Renaissance, and a founder of Asian Anglophone literature. He also spearheaded Indian journalism, publishing newspapers in three languages: Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali, Mir’at’l-Akhbar in Persian, and Bengal Herald in English. His efforts to promote Western education and establish English-medium institutions in Calcutta laid the foundations of modern South Asian education, influencing generations. Moreover, Rammohun was a versatile linguist, proficient in nine languages: Arabic, Bengali, English, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Latin, Persian, and Sanskrit.

Rabindranath Tagore once said, “Languages are jealous sovereigns and passports are rarely allowed for travellers to cross their strictly guarded boundaries.” The fact that Rammohun could cross the borders of nine cultures and claim his “citizenship” in those diverse literary-linguistic domains bespeaks his imagination’s cosmopolitan reach and the freedom with which his mind could traverse continents, creeds, and cultures. Owing to the scope and depth of his intellectual engagement and influence, historian Stanley Wolpert has compared him with the leaders of the Florentine Renaissance, describing him as a “beacon of change, auguring the rebirth of pride and faith [in Indian identity].”

An avant-garde reformist, Rammohun sought to modernise India by introducing bold, unorthodox ideas to transform prevailing institutions and practices within Hinduism, the majoritarian religion to which he belonged. He wanted to replace Hindu idolatry and polytheism with Islamo-Christian monotheism and to abolish sati, the caste system, child marriage, polygamy, dowry, and repressive gender practices. His method for achieving this was to incorporate Enlightenment rationalism and Western liberal ideas, such as individualism, individual rights, freedom of thought and expression, and freedom of association across languages and faiths. He also sought to create an interfaith dialogue among Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism to purify the latter of its antiquated customs. For this, he was ostracised by his community, beginning with his parents forcing him to leave the family home in adolescence, and later, his mother, along with other family members, launching a legal challenge against him to disown him and deprive him of his inheritance. Despite such hostilities between the mother and son, Rammohun saw his mother, Tarini Debi, as a model of independent womanhood.

Rammohun was born in 1772 into a Kulin Brahmin family in Radhanagar, Bengal. The family was wealthy and influential, yet ultra-conservative. His great-grandfather, Krishnachandra Bandyopadhyay, served the Mughal treasury under the Nawab of Bengal during the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb. He was awarded the Mughal title “Raya Rayan” (King of Kings), and the family adopted the abbreviation “Roy” or “Rai” as its family name, replacing their caste name “Bandyopadhyay.” Rammohun’s other title, “Raja,” also came from a Mughal ruler. It was conferred on him by Delhi’s Mughal emperor, Akbar Shah II, when he was sent to England in 1829 as the emperor’s emissary to the court of King William IV. 

Rammohun was brought up in Bengali, Persian, and Sanskrit. Persian was the lingua franca of Bengal at the time. His father first appointed a munshi to teach him Persian at home. Around the age of nine, he was enrolled in an Islamic madrasa in Patna, Bihar, where he became so proficient in Arabic and Persian that he read the Qur’an and Sufi poetry in their original languages and was deeply influenced by Islam’s monotheistic ideology. In 1803, he published his first book, Tuhfat-ul Muwahhidin (A Defence of Monotheism), in Persian, with an Arabic preface, in which he launched a rationalist critique of Hinduism to modernise it, in light of Islamic ideals, advocating a universal religion based on reason and belief in one universal God. This sparked a torrent of tirades from the orthodox segments of his community, including his family and friends.

According to John Digby, an East India Company official who became his employer, close friend, and confidant in 1803, Rammohun began learning English in 1794, at the age of 22. He was slow at first, but picked up the language rapidly after being assigned to handle all of Digby’s public correspondence and through conversation with European colleagues and friends at the Company. Recalling Rabindranath’s statement about the challenges of acculturating to a foreign tongue, one cannot but admire Rammohun’s genius in how quickly he gained creative command of English, the instrument of empire, and harnessed it not only to contest imperial hegemony but also to crystallise and voice his reformist ideas. His publications in English began with Translation of an Abridgement of the Vedanta (1816) and A Defence of Hindoo Theism (1817), which made him only the second native Asian to produce literary work in English, after another Bengali, Sake Dean Mahomed, who published his inaugural title, Travels, in 1794, as an immigrant in Ireland.

This is an excerpt. Read the rest of the essay on The Daily Star and Star Books and Literature websites.

Professor Mohammad Quayum, an affiliate of Flinders University in South Australia, has published more than 40 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters on American, Bengali, and Asian Anglophone literature.