File

1772-1833

Dhruba Roy Period 3

Early Life

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 -Ram Mohan Roy was born of a distinguished Brahmin caste family that was Bengali and Hindu.  He was born in a British ruled Bengal (Southern Asia- Contains India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.)  -Little is known of early life and education.  -Travels outside of Bengal to become familiar with several languages like Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and English. He included this with his native Hindi from his Bengali background.

British East India Company

  1805- Roy was employed by John Digby, who had introduced Western culture and literature.  Digby was a lower company official in the British East India Company and had Roy as his assistant. Roy had supported himself in the company through moneylending, managing his small estates and speculating BEIC bonds.  For 10 years Roy had been an on and off worker in the British East India Company.

Social and Political Activism

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 Ram Mohan Roy was best known for his Social and Political Activism and largely influenced the Indian people and brought the British together as well.  1823- British impose censorship onto the Calcutta press, Roy being a founder and editor of two newspapers organized a protest for freedom of speech and religion. He said that these should be natural rights.  After this protest he looked more towards political actions and so he went writing newspapers, treatises and books.

 Roy criticized what he saw as the idolatry and superstition of traditional Hinduism and he even detested many customs that he felt were unnecessary such as the sati or suttee custom.  Sati- A custom of widow burning upon the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands which was outlawed in 1829.  Ram also addressed his concerns to the British about a new Sanskrit School in Calcutta, in the Letter to Lord Amherst, Roy said his country was grateful that they and they British were working together and that they are gifting the school, but, that the people expected to be taught by Britain’s educated scholars.  Roy felt that the classical Indian literature would not prepare the younger new generations of the Bengal people and he proposed, instead for a modern Western curriculum of study.  Roy led another protest against the outmoded British legal and revenue administration in India.

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Brahmo Samaj

  Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj or (Divine Society/Society of Brahma) in 1828  This society attracted Indians who sought to reconcile the values of the West with the religious traditions of India. This Society is what also supported the bans and changes in Hindu customs that Roy wanted.  They outlawed many of the abuses in India such as slavery and abuses to women, prohibitions against widows remarrying were revoked in 1856 and female infanticide was made a crime in 1870.

• Many Indian intellectuals turned to the Western secular values and nationalism as the way to reclaim India. • The western education spread just as Roy ad imagine played an important role as it was aided by European/American missionaries. • Roy had opened many colleges with these western education such as in 1816 the Hindu College in Calcutta, Bethune College in Calcutta, the first secular school for Indian women in 1849. • Three other universities were established in India 1857 and by 1870 there were over 24,000 elementary and secondary schools.

LEGACY

• Ram Mohan Roy had created the India he had dreamed for, as the graduates of these new Western educated schools created nationalism in India . • These Nationalisms came from the middle class and they had soon fought back against some obstacles that British rule had put in their place slowing down Bengal’s advancement. • These educated Bengal scholars created the first Indian National Congress in 1885, looking for better ways to improve employment and Indian government. • The INC (Indian National Congress) helped alleviate the poverty of the Indian masses by calling for reductions in military expenditures and they also promoted a unity among the country’s many religions and social ethnic groups.