Raja Ram Mohan Roy (Bengali pronunciation: [ram moɦɔn rae̯]; 22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was an Indian social reformer and writer who was one of the founders of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the precursor of the Brahmo Samaj, a socio-religious reform movement in the Indian subcontinent. He has been dubbed the "Father of the Indian Renaissance." He was given the title of Raja by Mughal emperor Akbar II (r. 1806–1837).
His influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration, education, and religion. He was known for his efforts to abolish the practices of sati and child marriage. Roy wrote Gaudiya Vyakaran, which was the first complete Bangla grammar written book.
Ram Mohan Roy was born in Radhanagar, Hooghly District, Bengal Presidency. His great-grandfather Krishnakanta Bandyopadhyay was a Rarhi Kulin (noble) Brahmin. Among Kulin Brahmins – descendants of the five families of Brahmins, migrated from Kannauj by Ballal Sen in the 12th century as per popular myth – those from the Rarhi district of West Bengal were notorious in the 19th century for living off dowries by marrying several women. Kulinism was a synonym for polygamy and the dowry system, both of which Ram Mohan campaigned against. His father, Ramkanta, was a Vaishnavite, while his mother, Tarini Devi, was from a Shaivite family. He was a great scholar of Sanskrit, Persian and English languages and also knew Arabic, Latin and Greek. One parent prepared him for the occupation of a scholar, the Shastri, while the other secured for him all the worldly advantages needed to launch a career in the laukik or worldly sphere of public administration. Torn between these two parental ideals from early childhood, Ram Mohan vacillated between the two for the rest of his life.
During his childhood Ram Mohan Roy witnessed the death of his sister-in-law through sati. The seventeen-year-old girl was dragged towards the pyre where Ram Mohan Roy witnessed her terrified state. He tried to protest but to no avail. She was burned alive. The people chanted "Maha Sati! Maha Sati! Maha Sati!" (great wife) over her painful screams.
Ram Mohan Roy was married three times. His first wife died early. He had two sons, Radhaprasad in 1800, and Ramaprasad in 1812 with his second wife, who died in 1824. Roy's third wife outlived him.
The nature and content of Ram Mohan Roy's early education is disputed. One view is that Ram Mohan started his formal education in the village pathshala where he learned Bengali and some Sanskrit and Persian. Later he is said to have studied Persian and Arabic in a madrasa in Patna and after that he was sent to Benares to learn the intricacies of Sanskrit and Hindu scripture, including the Vedas and Upanishads. The dates of his time in both these places are uncertain. However, it is believed that he was sent to Patna when he was nine years old and two years later he went to Benares.
Ram Mohan Roy's impact on modern Indian history was his revival of the pure and ethical principles of the Vedanta school of philosophy as found in the Upanishads. He preached the unity of God, made early translations of Vedic scriptures into English, co-founded the Calcutta Unitarian Society and founded the Brahmo Sabha, precursor to Brahmo Samaj. The Brahmo Samaj played a major role in reforming and modernising the Indian society. He successfully campaigned against sati, the practice of burning widows on their husband's funeral pyre. He sought to integrate Western culture with the best features of his own country's traditions. He established a number of schools to popularise a modern system of education in India. He promoted a rational, ethical, non-authoritarian, this-worldly views and social reforms in Hinduism. His writings also sparked interest among British and American Unitarians.
Christianity and the early rule of the East India Company (1795–1828)
In 1797, Raja Ram Mohan reached Calcutta and became a bania (moneylender), mainly to lend to the Englishmen of the Company living beyond their means. Ram Mohan also continued his vocation as pandit in the English courts and started to make a living for himself. He began learning Greek and Latin.
In 1799, Carey was joined by missionary Joshua Marshman and the printer William Ward at the Danish settlement of Serampore.
From 1803 until 1815, Ram Mohan served the East India Company's "Writing Service", commencing as private clerk (Munshi) to Thomas Woodroffe, Registrar of the Appellate Court at Murshidabad (whose distant nephew, John Woodroffe—also a magistrate—and later lived off the Maha Nirvana Tantra under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon). Roy resigned from Woodroffe's service and later secured employment with John Digby, a Company collector, and Ram Mohan spent many years at Rangpur and elsewhere with Digby, where he renewed his contacts with Hariharananda. William Carey had by this time settled at Serampore and the old trio renewed their profitable association. William Carey was also aligned now with the English Company, then head-quartered at Fort William, and his religious and political ambitions were increasingly intertwined.
While in Murshidabad, in 1804 Roy wrote Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A Gift to Monotheists) in Persian with an introduction in Arabic. Bengali had not yet become the language of intellectual discourse. The importance of Tuhfat-ul-muwahhidin lies only in its being the first known theological statement of one who achieved later fame and notoriety as a Vedantin. His biographer Bruce Carlisle Robinson finds this work unremarkable, perhaps of interest only to a social historian because of its amateurish eclecticism. Roy did not know the Upanishads at this stage in his intellectual development. Tuhfat became available in 1884 in the English translation of Maulavi Obaidullah EI Obaid, published by the Adi Brahmo Samaj.
In 1814, he started Atmiya Sabha (i.e. Society of Friends) a philosophical discussion circle in Kolkata (then Calcutta) to propagate the monotheistic ideals of the vedanta and to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals and other social ills.
The East India Company was draining money from India at a rate of three million pounds a year by 1838. Ram Mohan Roy was one of the first to try to estimate how much money was being taken out of India and to where it was disappearing. He estimated that around one-half of all total revenue collected in India was sent out to England, leaving India, with a considerably larger population, to use the remaining money to maintain social well-being. Ram Mohan Roy saw this and believed that the unrestricted settlement of Europeans in India governing under free trade would help ease the economic drain crisis.
During the next two decades, Ram Mohan along with William Carey, launched his attack against the bastions of Hinduism of Bengal, namely his own Kulin Brahmin priestly clan (then in control of the many temples of Bengal) and their priestly excesses. The Kulin excesses targeted include sati (the co-cremation of widows), polygamy, child marriage and dowry.
From 1819, Ram Mohan's battery increasingly turned against William Carey, a Baptist Missionary settled in Serampore, and the Serampore missionaries. With Dwarkanath's munificence, he launched a series of attacks against Trinitarian Christianity and was now considerably assisted in his theological debates by the Unitarian faction of Christianity.
He wrote Gaudiya Vyakaran which was the first complete Bangla grammar written book. It was published in 1826.
In 1828, he launched Brahmo Sabha with Debendranath Tagore. By 1828, he had become a well known figure in India. In 1830, he had gone to England as an envoy of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, who invested him with the title of Raja to the court of King William IV.