Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s contribution in Anglo-Indian Literature

Raja Ram Mohan Roy: contribution in Anglo-Indian Literature

Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s contribution in Anglo-Indian Literature

Answer: Raja Ram Mohan Roy is the trailblazing figure in ushering in the Renaissance in the 19th century British India. His promethean might in the dawn of Indian Renaissance is rightly worded as ‘the inaugurator of the modern age in India’ and as ‘the morning star of the Indian Renaissance’ by Rabindranath Tagore and M.K. Naik respectively.

Born in a village (Radhanagar) in Bengal on 22 May 1772, Ram Mohan Roy Ram Mohan Roy mastered, while still young, many languages like Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani besides Bengali.

After journeying within and outside India and some business ventures at Calcutta, he served in the districts under two British officials- Woodford and Digby – and the association was more than merely official. Leaving company service at last, Ram Mohan Roy returned to Calcutta in 1814, started the Atmiya Sabha and so launched him on the consciousness of Calcutta society.

The next few years were a period of hectic activity, tireless endeavour, and often acrimonious controversy with Christians and Hindus like. The plight of the widows, the darkness of superstitions, the chaos of ignorance, the general backwardness of the country, all steered him to action.

Ram Mohan Roy's interest and inquiries ranged from the right of women and the freedom of the press of English education, the revenue and judicial system in India, religious toleration and the plight of the Indian peasantry. He wanted India to become a new modern country and the Indians to become a virile new people – of course not by closing the Indian culture from the past, but by achieving a new integration of our traditional energy with the new scientific knowledge of the West.

He was a master of controversy, though never for its own sake, and he met ably both his Indian and foreign critics. He begged, pleaded, argued or exhorted as occasion demanded; fearlessness and an eye for actuality were the sources of his strength and the main goal of his dedicated efforts was the complete rebirth of India, which included economic progress, political education, cultural renaissance and spiritual awakening. In fact, he even thinks of the possible emergence of a League of Nations and the arbitration process for the settlement of national disputes.

Ram Mohan Roy, though he may be named as the first Indian master of English prose, was great in so many respects that he was more than just a history of Indo-Anglican literature. His mission in England during the last two years (1831 to 33) of his life argued well for India and he seems to have made a notable impression on the leaders of opinion in England.

He even wrote a brief autobiographical sketch on request and concluded by saying disarmingly: “I hope you will excuse the brevity of this sketch, as I have no leisure at present to enter into particulars”. He, thus, started the tradition of Indian leaders writing autobiographies and modern auto-biographers like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru etc. followed the path that he paved for the Indians in British-India.

Remarkably, of his English works as many as thirty two essays are original on various subjects. The earliest of his writing on religion were in the form of translation, “An Abridgment of the Vedant" and renderings of the “Kena and Isa Upanishads”. Also, “A Defence of Hindu Theism" and “Precepts of Jesus” are two remarkable humanistic writings that Ram Mohan Roy had ever written on religious doctrines.

In conclusion, an Indian scholar, Mr P.R. Krishnaswami, put forward the interesting hypothesis that Ram Mohan Lal in Thackeray’s The Newcomer was really a malicious caricature based on a study of Ram Mohan Roy’s sojourn in England, and even advanced the opinion that his was the result of family prejudice. Be that as it may, it is a further indication of the great space in Indian literature that Ram Mohan Roy mastered the English language, and wrote and spoke forceful English years before Macaulay wrote his Minute, like the first Indo-Anglican writers of verse and prose- the Cavalry Brothers, Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghosh, Hassan Ali etc.

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