Raja Rammohan Roy - Swami Tathagatananda

Part I

"The little stir,’ to quote Swami Vivekananda, ‘the little life that you see in India begins from the day Raja Rammohan Roy broke through the walls of exclusiveness. Since that day history in India has taken another turn, and now it is growing with accelerated motion.’ In 1898, Swamiji in the course of his conversations at Nainital spoke especially of the illustrious Raja Rammohan Roy, of his breadth of vision and farsightedness. The Swami eloquently empha-sized the three dominant notes of this great forerunner’s message—his acceptance of Vedanta, preaching of patriotism, and the love that embraced the Muslims equally with the Hindus. Rammohan stands in history ‘as the living bridge over which India marches from an unmeasured past to her incalculable future…….. He was, if not the prophetic type, at least the pre-cursive hint, of the change that is to come.’ Rammohan inaugu-rated the ‘Modern Age’ in India, His was a large heart, a vast mind, a vaster vision. The darkness he saw all around—in social usages, in politics, in the realm of religion, education and art—stirred him to those noble endeavors for the social, spiritual and cultural regeneration of his countrymen, from which originated all other progressive movements in India. ‘In Europe’, says Sir Jadunath Sarkar, the great historian, ‘the Renaissance and the Reformation were two distinct movements. But in India they were united in the person of Rammohan. All modern Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Brahmos, and Christians, irrespective of their special creeds, are the heirs to the rich legacy of spiritual life and intellectual culture left behind by Rammohan Roy.’ Indian intellectuals were confused between superstition and science, between despotism and democracy, between immobile custom and a conservative progress, between a bewildering polytheism and a ‘vague’ theism. The Raja drank eagerly from the fountainhead of modern freedom and was inspired by the spirit of the ‘Age of Illumination.’ These studies only confirmed him in his rejection of miracle, dogma, and ritual, to which rejection he had already been led by his own reflections on the Vedanta.

In 1825, he had established a ‘Vedanta College’, for the teaching of the monotheistic doctrines of the Vedanta. He saw in the Vedanta, rightly handled and rightly explained, a means for leading his countrymen with pure and elevated theism.’ He believed in the central core of true religion, the existence of a Creator and Moral Governor, and the existence of a spiritual principle in the soul; everything else in the religions of the world is non-essential, and is often indeed, a false and impure accretion to this central core of truth. After the first flush of emotional disturbances deeper draughts of the Vedanta brought him back to a theistic view of the world and world history. ‘He was a genuine out-growth of the old Hindu stock, in a soil watered by new influences, and in an atmosphere charged with unwonted forcing power, but still a true scion of the old stock. The Raja was no mere Occidentalized Oriental, no Hindu polished into the doubtful semblance of a European…. We shall find that he leads the way…. Towards a civilization which is neither Western nor Eastern, but something vastly larger and nobler than both.’

Early Years

Rammohan was born at Radhanagar, a village in Hooghly, Bengal on the 22nd of May, 1772, of an ancient an honorable Brahman family. His father, Ram Kanta Roy was specially noted for his quiet and retiring disposition and his great devotion to the religion of his ancestors. His mother, Tarini Devi, was as remarkable for her piety as her husband. Rammohan’s ancestors on the father’s side were Vaishnavas and on the mother’s side Saktas. His mother, however, adopted Vaishnava practices after her marriage. The closing year of her life was passed in the performance of a characteristic vow. Though brought up in luxury, she fully dedicated her life during that year to the temple of Jagannath in Orissa as a menial servant.

(to be continued in November, 2006 issue)

© "Glimpses of Great Lives" published by The Vedanta Society of New York, 34 West 71st Street, New York, NY 10023. USA. Reprinted with permission.

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