 Hi Shreya, hope you'll enjoy this video of a trip to Bristol. England by train is so picturesque, though you'll have to forgive Amit trying in vain to capture his reflection on the window glass. Bristol is charming, a seaside town growing every day. But I have a very special reason for sending it to you. It has a surprise in it for you and your grandma. For we were in Bristol for an unusual occasion, a date with Indian history. You know how much the British love and treasured the past. Bristol has an old cemetery called Arnau's Vale where the mizolium of Raja Ram Mohan Roy stands. Built in his memory by his friend and compatriot Prince Dvarkana Tagore. On 27 September, every year, that's where they remember Ram Mohan's death anniversary. Even today, 165 years later. We have managed to raise the money to... Thank you. Hi, Tita. How are you? I've got something to tell you. Nandini sent me the DVD of Raja Ram Mohan Roy's annual memorial service. You must come and see it. My grandmother, my link to the past since my first Brahmo Samaj prayer meeting on her lap, encouraged me to rediscover Ram Mohan, India's first modern Sivant. He was also a successful trader, a man of letters, philosopher, politician and a social reformer who founded the Brahmo Samaj. I followed her lead and went off in search of him, to a museum dedicated to him. It was a revelation. Through the sunset of the Mughal and the dawn of the British Empire, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, he became one of the architects of modern India, in many more ways than one. There are more I discovered seemed more an enigma than a historical character. He emerged as a colossus, straddling two eventful centuries, both witness to phenomenal change, when our ancient civilization met with the West. Potentially, it could have meant a serious conflict of civilizations, like the experience of our own times. But Ram Mohan found a unique creative opportunity, where new worlds enriched old ones with thoughts and ideas that transformed the quality of our lives. The museum was not enough, but I hit the road towards his family's ancestral seed in Draadhanobar, about a hundred-odd kilometers away in Hukli. What I saw left me in awe. Even after two centuries, the ambience spelt power and wealth. Ram Mohan's father, Ramakanto, was a feudal lord, loyal to the Mughal rulers in Delhi. An heir of devotion seemed to linger here, so I wasn't surprised to know that Ramakanto's politics never interfered with his faith as a devout Vaishnavite. His wife Tarani Devi, though, came from a Shakta background. In those days, it was an unusual match, and I could sense that this duality between the two major schools of Hindu faith must have had its influence on Ram Mohan's upbringing. These walls seem to tell me the story of how Ram Mohan grew up to be both a man of the world, a trader and administrator, as well as a man of thought, a philosopher and social reformer. He was born on 22nd May 1772, seven years after the East India Company procured the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Urissa from the Mughal Badshah. It also brought about the effective end of Navabi rule in Bengal. Here, among the Radhanagur ruins, I understood scholar-historian Brogenshield's description of Ram Mohan's times. The darkest age in modern Indian history, an old society and polity had crumbled down, and a new one had not yet been built in its place. Devastation reigned in the land. All vital limbs of society were paralyzed. All were in chaotic condition. My journey into this dark age started with my grandmother's advice to meet scholars, read books and look at paintings and woodcuts. Brahmin monopoly on religious texts left flagrant misinterpretations unchallenged by lay believers, already divided severely by caste. Idolatry and orthodox rituals nurtured barbaric practices like the burning of widows. When Warren Hastings shifted the capital from Murshidabad, it signalled the rise of the British Empire in Calcutta. Beyond it, a great famine devastated the villages of Bengal. If you look at the socio-political background in which Ram Mohan was born in 1772, as long ago as that, that was the year when the English East India Company established a governorship in Bengal. Warren Hastings, who later, two years later became the governor-general of Bengal. So these are the earliest days of the British Sarkar in India. A few years before Ram Mohan was born, his father had taken part in a rebellion against the English East India Company on behalf of the last of the Mughal emperors, who was then Shahzada Ali Gohar, later called Shah Alam II. Ram Mohan's father had fought for the Raja of Bodhman, whose loyal feudal vassal he was. And these people, at the battle of the Bankab river just outside Bodhman town, had made a desperate stand against British rule. Ram Mohan, of course, was born in an age when the Zamindas of Bengal had accepted the company's rule. Tradition, however, gave him a Sanskrit education, backed up with Arabic and Persian the code language. By Hastings, he was fluent in all three Asian languages, along with his mother tongue, Bengali. But it is interesting to remember that pretty early in his life, he chafed against his family's practices and became what in religious history we call the Ramata tradition, the Ramata Shadhu tradition. That is, a person who, in search of religious understanding and meditative practices, roams all over India. Ram Mohan has said in his autobiographical fragment that he travelled around northern India and perhaps southern India and certainly into Tibet, of those days, in the late 18th century, picking up not just Hindu learning, but also the learning in Arabic about the Quran, the learning in Persian about secular matters of governance, and the learning that was available in the tongue-throws, which were being read in far-off Nepal and Tibet. His early reading of the Quran shook his faith in Hindu idolatry and founded his lifelong admiration of the strict monotheism of Islam. With time and maturity, he was also drawn to Sufi mysticism, with its poignant expression in Persian poetry and its resonance with tenets of the Vedanta. Sufism in Bengal had deep and popular roots. And then the point is that by the end of the 18th century, Ram Mohan comes back and he does not come back to a life of religion, like the Sadhus. He does not become a Sadhu. He becomes a divan for an English-East India Company's official, Digby. In 1805, Ram Mohan writes this Persian tract with the first page of invocation in Arabic. It's called the Tawfat ul Muahiddin. Tawfat are present. Tawfat. Ul Muahiddin, those who believe in the unity of the deity. A gift to believers in the unity of the deity. So was that tract a kind of manifesto for Ram Mohan? Yes, of course. Of course, you're right, that this is what he is going to preach all his life. He is coming towards the end of his service career. In another 11 years, he is going to retire and settle down in Kolkata in 1800 and 14 or 16. I forget the exact date. And it is a manifesto for him that he is now talking in terms of democracy and the right to honour. Ram Mohan's lifelong admiration for historic landmarks like the American War of Independence and the French Revolution came with his Rangpur experience, along with eulinguistic skills opening windows to European Enlightenment and the values of liberty and equality. My journey with Ram Mohan led me to 1815 and to Kolkata, where he had lived earlier from 1797 to 1804. This was the city that would witness his major lifetime achievements. His villa in the Manikthala suburbs was the scene of his major work as the translator of the Vedanta, Upanishads and other texts. His villa is now ironically the police museum. But once, this was where Kolkata's intellectual elite, both European and Indian, participated in discussion and debate. Its contents form the intellectual basis of his later work as a social and religious reformer. I discovered more at his Kolkata townhouse, which has recently been restored into a museum dedicated to him. I was surprised again and again by the unusual facets of his character and his concerns. I was surprised how much of what my generation and I believe in stems from what he first dared to think. The walls of the museum reverberate with songs he composed and stimulating debates he set in motion. It is here that he brought together the Atiyo Shabha, an association for disseminating religious understanding and tolerance. Participants included Bengal's intellectual and social elite like Prince Dwarka Nath Tagore and Kalinath Munshi. He is written in English and in Bengali. His writing is in Dukhande. In English, his writing is written in Prasool. He writes in Bengali. I think when he writes, he starts from 1815. Among his numerous interactions is the famous encounter with the Southern scholar Subramanya Shastri. This was part of his larger campaign to confront and engage with a powerful and entrenched Hindu orthodoxy. He inaugurated an unknown spirit of freedom and rationality in his life. Subramanya Shastri is one of the most prominent in the Indian orthodoxy. He inaugurated an unknown spirit of freedom and rationality in theological discussions. My encounter with the museum's mural on Sati was a strong reminder of Ramohan's personal crusade against a barbaric custom. Much of the world justifiably remembers him by his spirited fight against the first emolition of Hindu widows in their husband's funeral pyre. This scene in childhood returned to me through its moving images. Tathachitrangadudharang hartaarang svanabhaddha yavadagnoomritey badho striy namatmanan svaad trishtri A deeply entrenched ritual, Sati was condoned by faith and guarded by vested interests. The movement for its abolition began with Ramohan's personal experience, the emulation of his brother Jagumohan's widow in 1811. The site of that barbaric ritual is today hallowed ground because this is where Ram Mohan swore to fight relentlessly for the abolition of Sati. Ram Mohan's powerful writings, his vast classical scholarship and his impeccable credentials gave considerable leverage to the eventual ban on Sati, legalized on 4th December 1829 by Lord Ben Tink. The practice of Sati, or of burning or bearing alive the widows of Hindus is revolting to the feelings of human nature. It is nowhere enjoined by the religion of the Hindus as an imperative duty. In those in which it has been most frequent, it is notorious that in many instances, acts of atrocity have been perpetrated which have been shocking to the Hindus themselves and in their eyes unlawful and wicked. The practice of Sati, or of burning or bearing alive the widows of Hindus is hereby declared illegal and punishable by the criminal courts. The Orthodox Hindu community retaliated with loud protests supported by powerful community leaders, McRadhakanto Dev, the matter went up to the Privy Council in London. Ram Mohan's liberalism even challenged the Christian faith. In 1820, he published Precepts of Jesus in which he de-linked the moral message of Christ from specific Christian reliance on miracle stories. The missionaries were at once up in arms against the daring heathen, but Ram Mohan's courage never wavered. My research gave no clues to Ram Mohan's Unitarian mission, except the interview in the video from Bristol. The router, of course, called himself a Hindu Unitarian by 1826. Therefore, the Unitarians worldwide were very interested in him and the Unitarian magazines went from America to Britain to India and everywhere else. So everybody who was in the missionary field and the Unitarians were in the missionary field in Calcutta knew about the Raja. Now, the question was who gained from home and I think actually they both did. The Unitarians gained in the sense that the Brahmo Samaj developed later on, according to Keshav Chandasen, along slightly different lines, but they never forgot the Raja's interest in Unitarianism. The Unitarian mission evolved into the Brahmo Sabha in 1828. Even as a child, I knew from my grandma that it was Ram Mohan who wrote the original trust deed on the basis of which the Brahmo Samaj came into being. It came as the culmination of a lifetime's endeavor by one who was as much a man of action as a man of thought and letters. My grandma told me how Ram Mohan's scholarship revealed that the Hindu scriptures gave women rights equal to men. This brought great legitimacy to the support of the movement for women's rights, especially to own property, to remarry after widowhood and to education as a means to empowerment. He contributed not only towards making me what I am today, but also in liberating women of her generation. To get back to your question that I mean what exactly is Ram Mohan's relevance today, of course one of the obvious things would be, I mean you would say that he tried to synthesize, he tried to synthesize Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Certainly, you know, a lot of Islam. And this synthesis, see, I think if we analyze this synthesis, not going to the texts of the synthesis, but analyze the act of the synthesis, then you'll probably see that there was a basis of tolerance. And in a time when intolerance is so rampant, intolerance of every kind, not just religious intolerance, but also political intolerance, intolerance of ideology, we can see a sort of seed of tolerance that he was trying to preach tolerance by bringing these religions or religious etiologies together. Finally, from the beginning of this revolution, we have decided that what kind of code to write, what kind of code to read, meaning that the code of our Bangladesh, according to the punctuation of the day, according to the face of the day, we will go to the front, the semi-colonial line, we will give them, we will leave them. Because when Ram Mohan wrote the code, at that time there was no punctuation of the day. Today, Ram Mohan's code of the day is a bit difficult, it's a bit difficult. The first thing that we have to say, according to Vedanta's words, what is the code of the day and what is the code of the path, is that the beginning of the day and the end of the day are made especially by these two differences. In the place where the word is still in the heart, in the same way, in the same form, it is from the beginning of the day that the code of the day is made. What is the code of the day? So, Ram Mohan made the language of our mind. Another thing, I think it is said that Ram Mohan was the architect of English education in India. He wrote a very famous letter to Lord Amastin in 1823. It's saying that Ram Mohan was trying to say in the letter that it's not just English. English is simply a vehicle. English is some kind of a medium. It's not English education for English education's sake. But he wanted English as a vehicle for natural sciences, for science, for he mentioned chemistry, he mentions mathematics. And since this was a time when all the ancient sources of the sciences, we rediscovered Indian science, ancient Indian science, ancient Indian scientific texts later. Since all this were, let's say, in some kind of dormant condition, Ram Mohan was probably right to think that English would be the right instrument through which new education can come. Unfortunately, what came was Macaulay. And what Macaulay wanted was not science, not natural sciences, not rationality, not, let's say, 18th century reason, but English educated clerks who do the work for us. That was Macaulay's famous minute. Though the pioneering voice of Ram Mohan in education led to the foundation of the Hindu College on 20th January 1817, his name does not appear in the founding committee. But I would like to emphasize that throughout this concern with religion, Ram Mohan is carrying on what was called, what I think you yourself said, was his early manifesto. A manifesto of political equalization with the forces of colonialism. The two famous things for which he is known. The first is his criticism of the gagging of the press. Amherst, the man whose name was later to be given to the street on which he lived. Governor-General in Bengal in the early 1820s was responsible for an ordinance which tried to say that various groups of Indians could not express their views as openly as they wished. The British, when they came to power, were accepted with Phulchandun. Flowers and sandalwood paste in celebration because they were seen as the harbingers of a new destiny. Was it this destiny, the North says, which is going to gag the minds of those who are looking for modernity? No. And what does he do? He stops publishing the paper. One of the first newspapers to come out in Kolkata in an Indian language. Now, it is significant that this paper is not in Bengali. Ram Mohan is writing in the language of his Mughal for bears. It's called the Miratul Akhbar news. And he stops the publication of Miratul Akhbar. It's been protested against the ordinance. So in a sense, Ram Mohan is one of the earliest people who is teaching us the virtues of nonviolent protest. Not just waving one's sword and dying fighting, but of living to fight another day and to protest yet another day. This is the message that is going to grow in the 19th century in moderate nationalism all over India. Ram Mohan left for England on 19 November 1830 to reach its shores on 18 April 1831. His long voyage was distinguished by his encounter with the French tricolor flying on a vessel in the high seas. His excitement and insistence that he be carried on board the French ship, despite his indisposition, shows his enthusiasm for the values he associated with the revolution. It is from England that he can learn more about the principles of modern liberty. He wants to go to the home of parliamentary democracy. He wants to learn how parliamentary democracy can be brought to it. And he's prepared even to do this as an emissary of the broken down Mughal empire. Shalam has given way, blinded and toothless in 1803, to a new emperor, so-called, is no more an emperor, Akbar II, who is just a pensioner of the British. This person fighting for the rights of his family and privileges, having been expropriated largely by the Marathas in the British, is now appealing to the crown to see that his rights and privileges are maintained. He confers the title of Raja on Ramon. We forget this. Ramon was given the title of Raja by the Mughals. Again, the same message is being repeated, the same duality between the late Mughals and the early British. And Ramon goes to England to plead the Mughal case in Parliament. The British treat that with contempt. Where he does not receive contempt in his journey to England is from the common middle class in London or in Bristol or in other parts of England that he visited. I think what he did was, in Britain anyway, as well partly in Calcutta, was he astounded the British people. You cannot run an empire by thinking that the people that you are ruling are as good, if not better than you, because you just wouldn't be there. But when the Raja appeared and when he spoke, I think the great British public realized the quality of the man, the quality of what the Bengali Renaissance was producing at the time, the quality of intellect. Because not only was he skilled in his own Vedic background, in Islam as well, but he understood the nuances of the West. And I think it was that that absolutely amazed the British public. He lectured, he spoke, he went into the houses of Parliament, he gave evidence to the Privy Council, all of whom listened to him with, I'm not exaggerating, or an admiration. And that is a very great beginning. That's Kala contracted, Ida. She's an amateur historian. She's devoted her life to the glorification and research of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. She is wonderful. It is she who leads the ceremonies every year on 26 September. Can be taken as a multicultural icon for our 21st century. And that, I think, is a very important position. Each generation looks for something different in a hero of a previous generation.