{"id":129211,"date":"2023-06-22T13:45:45","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T08:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/?p=129211"},"modified":"2023-06-22T00:30:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T19:00:32","slug":"who-was-raja-ram-mohan-roy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/history\/who-was-raja-ram-mohan-roy","title":{"rendered":"Who Was Raja Ram Mohan Roy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Raja Ram Mohan Roy is the originator of the Brahmo Samaj (one of India&#8217;s first socio-religious reformist organisations), and was a brilliant philosopher and free intellectual. He was a religious and social reformer known as the the &#8216;Father of the Bengal Renaissance&#8217; or &#8216;Father of Modern India&#8217;. He was born in the Radhanagar region in the Bengal Province, in May 1772, into a conventional Bengali Hindu household.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Ram Mohan&#8217;s education\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He was sent to Patna for additional studies, where he studied Arabic and Persian. He also studied the Quran, Arabic interpretations of Plato and Aristotle&#8217;s works, and Sufi mystic poets&#8217; compositions. By age fifteen, Raja Rammohun Roy had mastered Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Bangla. He could also communicate in both English and Hindi.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He journeyed to Varanasi to study the Vedas, Hindu texts, and Hindu ideology.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He also explored Islam as well as Christianity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">When he was sixteen, he logically condemned Hindu idol worship.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">From 1809 until 1814, he was employed in the East India Company&#8217;s Revenue Department and as a private Diwan to Woodforde and Digby.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He committed his career to religious, societal, and political reforms 1814.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Political and Economic Achievements<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Raja Ram Mohan Roy was amazed and liked the civil rights granted to citizens under the British Constitutional System. He desired to transfer the benefits of such a governance structure to the Indian people.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Taxation Reforms\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He spoke out against the repressive practises of Bengali zamindars.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He requested that the minimum rent be set.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He urged that export levies on Indian commodities be reduced and that taxes on tax-free regions be abolished.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He advocated for the termination of the commercial privileges of the East India Company.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Freedom of the press<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0He spoke out against the British government&#8217;s oppressive policies, particularly the limits on press freedom. He backed the free press movement in India with his writings and activism.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">When Lord Hastings abolished press regulation in 1819, Ram Mohan discovered three journals: Mirat-ul-Akbar (1821), Samvad Kaumudi (1821), and The Brahmanical Magazine (1821)\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Administrative initiatives<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He advocated for equitable treatment of Indians and Europeans. He advocated for the Indianization of superior services and the separation of the administration and the judiciary.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Contributions to Society<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He saw reformist religious organisations as agents of social and political change.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He established the Atmiya Sabha in the year 1814, the Calcutta Unitarian Society in the year 1821, and the Brahmo Sabha in the year 1828.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He fought for equality between men and women, such as a widow&#8217;s freedom to remarriage and women&#8217;s right to possess assets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">His efforts resulted in the eradication of Sati in 1829 by Lord William Bentinck, the then-Governor-General of India, who opposed polygamy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Raja Ram Mohan Roy advocated for abolishing the caste system, untouchability, beliefs, and using intoxicants.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He condemned child marriage, adultery, female illiteracy, and the plight of widows.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He emphasised rationality and a modern scientific perspective.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He battled against Hindu society&#8217;s perceived evils at the time.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">He founded the Sambad Kaumudi, a Bengali weekly journal that constantly condemned Sati as cruel and anti-Hinduism.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raja Ram Mohan Roy is the originator of the Brahmo Samaj (one of India&#8217;s first socio-religious reformist organisations), and was a brilliant philosopher and free intellectual. He was a religious and social reformer known as the the &#8216;Father of the Bengal Renaissance&#8217; or &#8216;Father of Modern India&#8217;. He was born in the Radhanagar region in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21834,"featured_media":136976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12202,12245,12389,8,12206,11315,12218,12191,12279],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-129211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog","8":"category-heritage","9":"category-historical","10":"category-history","11":"category-incredible-india","12":"category-india","13":"category-interesting","14":"category-personality","15":"category-popular"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129211"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136963,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129211\/revisions\/136963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}