Raja Ram Mohan Roy – Indian Social Reformer

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• Raja Ram Mohan Roy was impressed and admired the civil liberties given to people under the British System of Constitutional Government. He wanted to extend the benefits of that system of government to the Indian people.
• Reforms for Taxes –
  • He condemned the oppressive practices of Bengali zamindars.
  • He demanded the fixation of minimum rents.
  • He called for a reduction of export duties on Indian goods abroad and demanded the abolition of taxes on tax-free lands.
  • He raised his voice for the abolition of the East India Company’s trading rights.
• Press freedom: he spoke against the unjust policies of the British government especially the restrictions on press freedom. Through his writings and activities, he supported the movement for a free press in India.
  • When press censorship was relaxed by Lord Hastings in 1819, Ram Mohan found three journals- The Brahmanical Magazine (1821); The Bengali weekly, Samvad Kaumudi (1821); and the Persian weekly, Mirat-ul-Akbar.
• Administrative reforms: He demanded equality between Indians and Europeans. He wanted the Indianisation of superior services and separation of the executive from the judiciary. 

1.  He conceived reformist religious associations as instruments of social and political transformation
   • In 1814 he formed Atmiya Sabha, the Calcutta Unitarian Association in 1821, and in 1828 the Brahmo Sabha or Brahmo Samaj in 1828.
2. He campaigned for rights for women, including the right for widows to remarry, and the right for women to hold property.
3. His efforts led to the abolition of Sati in 1829 by Lord William Bentinck, the then Governor-General of India. He opposed the practice of polygamy.
4. Raja Ram Mohan Roy campaigned against the caste system, untouchability, superstitions and use of intoxicants.
5. He attacked child marriage, polygamy, illiteracy of women and the degraded state of widows. 
6. He stressed rationalism and the modern scientific approach.
7. He fought against the perceived ills of Hindu society at that time.
8. He started the Sambad Kaumudi, a Bengali weekly newspaper that regularly denounced Sati as barbaric and against the tenets of Hinduism.

1. He started many schools to educate Indians in Western scientific education in English.
2. He believed that English-language education was superior to the traditional Indian education system.
3. He supported David Hare’s efforts to find the Hindu College in 1817, while Roy’s English school taught mechanics and Voltaire’s philosophy.
4. In 1822, he founded a school based on English education.
5. In 1825, he established Vedanta College where courses in both Indian learning and Western social and physical sciences were offered.

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s first published work Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhiddin (a gift to deists) published in 1803 exposed irrational religious beliefs. 
• He opposed idolatry, and corrupt practices of the Hindus as the belief in revelations, prophets, miracles etc.
• He was against the perceived polytheism of Hinduism. He advocated monotheism as given in the scriptures.
• In 1814, he founded Atmiya Sabha in Calcutta to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals and other social ills.
• He criticized the ritualism of Christianity and rejected Christ as the incarnation of God. In Precepts of Jesus (1820), he tried to separate the moral and philosophical message of the New Testament, which he praised, from its miracle stories.
• He translated the Vedas and five of the Upanishads into Bengali.

• Brahmo Samaj’s chief aim was the worship of the eternal god. It was against priesthood, rituals and sacrifices. It focused on prayers, meditation and reading of the scriptures. Basically, Brahmo Samaj was started to expose the religious hypocrisies.
• It was the first intellectual reform movement in modern India where social evils then practised were condemned and efforts made to remove them from society.
• It led to the emergence of rationalism and enlightenment in India which indirectly contributed to the nationalist movement.
• The Brahmo Samaj believed in the unity of all religions.
• Prominent Leaders of Brahmo Samaj were Debendranath Tagore (father of Rabindra Nath Tagore), Keshub Chandra Sen, Pt. Sivnath Shastri, and Rabindranath Tagore.
• Later in 1866, Brahma Sabha was split into two, namely Brahmo Samaj of India led by Keshub Chandra Sen and Adi Brahmo Samaj led by Debendranath Tagore.
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his Brahmo Samaj played a vital role in awakening Indian society to the pressing issues plaguing society at that time.
• It was the forerunner of all social, religious and political movements of modern India.

• Influenced by Western modern thought Ram Mohan Roy stressed rationalism and the modern scientific approach.
• He believed that religious orthodoxies instead of tending to the amelioration of the condition of society have become causes of injury, a source of trouble and detrimental to social life and bewilderment to the people.
  • He believed that sacrifices and rituals cannot restitute the sins of people; it can be done through self-purification and repentance. He also believed that religious reform is both social reform and political modernization.
• His immediate problem was the degeneration of the religious and social conditions of his native Bengal.
• He was a strong opponent of the caste system and believed in the social equality of all human beings.
• Ram Mohan was attracted to Islamic monotheism and believed that monotheism supported one universal model for humanity. He said that monotheism is also the fundamental message of Vedanta.
  • His idea of a single, unitarian god was a corrective to the polytheism of orthodox Hinduism and to Christian trinitarianism. 
• He stressed that  Hindu society can not progress unless women were freed from inhuman forms of oppression like illiteracy, Sati, purdah,  child marriage, etc.
  • He characterized sati as the violation of every humane and social feeling and as symptomatic of the moral debasement of a race.