Eveyone among the so called Hindu right wing, a large
number of who can give a run for the money to the left for half baked knowledge
and clichéd repetition, love to cite this Thomas Macaulay quote:-
“In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose
general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us,
with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must
at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and
the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour,
but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
This quote is used, shared and ruminated upon by the so
called right wingers who are ever so eager to bring out how British ruined
education in India ,but get their children educated in the same schools they
criticize and gloat about the marks that they get in the same examination
system.
But this quote above is just half of the quote. Lets look
at its subsequent part:-
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular
dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science
borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit
vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”
Anglophiles and British raj romanticizers will be very
quick to jump in and say that this proves Macaulay’s love and concern for
Indians to get them to ‘civilize’ and get educated. But this infact is what the
evil genius British Raj was, this is all about creating a race of ‘brown
sahibs’ who will speak the master’s language, and see the world with the
master’s eyes, develop a life long aversion to their own language, act as a
‘safety valve’ between the masters and the ‘unwashed’ natives that could turn
violent, and also act as the tool to subjugate the natives and ‘condition’ them
into nothing more than beasts of burden.
The total number of Sati cases at the time of British Raj
were next to negligible, and least of all in Bengal, which fell under the rule
of the East India Company first. A long dead tradition had to be brought back
to life in their narrative.
We must remember that for a colonial power to ascertain and
legitimise its rule over its subjects, it needs to form a narrative that will
legitimise their rule. A narrative, that will proclaim that the ‘natives’ need
to be ‘saved’ from their backward beliefs and superstitions and given a just
and equal society which only the coloniser is capable of, given his ‘superior’
culture and race.
The easiest way of doing it is to produce a class of the
local population, educated in the colonizer’s ethos, who will always look upto
him and will hate their native culture and the working class. Its good if the
‘brown sahib’ converts to Christianity. But its even better if the brown sahib
retains his Hindu name, because that will give him a smokescreen to do his
master’s will of ‘reconstruction’ and social engineering.
Let’s have a look at a very prominent name among them, Raja Ram
Mohun Roy. A name that is hailed as pioneer
of modernity in India by Hindu-bashing left-liberal quarters. He was monumental
in successfully convincing the British Parliament and the East India Company of
the inferiority as well as worthlessness of Sanskrit education while at the
same time championing the cause of English schooling for Indians. Macaulay
himself would have been proud.
But how is he a villain? Wasnt he a reformer who helped
abolished ‘’sutee” with mai baap governor general William Bentick?
For those who fall into this lie of sati being a norm in
Hindus forget this logic that had it been the standard practice, Hindus would
have died out in a few hundred years as there would be noone left to procreate.
Nine out of ten times, it is the wife that survives the husband. Women on an
average, live more than men than 5-10 years. So if every woman kills herself on
her husband’s funeral pyre without exception, its a recipe for demographic
suicide, especially in olden times when most today’s curable diseases were
deadly and took away a huge amount of population regularly.
The British Empire had scant interest in social and educational
reforms. Ram Mohun Roy’s biggest ‘’reform’’ was to reject polytheism,
traditional Hindu education system, and to push monotheism. His Persian and
Arabic education had influenced his monotheistic idea of god,even before he
learnt a word of English. His aim was to replace Sanskrit based education
by English based one, via the schools that he built.
As a member of the Council of India, Macaulay had presented his minute on education before the Committee on Public Instruction, on February 2, 1835, decisively altering the mood of the Council and Committee members in his favour and clearing the path for the English Education Act 1835.
So far the story of the paradigm change in Indian education systems is quite a common knowledge. However, what many may not know is that even before Macaulay could present his infamous Minute, Raja Ram Mohan Roy had already written a lengthy memorial to Lord Amherst, the then Governor-General of India on December 11, 1823 (12 years before Macaulay’s Minute made its appearance in the scene), launching a vicious attack on the traditional Sanskrit education system prevalent at that time in India.
Roy questioned the effectiveness of imparting traditional education through the Sanskrit language. He contended that the amount of funds (which was somewhere around one lakh rupees at that time) channelized for educating Indians (in accordance with the Parliament’s agreement in the East India Company’s charter, 1813) should instead be invested in employing “European gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences which the nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that have raised them above the inhabitants of the other parts of the world” (Roy’s letter to Amherst, 1823). In his memorial to Governor-General Lord Amherst, Roy attacked the policy of the General Committee of Public Instruction, which, led by H. H. Wilson, had established a Sanskrit College in Calcutta in January 1824. Roy, on the other hand, batted for founding a college devoted completely to the European system of learning instead of a spending the government’s money on yet another Sanskrit college (the first of its kind had already come up in Varanasi in the year 1791).
The General Committee on Public Instruction had allocated funds for the establishment of a Sanskrit College in Calcutta, finally opening the same in the year 1823 on the grounds opposite to the Hindoo College (now Presidency University), bastion of European education that used English as its medium of instruction and where the maverick teacher Henry Derozio was leading a band of young students, in thought and deed, towards radical thinking which made their parents fear, not without good reason, that their wards would eventually “reject the Hinduism of their forefathers convert to Christianity or join the Brahmo Samaj” (Seely 2004).”
Ram Mohan Roy
acted as a political agitator and agent, representing Christian missionaries
whilst employed by the East India Company and simultaneously pursuing his
vocation as a Pandit. One of them was William Carey, a Baptist shoemaker turned
missionary who landed in India in 1793, with the main objective to translate,
publish and distribute the Bible in Indian languages and propagate Christianity
to the Indian people.He realised the "mobile" (i.e. service classes) Brahmins
and Pundits were most able to help him in this endeavour, and he began
gathering them. He learnt the Buddhist and Jain religious works to better argue
the case for Christianity in the cultural context.In 1795, Carey made contact
with a Sanskrit scholar, the Tantric Hariharananda Vidyabagish, who
later introduced him to Ram Mohan Roy, who wished to learn English. Between
1796 and 1797, the trio of Carey, Vidyavagish and Roy created a religious work
known as the "Maha Nirvana Tantra" (or "Book of the Great
Liberation") and positioned it as a religious text to "the One True
God". Rammohan was clever enough to
understand that his ideas were more welcome if only people looked at it as age
old wisdom rather than a revolutionary new idea. "Maha Nirvana
Tantra" therefore supported monotheism and had sections masking prevailing
progressive judicial thoughts as ancient discourse on law. In
1797, Ram Mohan reached Calcutta and became a moneylender, mainly to impoverished
Englishmen of the Company living beyond their means. Ram Mohan also continued
his vocation as pundit in the English courts and started to make a living for
himself. He began learning Greek and Latin. From 1803-15, he was a clerk with
East India Company's "Writing Service". During this time, he also
wrote Tuḥfat al-Muwaḥḥidīn, he championed the cause of
Monotheism.” Roy protested against the idolatries and superstitions
of Hinduism and tried to identify a common religious foundation based on the
doctrine of the unity of God. He advocated for the supremacy of human reason
and conscience over all outside authority whether of scripture, priest or
prophet.” He also opposed the principle of Trinitariasm’ (God, Son
Jesus and the holy spirit) of the Christianity (which would be his reason to
fall out with William Carey in 1819). He rejected polytheism,
idol-worship and rituals of different religions. He advocated monotheism or
unity among gods. He also advised people to be guided by the conscience. He
inspired men to cultivate rationality. To all he appealed to observe the
principle of unity of God.
Ram Mohun Roy
mainly attacked his own community, the Kulin Brahmins, and this target was
understandable, as they were then in control of the many temples of Bengal. With
Dwarkanath's backing, he launched a series of attacks against Baptist
"Trinitarian" Christianity and was now considerably assisted in his
theological debates by the Unitarian faction of Christianity."
In 1828, he
founded the Brahmo Samaj, which according to eminent historians was a social
reform movement. Its core beliefs were:-
- Brahmo Samaj believe that the most fundamental doctrines of Brahmoism are at the basis of every religion followed by man.
- Brahmo Samaj believe in the existence of One Supreme God — "a God, endowed with a distinct personality & moral attributes equal to His nature, and intelligence befitting the Author and Preserver of the Universe," and worship Him alone.
- Brahmo Samaj believe that worship of Him needs no fixed place or time. "We can adore Him at any time and at any place, provided that time and that place are calculated to compose and direct the mind towards Him."
The idol worship denigration that he showed is not very different from the mentality of the Islamist or Church agents who devote their entire life to the ‘holy’ cause ‘cleanse’ the world of ‘heathenism’.
Also a fact which
is not much spoken about is that, his disrespectful speech and actions towards
the Hinduism that was so dear to his parents finally broke their patience and
he was driven out of his house in teens due to his relentless offensive
attitude towards Hinduism.
In 1830, Ram Mohan
Roy travelled to the United Kingdom as an ambassador of the Mughal Empire, to supposedly
ensure that Lord William Bentinck's Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829 banning the
practice of Sati was not overturned. But his real motive was to successfully
persuade the British government to
increase the stipend of the Mughal Emperor by £30,000! Roy also petitioned the
King to increase his allowance and perquisites! Also on the list was his
lifelong passion, the campaign against Sanskrit education and for English
education.
Lets have a look at his mausoleum:-
Pay attention to the words “endeavours to suppress idolatry”. In simple language it means missionary work.
Why will the British give such an honourable burial to an Indian patriot (in their own country, and that too at a time when dark skinned humans were not even considered humans by the white colonial overlords), if Ram Mohun Roy was one , as the progressive and western historians tell us? And why will they give an Indian patriot a title (Raja is a title)?
If he was a linguist, why couldn’t he use his knowledge to bring about a perfect synchrony of the eastern and western media of education rather than wanting to purge Sanskrit and other indic languages from the curriculum? What kind of linguist wants to import and impose a foreign language that would eventually erode the spiritual-cultural ethos of the country?
Ironically, Ram Mohun Roy was not even accepted fully by the European Christian missionaries for which he strived so hard all his life. He was, on the contrary, called by the same derogatory names that the Christian missionaries reserve for all Hindus. He was ‘rediscovered’ in the late 19th century by the pro British Indian elite and Western left-liberals via the Hindu-hating Brahmo samajists in the late 19th to 20th century, and started projecting him as the “Father/Maker of Modern India”.
He died in England in 1833, of meningitis and was buried in southern Bristol. Its a fitting divine justice that a person like him did not get a place in his motherland even after death. Who says there is no justice in the world?
