5

Rammohan Roy: Civil Rights

Amiya P. Sen

He would be free or not be at all … love of freedom was perhaps the strongest passion of his soul; freedom not of action merely but of thought.

William Adam

The character of a nation is always in a great degree dependant on the character of individuals … the single name of Rammohan Roy is cherished by the more enlightened of his countrymen with gratitude and admiration because they feel how much they owe him when foreigners speak with insulting contempt—as they often do—of the native intellect, the example of Rammohan Roy is appealed to as an answer.

Bengal Herald, 17 January 1841

On 5 April 1823, an anonymous correspondent of the Calcutta Journal, a popular newspaper of the time, produced what appear to be fairly insightful analyses of social citizenry in the colonial city of Calcutta. The residents of that city, the correspondent claimed, could be broadly classified under three categories. First, there were those who allegedly preferred to remain plunged in darkness, desiring neither ‘benefit of knowledge nor blessings of true religion’. Their more ‘enlightened’ compatriots, by comparison, were quite contended with the status quo and asked no more than the continued enjoyment of civil and religious rights available under the Company’s administration. Finally, there were people who consciously opposed British rule, chiefly for its tendency to pull down ‘the stronghold of ancient superstition and absurdities of established custom’.¹ Prima facie it is tempting to attribute these observations to Raja Rammohan Roy (1772–1833) himself for the rhetoric and the distinct turn of phrase are very reminiscent of him. The singular difficulty with this claim though is that the Raja would have been hard pressed to identify himself with any of the three categories. Of these, the first and the third would have been entirely unacceptable to him and even the second generally incompatible with his social and political vision. Rammohan’s primary quest as I see it, was epistemological—an attempt to locate the right and socially useful sources of knowledge. The Raja not only accepted British rule in India as a fait accompli but providential in design and something that had to be constantly worked upon through the active mediation of interested citizens. This ruled out preferring pre-British rule to the British or to even remain contended with the limited or selective changes introduced by the Company. In modern India Rammohan was perhaps the first to argue, albeit somewhat indirectly and in a subdued voice, that colonialism ipso facto prevented Britain from replicating in India those social and political institutions on which her own modernization had rested. Thus British liberal ideology or constitutional practice followed perceptibly different practices in Britain and India. In Rammohan’s view, the daunting task before responsible public opinion in both these countries was to close down this gap between precept and practice. This called for a pro-active, not reactive response to change.

Rammohan’s historical location naturally makes him a controversial figure. The Raja lived and worked at a time when patriotic impulses or cultural pride were not wholly incompatible with a genuine admiration for the new cultural and political order. Even fifty years after him, a fellowBengali, the novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–84) could say that in itself, British rule was not unwelcome so long as it produced positive changes in the daily lives of the people.² However, such sentiments must be understood in relation to special circumstances of Bengal where the political transition was the quickest, quite dramatic and fraught with important changes within society and economy. The nature and the pace at which such changes were carried out would explain why the Bengali intelligentsia, paradoxically enough, were the warmest supporters of British rule as also its most articulate critics. Rammohan too, as we shall presently see, was an ardent supporter of colonization without entrusting India to the perpetual care of the British.

Though much eulogized in some quarters, Rammohan also suffered much malice and misapprehension.³ In most cases, this came from people whose visions were clouded by personal differences or sheer conservatism. However, even closer to our time, his standing within the so-called ‘Bengal Renaissance’ has been viewed or interpreted very differently, depending upon the historical or ideological perspective employed. His work has sometimes been interpreted as an early and effective antidote to Christian proselytization. This conveniently overlooks the deep understanding and appreciation that the Raja had of the moral and religious precepts of Christianity. More recently, Marxist critics while justly associating him with only an ambivalent and limited modernization,⁴ do not sufficiently allow for the fact that in their day, Rammohan and his supporters had no real understanding of the mechanism of exploitation that colonialism employed or how exploitation was inherent to it. No doubt the Raja displayed caution and conservatism in certain matters; on the other hand it might be reasonably argued that no Indian thinker of the 19th and early 20th centuries entirely escaped this. Arguably, the mentality of colonized intellectuals deserves as much to be an autonomous field of study as colonialism itself as a distinct stage in human history.

Rammohan Roy was born into a family of high-ranking (kulin) Brahmin family of Radhanagar, District Burdwan, W Bengal that had the distinction of serving the imperial Mughals for three generations. His great grandfather, Krishna Chandra Bandopadhyay was in the service of Murshid Quli Khan, Subedar [governor] of Mughal Bengal. Rammohan’s grandfather, Brojomadhab, served Ali Verdi Khan, Murshid Quli’s successor in office. Rammohan himself went as the emissary of Emperor Akabar II before the Court of Directors of East India Company in London. The family acquired rentier interests when Brojomadhab’s son, Ramakanta invested in landed estates following the Permanent Settlement in Bengal (1793). Rammohan followed closely on his father’s footsteps, combining lucrative money-lending activity with purchase of prime estates. Between 1809 and 1814, the six talukas or estates he had acquired fetched him an annual income of Rs.11,000. The family’s long-standing secular service under the Mughals explains the Raja’s close familiarity with Indo-Persian culture and what has come to be seen as his ‘great regard for the externals of Moslem civilisation’.⁵ There is nevertheless a certain ambivalence that we may detect here. Especially after he embraced the idea of interminable progress under British rule, praise for the Mughals was hard to come by. Rammohan accepted the title ‘Raja’ conferred on him by Akbar II but remained consistently critical of Mughal polity and statecraft.⁶

Rammohan first entered the service of Europeans in the year 1803 as munshi (private secretary) to the Collector of Murshidabad, Thomas Woodforde. Subsequently, he served the civilian John Digby, later to be his close personal friend. Lending money to low paid Britishers or officials enabled Rammohan to considerably widen his circle of friends and acquaintances. However, it was during this time that he was also seriously drawn into a study of the English language but perhaps more importantly, developments in contemporary Europe. Digby himself refers to his constant habit of reading English newspapers and his gathering interest in continental politics. Several years later, when in England, he expressed his feelings in the following words:

I felt impressed with the idea that in Europe, literature was zealously encouraged and knowledge widely diffused; that mechanics was almost in a state of perfection and politics in daily progress, that moral duties were, on the whole, observed with exemplary propriety …. I was, in consequence, continually making efforts for a series of efforts for a series of years to visit the western world with a view to satisfy myself on these subjects by personal experiences.⁷

By 1814, apparently, Rammohan Roy had enough personal resources not to work for a living. It was thus that in the manner of the prosperous gentry, he chose to settle down in Calcutta, the political and cultural nucleus of British India. Hereafter, he befriended many more European gentlemen of distinction belonging to he world of business and speculation such as John W Ricketts, owner of the Agency House in which he invested a good part of his money, James Silk Buckingham, the radical journalist who was deported from India, the Orientalist scholar, H. Wilson, David Hare, a pioneer in English education in Bengal, and the Unitarian, William Adam, who supported his agenda of religious reform.

For the next fifteen years, that is until he sailed for England in November 1830, Rammohan was embroiled in furious debates with Hindu pundits and publicists over the ‘true basis’ of Hinduism; questioned the basis of Trinitarian Christianity; repeatedly petitioned the State for re-dressal of civic grievances; shocked orthodox Hindu opinion by supporting anti-Sati legislation and showed a growing interest in a free trade economy. This intensely polemical phase in his life was intellectually also the most productive. Apart from the fact that he contributed substantially to the growth of modern Bengali prose, it is important to remember that between 1814–33, he authored more than 60 tracts and pamphlets in the English, Bengali and Sanskrit languages. This may well be contrasted with the fact that in the pre-1814 phase, Rammohan is said to have composed just three works, two of which are still untraceable. As a young boy he is known to have written a tract condemning Hindu idolatry that had led to serious differences with his father. However, the radicalism of this tract is difficult to vouch for since it has still not been recovered. Similar is the case with the Manzaratul Adiyan, a Persian tract he may have composed sometime around 1803–4, simultaneously with the well-known Tuhfat-ul-Muwahidin (A Gift to the Monotheists) the main text of which is in Persian and the introduction in Arabic. The post-1814 writings, by comparison, cover a very wide range of subjects, covering metaphysics, Bengali grammars, temperance, gender justice, history, Hindu laws of inheritance and observations on the state of society and economy in contemporary Bengal. From Calcutta he also successfully ran three journals/newpapers—the Bengali Samvad Kaumudi, the bilingual Brahmanical Magazine and the Persian Mirat ul Akhbar.

Though officially sent to England in 1830 to plead for an enhanced pension for the Mughal Emperor, Rammohan personally carried multiple agendas. In part he was there to counter the propaganda carried out by the Hindu orthodoxy against the Sati Regulations. Moe importantly, however, he remained acutely conscious of the fact that his visit coincided with the passage of the Reform Bill in the British Parliament. While in England, he called upon a wide variety of people. At the industrial town of Manchester, he shook hands with the working population and exhorted them to support the King and his ministers in effecting reform. He was delighted with the midnight meeting he could manage with the philosopher Bentham but admonished the Socialist Charles Owen for his atheism. In the summer of 1832 he traveled to France, the political developments of which always excited him.⁸ Around this time he also appeared before Select Committees of the House of Commons to be interrogated at length on the material and moral conditions in India under the Company’s administration. The testimony he has left behind now serve as valuable source material for the study of early Indian responses to colonialism.

Raja Rammohan Roy died after a brief illness on 27 December 1833.

Colonial Encounter and Rammohan

One of Rammohan’s letters (of 1832) to a friend, George James Gordon, carries an autobiographical fragment that reveals the political views he held in his early life. First, there is the claim that even at the age of twenty, he was ‘tolerably acquainted with [British] laws and forms of government’. The same letter also reveals how and why he came to radically change his views on British rule. Though initially unhappy with this, the Raja admits that he gradually overcame such ‘prejudices’ from the settled conviction that though foreign in origin, this rule would lead to the amelioration in the condition of native inhabitants. Such conclusions must be understood in the light of certain characteristic qualities that he also began to associate with peoples and communities. Europeans, he found on the whole to be ‘more intelligent and steady’ and the Hindus ‘superstitious and miserable both in the performance of their religious rites and in their domestic concern’.⁹ Again, the Bengalis were a people of ‘submissive disposition’; they did not stir and showed loyalty to the Mughals even as their property was plundered and their blood wantonly shed. In a statement that foreshadows the events of 1857, the Raja warned that this would not be necessarily true of the people from the upper provinces. The grievances of such people, if left unheeded, might weaken if not actually undermine British power in India.¹⁰ Prudence persuaded Rammohan to add that that the possibilities of a strong anti-British sentiment developing in Bengal itself were indeed slim for, under the British, the people here had come to enjoy ‘that freedom and security which is considered by rational and social beings as the grand object of all civil and religious institutions.’¹¹ By the 1820s, the ‘providential nature’ of British rule and sharp criticism of Mughal polity became recurring motifs in Rammohan’s writings. An Appeal mad to the King in Council against strictures passed on the Indian press has the following:

… Divine Providence at last, in its abundant mercy, stirred up the English nation to break the yoke of those tyrants [Mughals] and to secure the oppressed natives of Bengal under its protection …. The English distinguished this city [Calcutta] by such peculiar marks of favour as free people would be expected to bestow, in establishing a English court of judicature and granting to al within its jurisdiction, the same civil rights as every Briton enjoys in his native country; thus putting the native in India in possession of such privileges as their forefathers never expected to obtain even under Hindu rulers. Considering these things … your dutiful subjects consequently have not viewed the English as a body of conquerors but rather as deliverers, and look up to your Majesty not only as a ruler but also a father and protector.¹²

Even allowing for the strongly loyalist tone which was only expected to embellish an appeal, it is clear that Rammohan had come to accept the dominant thesis within early British writings on India. In concrete terms this meant pitting the ‘regressive’ character of pre-British rule with the ‘enlightened’ and ‘liberating’ character of the British. Oriental governments he now labeled as undemocratic and irresponsible. ‘Asia affords few instances of Princes who have submitted their actions to the judgments of their people’¹³ and further, that Asiatic princes profited from deliberately keeping people in ignorance, he was to observe.¹⁴ That the British ruling class itself took Rammohan to embody the ‘civilising’ mission that Britain had extended to India emerges from a passage that appeared in The Times on 13 January 1831:

We hail his arrival [in England] as a harbinger of those fruits which must result from the dissemination of European knowledge and literature of those sound principles of rule and government which it is the solemn obligation of Great Britain to extend to her vast and interesting Empire in the east.¹⁵

This brings us to the question of Rammohan Roy and Indian modernization. In a well-known essay, the historian Rajat K. Ray has identified the Raja with a three fold process of modernization: (a) the consolidation of the position of the traditional high caste landed gentry; (b) transformation of a medieval literati into a modern intelligentsia; (c) the transformation from monopolistic trade to free trade imperialism. In this section we deal with the first and the third of these processes.

Rammohan and like-minded individuals now appear quite naïve in their belief that even under colonialism, the free movement of European skills and capital would contribute to the economic modernization of India. In a meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall on the 17^th December, 1829, Rammohan, along with Dwarkanath Tagore and Prasanna Kumar Tagore openly supported the ‘free trade’ lobby which was building up at the time in both Britain and India. It is noteworthy that men like Dwarkanath, who took this position, had wide ranging economic or commercial interests ranging from investment in land to financial speculation and comprador trade.¹⁶ That the social character of the impending ‘transformation’ was to be extremely limited can be gauged from the repeated reference to the interests of ‘natives of wealth and respectability as well as the landholders of consequence’.¹⁷

A fairly explicit resume of the deep interests that a comprador class had begun taking in British rule occurs in the June 13^th, 1829 issue of the Bengal Herald, a paper in which Rammohan himself had some proprietory interests. The piece in question connects the consolidation of British rule with appreciable increases in land prices and the price of food grains. More significantly though, connections are drawn between the redistribution of wealth, the birth of ‘middling’ society and greater moral freedom. Rammohan, himself a beneficiary of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, believed in the ‘self-correcting authority of the natural landlord over his subjects’ which included both the will and the capacity to improve the condition of the subordinate peasantry.¹⁸ Not surprisingly, his view on the Bengal economy, particularly on the land question drew sharp criticism from quite contrary quarters. The Bengal Harakaru, though generally of a liberal disposition, alleged that while testifying before the house of commons’ select committee, the Raja spoke merely as a zamindar, overlooking the plight of the cultivating peas-ant.¹⁹ The conservative paper Samachar Chandrika, on the other hand, accused him of neglecting the interests of the traditional zamindars by which it meant that class that had failed to combine rentier interests with speculative trade. The Harakaru’s criticism, it has to be said, was somewhat harsh considering Rammohan’s recommendations to lower the rent and his general sensitivity to the worsening condition of the Bengal peasantry. Apparently, he was even willing to tax his own class for he suggested a tax on luxuries to compensate for the loss of revenue that might follow from the lowering of rents. In Rammohan’s defence it also needs to be said that his opponents often misinterpreted his support for European colonization. Thus the Samachar Darpan (of 15 October 1831) was unjust in its remark that unlike the Raja, the great body of Hindus did not wish that the English should come and cultivate the ground and become landlords. Surely Rammohan advocated the import of European skill and capital, not labour. His error, if any, lay in assuming that profits accruing from the investment of foreign skill and capital would be ploughed back into India’s rural economy. Ironically enough, the free trade policy he supported allowed for the greater integration of Indian markets and labour with the dictates of a buoyant British capitalism. In effect, this seriously hampered India’s own economic growth.

The Rationalist Foundations of Reform

In the understanding of Rammohan Roy, the modernisation of India rested not on material development alone but also the intellectual. It is this aspect of his thought that Rajat Ray has identified as the transformation of a medieval literati to a modern intelligentsia. Despite not being formally associated with the founding of the Hindu College (1817) that eventually produced a fine crop of western educated intellectuals, Rammohan was a pioneer in the field of such education. More significantly, though, he contributed towards changing the contemporary Indian outlook upon the home and the world.

Rammohan’s plans for modern education hinged on the greater use of English as the medium of instruction; here, the language itself was not as important as its function in disseminating useful contemporary knowledge. Arguably, this knowledge could also have been disseminated through indigenous languages as was indeed the case with certain modernizing countries.²⁰ On the other hand, in Rammohan’s time this looks an impracticable option especially given his preference for mathematics, natural Philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other related sciences.²¹ A competent technical vocabulary for these disciplines was found wanting a generation after him. Even in 1845, Kissory Chand Mitra, one of his early biographers could observe how the Bengali language remained ‘destitute of a scientific nomenclature which must be either created or borrowed to enable us to transfuse European science into it’.²² Rammohan although on the side of the Anglicists in pushing an English-medium education had intentions that were palpably different from that of Macau lay which brought about a largely literary education. And once again, as it would appear, the Raja failed to foresee why a colonial government would be keen to promote an education that carried a distinct ideological slant rather than a relatively value-free, scientific education.

Reason and reasonableness seem to be the two main platforms on which the reformism of Rammohan rested. It was on this ground that he demanded a more equitable share of property for Hindu women, the creation of certain enduring institutions that guaranteed civic and religious freedom, and end to the barbaric treatment of Hindu widows, idolatry and priestly excesses. Importantly enough, the criterion of reason that he employs here is not necessarily internal to some belief or practice but an analytical category that could be applied even from the outside. This made it possible for him to sometimes judge seemingly contrary things using the same yardstick. Thus religion too could be judged from a secular viewpoint and not merely from that of the practitioner. In Rammohan, this intermeshing of the religious and the secular is best exemplified by a remark he once made in a letter [of 18^th January, 1828] to his friend, John Digby. Quite remarkably, this letter connects advancement in religious life to that in the social and the political. For the Hindus, reforming their religion was necessary for the sake of obtaining ‘political advancement and social comfort’.²³ Utility, it would seem, was also to be a measure of religion and not surprisingly, Rammohan has sometimes been labeled as a ‘religious Benthamite’.²⁴ This is indeed an extraordinary position to take for a man who situated himself within the philosophical non-dualism of Acharya Sankara which takes a strongly non-utilitarian approach to religion.

Apparently, Rammohan entertained a dynamic view of reform and change, situating it within the larger framework of world-historical struggles. ‘Struggles are not merely between the reformers and anti-reformers’, he wrote to an English friend in April 1832, ‘but between liberty and tyranny throughout the world between justice and injustice and between right and wrong’.²⁵ This also underscores his universalism,—the belief that men everywhere had comparable problems which could be resolved by using similar methods. The struggle to bring about an enlightened and responsible government, was in his opinion, the common political destiny of civilized man. It was thus that he hosted parties and publicly rejoiced at the news of people attempting to overthrow despotic governments in France, Portugal or Naples. Conversely he could be sad and melancholic on hearing such movements capitulating before reactionary forces. ‘All mankind are one great family of which numerous nations and tribes existing are only branches’, he wrote to the French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand. But sustaining this required a free flow of peoples and ideas across countries and continents. Rammohan was pained upon hearing that his personal voyage to France would require the formal approval of bureaucrats.²⁶ His communication to Talleyrand also throws up the idea of resolving international disputes through amicable bilateral meetings. The term he chooses to use here is ‘Congress’ and one wonders if Rammohan’s thoughts were not in some way influenced by post-Napoleonic peace settlements, viz. the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the subsequent Concert of Europe (1815–22).

However, the Raja also believed that internationalism and the universal destiny of man was best protected by developed nations showing genuine concern for the underdeveloped; of the strong feeling morally obliged to help the weak. The universalism of Rammohan Roy is perhaps best manifest in his religious thinking and the extraordinary range of scholarship that he employed. Monier Monier-Williams took Rammohan to be the first earnest minded investigator of the science of comparative religion.²⁷ In his early life, as we know, the Raja was influenced by the radical theology of an eighth century sect, the Mutazalis. Such influences went into the writing of the Tuhfat. What is less known is his command over Islamic law and jurisprudence that earned him the title ‘zabardast maulavi’ among his Calcutta friends. Thereafter he mastered Hebrew, Syriac and the Greek languages to study in the original, the Old and the New Testaments. There are stories to the effect that he once crossed over to Tibet o learn Buddhism from the llamas and at least one biographer has alluded to his picking up rudimentary knowledge about Jainism from Marwari merchants.²⁸ As a Brahmin, he naturally made a special effort to study Hindu scriptures and it was here that he was also the most productive. Rammohan translated from the original Sanskrit, five of the major Upanishads— Isha, Kena, Katha, Mundaka and Mandukya— produced a modern commentary on the Brahma Sutras and also on the Bhagavad Gita though the latter is now untraceable. Significantly, the Raja translated these major texts into both English and Bengali which the allowed him to simultaneously address two different kinds of readers, the English educated (Europeans and Indian) and the traditional scholarly class. Reforming Hinduism was obviously his first priority and for this purpose he founded in Calcutta two religious organizations, the Atmiya Sabha and the Brahmo Sabha in 1815 and 1828 respectively.

Looking back at his religious and philosophical works it is possible to arrive at two significant conclusions. First, unlike some of his spiritual successors such as the Brahmo leader, Keshab Chadra Sen, Rammohan was not selective in his universalism. He did not take religions to e true in part but as self-contained bodies of Truth. This prevented him from syncretically fusing elements from one with those of another. To an extent therefore he anticipates the late 19th century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who believed that all religions had to be understood or experienced in the light of its own body of beliefs, rituals or practices. It was thus that the Raja was a ‘Brahman among Brahmans … a Mahommedan with Mahommedan and a Christian with a Christian’.²⁹ In Rammohan’s view, Universalism did not submerge religious personalities. Rather, it allowed all religions to themselves grow in fruitful contact with others. This view he strongly articulated in the Trust Deed of the Brahmo Samaj (1830) which advocated the ‘promotion of charity, morality, piety, benevolence, virtue and the strengthening of the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds’.³⁰

In his closing years Rammohan Roy was indeed cautious and somewhat conservative but in part, this was a measure of the dogged opposition he had to put up with. It is also probable that in later life he outgrew the tendency to negate existing thought and practice towards building a more positive social and religious consensus. Finally, contrary to what has sometimes been suggested, Rammohan did not merely take an instrumentalist view of religion or placed a disproportionate emphasis on ‘reason’. In fact, commenting on the Kena Upanishad [1.2.9] the Raja ruled out ‘tarka as a valid source to the knowledge of God. Rammohan Roy could be moved by the ecstatic poetry of Sufi poets, the mystical appeal of Brahman and the writings of European Deists some of whom found no opposition between reason and faith.³¹

Constitutionalism: Rights and Justice

The philosophical foundation of Rammohan’s legal and political thought has often been put to debate. There is difference of opinion on whether or not in these matters, the Raja largely went by what he had gathered from the contemporary west. The historian Barun De is inclined to believe that Rammohan’s constitutionalism had clear precedents in traditional Hindu thought and practice. Orthodox Hindu scholars, De reminds us, were already a part of a process whereby juridical right, if not the right of legal interpretation, was already vested in the sovereign. It was thus a number of such scholars assisted the early colonial state in codifying Hindu law and in its implementation.³² Here, De’s position offers some contrast to that of Biman Behari Majumdar who would have us believe that Rammohan’s legal and constitutional thought was almost entirely determined by English jurists and utilitarian thinkers like Blackstone and Bentham.³³ Majumdar’s views have also been criticized b scholars who had reason to believe that Utilitarian influences upon Rammohan have been grossly exaggerated. At least in the 1820s Bentham may not have been a very popular philosopher even in England and in some aspects, it has been argued, Rammohan’s position is not far removed from Greek hedonism.³⁴ And although he often speaks of ‘happiness’ being the measure of successful reform, this is not really separable from the concept of the ‘good’ that he may have easily derived from Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. Incidentally the term he specifically uses is ‘lokasreya (that which rests on the people)³⁵ which, to me strongly resonates of ‘lokasamgraha of the Gita.

Rammohan’s practical knowledge of law and legal institutions goes back to his days at Rangpur where as private Secretary to the Collector, he enjoyed certain quasi-judicial powers delegated by the Commissioners of Revenue. Presumably, his knowledge of Western legal theories and jurisprudence grew more intimate after he settled down in Calcutta, where the relevant texts or literature would have been available far more freely. Without taking the argument too far, it should be possible to say that Bentham did cast a major influence on Rammohan. Like Bentham, the Raja makes a clear distinction between law and morality and to press for the codification of law. Like the Utilitarian thinker again, he appears to reject the view that a positive social contract constituted society or that men had certain natural rights. If Rammohan did speak of rights, these were largely civic and religious in nature, not political. Thus religious toleration was something that every government was obliged to secure and promote but not necessarily, a democratic sharing of power. However, according to Majumdar himself, Rammohan also differed from his mentor in as much as he did not support the idea of a Universal Legal Code but one that took cognizance of the way manners or customs peculiar to a society evolved. In his Essay on Rights of Hindus over Ancestral Property (1830) he straddles both a historical position and the purely analytical by suggesting that property rules must have come to be founded on the basis of popular acceptance. Interestingly enough, this historicism did not take Rammohan to the position that laws also evolved in keeping with changes in social contexts, a position later taken by scholar—administrators like Sir Henry Maine. Perhaps it was this qualified acceptance of the historical that explains his strong defence of certain customary practices. In his day, Rammohan appears to be among the few who championed, even in the face of some opposition, the Dayabhaga law of inheritance, peculiar to Bengal.

The practical experiences that he had gained while serving in various official capacities enabled Rammohan to submit some original recommendations regarding the judicial system. On the whole, he expressed some unhappiness at the manner in which trials were conducted. In particular, he worried over the linguistic competence of European judges and the manipulation by scheming subordinates—all leading to the miscarriage of justice. The Raja seems to have had little faith in village justice too as handed out through the panchayat system. Here again, he found the system equally corruptible and always under pressure from vested interests. One important implication that followed from this was that the Raja was more openly on the side of centralization or standardization than the devolution of power and self-government. Interestingly enough, Rammohan was opposed to the reduction of the pay of European judges for he was apt to believe that that would negatively affect their performance and integrity. In keeping with his recommendations elsewhere, Rammohan was always keen to press the point that the greater induction of Indians into the judicial offices and functions would improve its general efficiency. Finally, even though he very much believed in the rule of law, the Raja did not think that every citizen could be subjected to the same legal/judicial processes irrespective of his social standing. High-ranking men, he argued, ought to be judged by special commissions.³⁶

In his constitutionalism, Rammohan was wholly in favour of a practical separation of powers. In Majumdar’s opinion again, this drew heavily upon the writings of Montesquieu and Blackstone. Apparently, the Raja was especially concerned with imposing suitable checks on the powers of the executive and ensuring the autonomy of certain civic institutions. Of the various forms of government Rammohan found both the democratic and the autocratic to be equally unacceptable; the first because it could easily grow to be unwieldy and the irresponsible and the second because it stifled human dignity and freedom. The best government was that which was ‘pledged not to infringe the laws of the nation’. Practically speaking, this amounted to a sharper separation of executive functions from that of lawmaking. In the 1830s, when the future structure of the Company’s administration in India was being debated, Rammohan took the side of those who felt that legislative authority should vest with the King and the Parliament as the highest sovereign bodies. Entrusting this to the Government of India, he felt, would make the executive unduly powerful. This, in the long run, would prevent the process of lawmaking to remain dispassionate or objective.³⁷

Rammohan was far too pragmatic a person not to realize the operative difficulties of legislating from Britain, particularly at a time when communication links between the colony and the metropolis were not very developed and the British ruling class as yet without a first hand acquaintance with Indian conditions. Such difficulties, he argued, could be effectively overcome by meeting three requirements. First, there had to be a free press in India; second the setting up of Enquiry Commissions from time to time and third, the positive co-option of more Indian of proven ability in the day to day administration. This, as Majumdar puts it aptly, the initiative for reform was left with the Indian government, the power to enact laws to the British Parliament and the function of positive criticism to ‘enlightened’ Indians.³⁸

In Rammohan’s view, the stability of British power in India depended primarily on the institution of a free press and the willing devolution of greater power and responsibility upon Indians. Here, evidently, he was thinking exclusively of a class of people who could combine the advantages of traditional rank and the benefits of a modern education. It was this class that could most effectively articulate the public’s perceptions about the state policy as well as socially disseminate modern values and changes in the nature of society and government. This led the Raja to protest repeatedly at the strictures passed against the Indian press in 1822. A petition was first submitted to Sir Francis Magnaghten, the Judge serving the Supreme Court at Calcutta and thereafter, the King in Council. The latter is usually taken to be the first attempt of its kind made by an Indian legal interpreter directly to the King.

However, what is more important here is not so much the uniqueness of the petition as its rationalization in terms of the Whig philosophy of the Reform Bill era.³⁹ It irked Rammohan that the colonial state unilaterally passed regulations without taking into confidence, the ‘responsible’ and ‘respectable’ classes in Hindu society. This pushed him into the paradoxical position of criticizing Mughal administrative policies yet acknowledging that under the Mughals, the Hindus could aspire to reach the highest offices of the state just as much as the upper class Muslim. On occasions one can detect his holding out veiled threats. Thus protesting against the Jury Bill of 1828 that empowered Christians to sit in judgment in the case of Hindu and Muslim offenders but not Christian offenders by either Hindu or Muslim, the Raja wrote the following to a friend:

…supposing that some hundred years hence, the Native character became elevated from constant intercourse with the European and the acquirements of general and political knowledge as well as of modern arts and sciences, is it possible that they will not have the spirit as well as the inclination to resist effectively, any unjust and oppressive measure serving to degrade them in the scale of society?⁴⁰

India could not be held down as easily as Ireland, the Raja warned, and eventually, the treatment of Indian subjects would very much determine whether the country would remain ‘useful and profitable as a willing province, an ally of the British Empire or troublesome and annoying as a determine enemy’.⁴¹ Interestingly, when his petition to the King opposing the Press Regulations failed to meet with a favourable response, Rammohan reacted rather dramatically by closing down the Mirat ul Akhbar.

Conclusion

With the advantage of historical hindsight it should be possible to say that in his overarching vision, Rammohan as indeed a modern man. Hs modernity lay not merely in his historical location but in the precise meanings that he derived from this. His vision was modern also because it was never overburdened by tradition or inhibited in the acceptance of change. Rammohan Roy respected tradition and often chose to express himself through it. However, tradition to him was never frozen in time but always capable of being reinterpreted and revalidated in the light of new experiences. This is precisely how he meant to bring something as traditional as Vedanta to the necessities of contemporary life. In this, he anticipates the life and work of the Hindu missionary, Swami Vivekanand.

The idea of reform was intrinsic to Rammohan’s thought since for good or worse he had come to accept the idea emanating in post-Enlightenment Europe of interminable human progress. At the same time, he was realistic enough to realize that change or reform in human society had to operate within a set of values determined by particular societies. It occurs to me that Rammohan was perhaps the first modern Hindu thinker to suggest that so far as the Hindus were concerned, the key to all reform, whether social, moral or political lay in religious reform. This perception was to dominate Hindu thinking for a long time.

In his personal culture, Rammohan appears quite anomalous but perhaps therein also lies his strength. In the matter of dressing, he was a Mughal, in manners and personal conduct a European and in religious and ritual conformity, a Hindu. Whether at home or outside, the Raja displayed European civility in his dealings with women. His granddaughter, Chandrajyoti Devi, recalled how he would take his seat only after the ladies in his presence were seated.⁴² And yet, we are reliably informed that on the voyage to England the Raja would have his food cooked only by Brahmans out of deference to caste prejudices.⁴³ By the time he left for England, Rammohan had come to be attacked both from the conservative society in Calcutta and the youthful Radicals. The conservatives were outraged at his iconoclasm, his role in the anti-Sati campaign and his mixing with non-Hindus. The radical Derozians, on the other hand, found him too ambivalent and backtracking on social questions.⁴⁴

There is reason to believe that Rammohan did not advocate an end to British rule, at least not in the foreseeable future. It was not the natural wish of the colonized, he wrote at one place, to separate from the mother country and if the Americans had indeed done so, this was only the result of persistent mis-government.⁴⁵ By this, presumably, Rammohan tried to convey that it was not a foreign government per se that was objectionable but its failure to take cognizance of the legitimate ambitions of its subjects. On the other hand, he was only too sensitive to the question of basic human rights and dignity, which, in his opinion, cut across all social and political rank. Sometime in 1809, when unduly insulted by a European officer, Rammohan Roy promptly sent off a strong letter of protest to Governor-General, Lord Minto, demanding unconditional apology from the offender.⁴⁶ It is tribute to contemporary notions of justice that he obtained what he had legitimately demanded.

Interestingly enough, although Rammohan saw continued British rule to be advantageous to India in most ways, he also seems prepared to accept the idea of the two countries severing their connections with one another:

if events should occur to effect a separation [of the two countries] … still a friendly and highly advantageous commercial intercourse may be kept up between the two free and Christian countries, united as they are by the resemblance of language, religion and manners.⁴⁷

From this B.B. Majumdar has concluded that in his last years, Rammohan Roy had accepted the ‘submergence’ of India’s linguistic and cultural identity ‘in the stream of European civilisation’.⁴⁸ On closer examination, such claims appear far-fetched. While the dissemination of the English language did anglicize and alienate Indian life styles, it also served as a major medium of cultural and political contestation for the Indians themselves. And by the term ‘Christian’ Rammohan did not mean a particular religious persuasion but a certain moral outlook upon the world. The moral obligation that one man may feel for another was extremely important for the Raja, with or without its cultural or theological framework. One of Rammohan’s favourite maxims was that ‘true way of serving God was to do good to man’.⁴⁹ This seemingly Christina precept was borrowed from the Sufi mystic poet, Sheikh Sadi.

In India, there were mixed reactions upon hearing Rammohan’s untimely death. His close friends and supporters mourned the event but others were not as forthcoming in their praise. Governor General Bentinck, greatly enamoured of his life and labours, personally contributed a sum of Rs 500 to the commemoration funds and promised to contribute more only if Rammohan’s countrymen could institute a chair in his honour. Sadly, no one responded to this generous offer.