What was the impact of Raja Rammohun Roy’s effort of bringing reforms in Bengal?

The scope of the so-called Indian renaissance started in Bengal by Rammohun Roy was very much limited, in so far as it meant only to remove certain glaring evil practices like sati which tyrannised but a small segment of the Brahmin sector of the Hindu society. Rammohun Roy was able to do what little he could in this field only with the active support of the British Government.

The British Government was keen on the suppression of such detestable superstitions and was waiting for the consummation of the influence of European education and the efforts of native reformers like Rammohun Roy for their gradual desuetude. The mighty support of the British judiciary was moreover the reform­ers’ forte, for the Nizamat Adalat in November 1826 considered the matter and Judge Smith insisted on immediate and entire prohibition of sati.

Judge Ross also expressed the belief that it would not, as had been feared, cause any disaffection among the native troops. Rammohun Roy’s achievements as a modemizer and reformer, in that sense were both limited and ambivalent. He and his followers were but the unconscious and helpless agents of the process of imperial economic and political penetration.

The great reforms of 19th century were, to be sure, the handiwork of British administrators; the modernizing effect that flowed from these social changes was the necessary condition and causal factor for the rise of the so-called renaissance. Roy’s role was only as a helper in the British effort to eradicate some social evils that made Hindu society a loathsome institution. His achievements were limited to intellectual plane and not extend to the level of basic social transformation.

In that sense he was the child of Indian renaissance and not the father of it and whatever contribution he had made to the advancement of the renaissance culture remained confined to the microscopic minority of the Hindu elitist and colonial framework in North India. South India was rather unaffected by the Rammohun Roy wave.

His effort to produce a synthesis of Hindu, Islamic and Western cultural traditions was too intellec­tual an exercise that it produced little or no change even in the public life of Bengal. Like Ditty-e-Ilahi of Akbar, it was a sublime attempt attended by transcendent failure; it left no trace of it in the institutional or social history of India.

The impact of Rammohun Roy’s movement was felt not on the contemporary society but on a later one. This long-range impact was, to be sure, the work of his admirers. He approached the social problems with extreme caution because public opinion was highly inflammable if reforms were imposed without taking into consideration the religious susceptibilities of the orthodox people.

Lord Bentinck wrote in his Minute on the issue of legislating against sati: “That enlightened native, Rammohan Roy was of the opinion that the practice might be suppressed, quietly and unobserved, by increasing the difficulties and by the indirect agency of the police.” He apprehended that any public enactment would give rise to general apprehension that the reasoning would be. “

While the English were contending for power, they deemed it politic to allow universal toleration and to respect our religion, but having obtained the supremacy, their first act is a violation of their professions, and the next will probably be, like the Mahommedan conquerors, to force upon us their religion.”

This amply illustrates the point that Roy had not succeeded in creating a favourable public opinion in Bengal for the introduction of the beneficial reforms at the hands of the British. It was Bentick’s humanitarian zeal that broke the backbone of opposition. Where there was no voluntary change forthcoming, he decided to strike heavily and with sure marksmanship. With confidence and supreme urge for change he wrote, “I write and feel as a Legislator for the Hindoos, and as I believe many enlightened Hindoos think and feel”.

The firmness with which this Legislator for the Hindus acted and the eagerness with which he sought to alleviate the evils, rightly put him on the front row of the heralds of the renaissance in India. With the optimism of a staunch humanist he declared, “The first and primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindoos. I know nothing so important to the improvement of their future condition, as the establishment of a purer morality, whatever their belief, and a more just conception of the will of God.

The first step to this better understanding will be dissociation of religious belief and practice from blood and murder. They will then, when no longer under this brutalizing excitement, view, with more calmness acknowledged truths. They will see that there can be no inconsistency in the ways of providence that to the command received as divine by all races of men.

“No innocent blood shall be spilt”, there can be no exception; and when they shall have been convinced of the error of this first and most criminal of their customs, may it not be hoped that others which stand in the Way of their improvement may likewise pass away, and that, thus emancipated from those chains and shackles upon their minds and actions, they may no longer continue, as they have done, the slaves of every foreign conqueror, but that they may assume their just places among the great families of mankind.”

From this it may be assumed without any error of contradiction that a polarization of cultural attitudes materialized among the Bengali intelligentsia in response to the enlightened cultural policy of the British Government. Rammohun Roy became the leader of this group by virtue of his reforming zeal and intellectual eminence.

These reformers, it may be noted, had no separate individual existence apart from the nurturant and protective penthouse of the British bureaucracy. If the governmental machinery was not utilized to effect changes in the social life in Bengal, and social legislation was not introduced in right earnest by the enlightened British administrators, the influence of Rammohun Roy would have been very much like dust in the balance.

When reforms were forced from above, through channels of state machinery, the people had no other choice but to submit. They were certainly not accepted without protest. As reported in the Asiatic Journal of March 1818, two widows fulfilled the sati ideal, in the presence of Rammohun Roy, and deliber­ately walked into the flames, the younger widow having previously with great animation, addressed herself to the bystanders in words to this effect “you have just seen my husband’s first wife perform the duty incumbent on her, and will now see me follow her example. Henceforward, I pray, do not attempt to prevent Hindu women from burning; otherwise our curse will be upon you.”

Concerning the limited success of the early reform organization C.H. Heimsath says: “The small groups such as the Brahmo and other reformist samajas remain isolated from the masses of the people that they sought to transform, sometimes by choice and always because of the immense social gap and discrepancy in size in India between the educated and uneducated portions of the population.”

He pointedly stresses the insignificance of the direct impact produced by Rammohan Roy’s social reform efforts. “One gets the impression”, says he, “from some writers that Roy’s campaign against sati, for example, which, incidentally faltered badly at the end and required Lord Bentinck’s stronger stomach for offending high caste sensitivities-succeeded overnight. The words of the reformers and the deeds of society and of the reformers themselves give two very difference impressions”.

In fact the nineteenth century renaissance was the renaissance that re­mained in the imagination of a small section of English educated high caste Hindus who had no real stake in the society, whose interest in the masses was nothing more than a romantic intellectual sympathy for them.

Their alienation from their own society partly because of adoption of English manners and thoughts and their identification with the established centers of authority, made their talk of reform and progress, more intellectual dissimulation and empty eliches. As Poddar remarked, under such leadership an Indian “renaissance which assured the people neither a recognition nor a place in the manifes­tation of its will was from its very inception a distorted sapless renaissance.”

Following Rammohan Roy’s campaign, we do not find in Bengal or in any part of India, that “ripening” of economy and florescence of culture with a fairly deep base in the people which rebirth or renaissance should suggest. What these reformers actually did was that emphasising individual emancipation; they looked to the government to break open the tightly guarded customs of upper caste Hindu through appropriate legislation.

This meant reliance on British agency for reform of Hindu society, a weak, and in the long run, ineffective mechanism. Viewed from this angle, the social reform movement initiated by Rammohan Roy and carried on by others in northern India, was nothing but an accom­plishment of the liberal British administrators of the period.

In sum it may be said that all reform movements of the 19th century in North India has an enlightened government in the van to clear the way, to act opportunely, and to implement changes without producing friction in the society. But in Kerala, especially in Travancore and Cochin, the citadels of archaic customs and caste rules, that favourable condition viz., the presence of the nurturant and protective state authority, was totally absent; there orthodox rulers, under the direction of prejudiced Dewans, were totally opposed to even a slight change in the recognised customs. Some of these customs were enjoined by the Scriptures, but many were invented by the Nambudiris.

Such usages or customs were fashioned to suit the life style of each caste. The comfort of the upper caste-men was the basis of all these customary rules and practices. Thus says Mateer, “The use of public highways was forbidden to outcastes, and anyone daring to pass on within polluting distance of a Nayar would be cut down at once.

To secure immediate recognition of such classes, they were required to be uncovered above the waist; shoes, umbrellas, fine cloth and costly ornaments were interdicted to them. The holding of umbrellas was prohibited to all castes, except Brahmanas, on public occasions, though the rains were pouring upon them.

The proper salutation from a female to persons of rank was to uncover the bosom.” It is clear that none of these injections are having any sanction of the Dharma Sastras or other scriptures of the Hindus. Still they were taken to be sacred customs, any violation of which being considered as producing imbalance in society and bringing in ruin of social happiness.

The rulers thought it their divine duty to protect the rights of the upper caste-man and any attempt on the part of the outcastes to question the sanctity of this social arrangement or to assert their right to be treated on a par with the Brahmins, was looked upon as grave crime and keel-hauled mercilessly.

The ruler of Venmani issued a proclamation stating. “The women who do not yield to the wish of men of the same or superior castes are immoral and should be put to death immediately.” Instances can be multiplied wherein the authority of Government unlike in the British Indian territories of North India, was used always to protect the unjust claims of caste Hindus. The Shanar revolts of 1829 and 1859 occurred when the women folk insisted on wearing upper garments.

The orthodox Hindus resorted to violent acts of repression to counteract this harmless violation of a vile and detestable customs and the state joined them by wielding its thunder against the depressed classes. Here governments were not enlightened to allow communities willing to change, to admit change in their customs and manners.