Why is Raja Ram Mohan Roy considered as the path – maker of Modern India ? Explain.
Ans – Raja Ram Mohan Roy is known all over the world as the founder of the school of Comparative Religion, as the great Vedantist who, on the one hand admits the influence of the Christian missionaries, and on the other hand, lays the foundation of monotheism in India. He is famous as the first advocate of social reforms on rational principles and the pioneer of Western education in the country.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy had been assessed very highly by different great personalities. According to Bipin Chandra Pal, “ He ( Raja Ram Mohan Roy ) was the first to affiliate political and social freedom to religious and spiritual emancipation and to initiate the present freedom movement in all its aspects in Modern India.
Roy’s unshakable faith in the ability, intelligence and capability of his countrymen to attain heights as was reached by any other civilised nation was clear in all his writings in regard to political reforms. S N Banerjee described Ram Mohan Roy as the first political agitator. Writing on Ram Mohan Roy, Jawaharlal Nehru said , “ He was more than a scholar and investigator, he was a reformer above all.” There was no aspect of national life which was left untouched by Ram Mohan Roy.
According to V P Naik, “ In the field of social and religious reform no less than in journalism and in politics his one endeavour was to awaken his countrymen not only to their rights as free men, but also to their obligation to society,”.
Dr Brajendra Nath Seal sums up his assessment of Roy as under :-
“ He ( Raja Ram Mohan Roy ) gave modern meaning and purpose to these ancient and medieval elements of Indian polity. He went on to link them up with representative government, trial by jury, and freedom of the press, and he corrected and completed the Hindu personal law of marriage, inheritance, religious worship, women’s status, stri-dhan and varna-ashrama-dharma by introducing the most liberal principles of justice and equity, for which, he found sanction also in old codes, thus working out a synthesis between Eastern and Western social values and postulates against the common background of universal humanity.”
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a great humanist and internationalist. Bentham, the great British liberal thinker greeted him as “his intensely admired and dearly beloved collaborator in the service of mankind. According to Miss Collet, “ Whatever future destinies may have in and work of Ram Mohan Roy, and not future of India alone, we stand on the eve of an unprecedented intermingling of the East and the West.”
