Searching for Truth

( 1772-1803 )

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH

• 1772, May 22 — His birth at Radhanagar.
• 1781-82 — Second and Third Marriages.
• 1787 — Leaves home to study Buddhism in Tibet.
• 1790-91 — Returns home and shortly afterwards settles at Benares.¹
• 1800 — Birth of his elder son Radhaprasad
• 1801 — First acquaintance with Mr. John Digby, of Bengal C. S.
• 1803 — Death of his father Ramkanta Roy

Rammohun Roy was born in the village of Radhanagar, near Krishnagar, in the Zilla of Hugli on the 22nd of May, 1772.²

His pedigree has been preserved upto a very early date, but we need not trace it in detail beyond his great-grandfather, Krishnachandra Banerji, who entered the service of the Nawab of Bengal and received from him the title of “Roy Roy,”³ afterwards contracted into Roy, which has ever since remained the designation of the family. This occurred during the reign of Emperor Aurangzib (1619-1707).⁴

Krishnachandra is said to have been an acute and able man, and a zealous member of the Vaishnava sect. He had three sons; Hariprasad Amarchandra and Brajabinode. Brajabinode Roy was wealthy and philanthropic and devotedly attached to his gods. He was employed under the Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowla in some honourable position at Murshidabad,⁵ but on account of some ill treatment he quitted that employment and spent the rest of his life at home. His fifth son Ramkanta Roy, was the father of our hero. But Rammohun’s maternal ancestors belonged to the rival sect of the Śaktas, of which his mother’s father was a priest—a curious conjuncture of antecedents for the future reformer of Hinduism. How this came to pass is thus narrated:—As Brajabinode Roy lay dying on the banks of the Ganges, a man named Shyama Bhattacharya of Chatara near Serampore, came to him requesting a boon. He was of honourable parentage and his family were well-known as the priests of the locality. The kind-hearted Brajabinode readily consented, and swore by the Ganges to grant the boon; whereupon Shyama Bhattacharya asked permission to bestow his daughter in marriage upon one of Brajabinode’s sons. Now as he was not only the priest of a rival sect but a bhanga kulin⁶ the dying man felt as if he had been trapped, but having sworn by the Ganges, he could not break his word. So he called his seven sons, and requested them, one by one, to make good his promise. All refused except the fifth son, Ramkanta, who readily accepted the unwelcome bride, and in due course married her. They had three children: the eldest was a daughter (name not recorded); the second and third were sons, Jagamohun and Rammohun. The daughter married one Sridhar Mukherji, said to have been a clever man (whose father is reported to have lived to his 125th year), and her son, Gurudas Mukerji, was much attached to his uncle Rammohun, and is said to have been the latter’s first convert in his own family.

Ramkanta Roy had also another wife⁷, of whom nothing is known except that she had a son named Ramlochan, of whom but little is recorded. But it is quite evident that Rammohun’s mother was the mistress of the household. Her name was Tarini, but she was always called Phulthakurani, i. e., “the fifth son’s wife.” She was a woman of strong character and of fine understanding and appears to have had considerable influence over her husband.

All that is recorded of Ramkanta Roy shows him to have been an upright and estimable man. He, like his father⁸ served for a time (as a Sarcar) under Siraj-ud-Dowla, but subsequently retired to Radhanagar. Here he rented some villages from the Raja of Burdwan, which seems to have been the first beginning of a long series of disputes between the Raja and the Roy family. Judging from the full report of a lawsuit brought against Rammohun Roy many years later by this Raja, he appears to have been so unscrupulous a man that we may fairly conclude him to have been in the wrong in his early conflicts with Ramkanta Roy, who was often so disgusted with the treatment he received that he would neglect his affairs for a while, and retire to meditate and tell his Harinam beads in a garden of sacred Tulsi plants. He was very devout, and a staunch believer in Vishnu as the Supreme God, and in Rāma as the last incarnation but one⁹ of Vishnu. Fortunately for his domestic peace, his Śakta wife was soon led to adopt his beliefs, which she did so heartily as to occasion some slight friction with her father if legend speaks truly.

Such was the home into which Rammohun Roy was born. His father spared no expense in his education; and local traditions assert that he showed great intelligence at an early age, and possessed a remarkably tenacious memory, never forgetting anything which he had once heard or read. After completing his school course of Bengali education, he took up the study of Persian (then the Court language throughout India), and soon became fascinated by the mystic poetry and philosophy of the Persian Sufis, for which he retained an ardent attachment throughout his life. He was next sent to Patna to learn Arabic, and (it is said, by his mother’s desire) to Benares to learn Sanskrit. At Patna his masters set him to study Arabic translations from Euclid and Aristotle and he then also made acquaintance with the Koran. All these influences, especially the last, tended inevitably towards the disintegration of his earliest religious beliefs, which had been very fervent. His friend, William Adam, wrote of him in 1826:—“He seems to have been religiously disposed from his early youth, having proposed to seclude himself from the world as a Sannyasi, or devotee, at the age of fourteen, from which he was only dissuaded by the entreaties of his mother.” It is said that his reverence for Vishnu was at one time so great that he would not even take a draught of water without first reciting a chapter of the Bhagavata Purāṇa. The boundless veneration which he is said to have entertained for his father’s household deities, is still more characteristically illustrated by the story that he could not bear to witness the performance of the Yatra (or popular play) of Man Bhanjan, in which the God Krishna weeps, clasping the feet of his fair Radhika, and his peacock head-gear and green clothes are seen rolling in the dust.

Another anecdote is reported of his Hindu period,—that “for the attainment of knowledge and wisdom,” he had, at a great expense, a certain ceremony performed for him 22 times, called Puraścharaṇa, consisting in a repetition of the name of a deity, accompanied with burnt offerings.

But Rammohun was not to pass out of this early phase without one mark of Hindusim which remained to colour his whole life. While yet a mere child, his father married him three times. The first bride died “at a very early age” (not specified), and after her death as we learn from William Adam’s letters, “his father, when he was only about nine years of age, married him within an interval of less than a twelvemonth to two different wives. This was in perfect conformity with the usage of his caste [the Kulin Brahman] and was done when he was incapable of judging for himself.”¹⁰

At last came the inevitable break. All accounts agree that it was preceded by much theological discussion between Rammohun and his father, and it is probably to this period that we should refer the following reminiscences of Mr. Adam, given in his Memorandum of 1879.

“It is not often that we get an insight into Hindu family life but his [ Ramkanta Roy’s ] son gave me a slight glance at least in referring to the amicable differences that arose between himself and his father on this subject. I inferred from what R. R. said that he always left it to his father, as the head and most venerable member of the family, to open the question which he thought fit to moot, and when he had finished his immediate argument, he was generally willing to listen to his son with patience, which sometimes, however, forsook him. The son’s response after the necessary preliminary admissions, usually began with the adversative particle ‘But’ ( Kintu ). ‘But notwithstanding all this, the orthodox conclusion you aim at does not follow.’ The father complained of this, and on one occasion, at least, burst out in the tone of remonstrance, as of an injured party : ‘Whatever argument I adduce you have always your Kintu, your counter-statement, your counter-argument, your counter-conclusion to oppose to me.’ The son recounted this to me with half a smile on his lips and a touch of humour in his voice, but without any expression of disrespect to his father.”

What follows may best be told in the words of Dr. Lant Carpenter :

“Without disputing the authority of his father, he often sought from him information as to the reasons of his faith; he obtained no satisfaction; and he at last determined at the early age of 15, to leave the paternal home, and sojourn for a time in Tibet, that he might see another form of religious faith. *¹¹ He spent two or three years in that country, and often excited the angers of the worshippers of the Lama by his rejection of their doctrine that this pretended deity—a living man—was the creator and preserver of the world. In these circumstances he experienced the soothing kindness of the female part of the family; and his gentle, feeling heart lately dwelt with deep interest, at the distance of more than forty years, on the recollections of that period which, he said, had made him always feel respect and gratitude towards the female sex.”

The precise extent and duration of his travels is not known; but they appear to have lasted about three or four years, and to have been terminated by a message of recall from his father, who is said to have grieved much at his absence, and to have shown him great kindness on his return. But all accounts agree that he did not remain long under the family roof, the incompatibility being too great. Our only actual knowledge as to his next step is derived from his own evidence in the Burdwan lawsuit already referred to, in which he states that “so far from inheriting the property of his deceased father, he had, during his lifetime, separated from him and the rest of the family, in consequence of his altered habits of life and change of opinions, which did not permit their living together.” Whither he betook himself none of his biographers seem to have known; but happily the missing fact is supplied in the letters of his friend, William Adam, who wrote in 1826 that Rammohun, after relinquishing idolatry, “was obliged to reside for ten or twelve years at Benares, at a distance from all his friends and relatives, who lived on the family estate at Burdwan, in Bengal.”¹² Referring to this period, another friend has testified as follows:—‘So strongly were his feelings wrought upon by the alienation which then commenced, that through life, under the pressure of dejection or disease, the frowning features of his father would rise unbidden on his imagination’.¹³

Probably he fixed his residence at Benares on account of the facilities afforded by that sacred city for the study of Sanskrit; and if so, we may conclude that it was chiefly at this period that he acquired his extensive knowledge of the Hindu Śāstras. Certainly it was not till then that he began family life on his own account, for his eldest son, Radhaprasad, was born in the year 1800, when Rammohun must have been about twenty-eight years old, apparently seven years after his return from travel. On what resources he then subsisted does not appear. The only lucrative occupation in which he is ever known to have been engaged was his work in the Civil Service under the East India Company; but that must certainly be referred to a later date, as he only began to learn English in 1796, and had not obtained much proficiency in it by 1801.¹⁴ Probably, however, in such a seat of Hindu learning as Benares he might have obtained employment by copying manuscripts. In any case, he seems to have remained there until his father’s death in 1803. It is a relief to know that after all their differences, the father and son were together at the last.¹⁵ This we learn from Mr. Adam, who reports as follows in his Memorandum:

“R. Roy, in conversation, mentioned to me with much feeling that he had stood by the deathbed of his father, who with his expiring breath continued to invoke his God—Ram! Ram! with a strength of faith and a fervour of pious devotion which it was impossible not to respect although the son had then ceased to cherish any religious veneration for the family deity”.

Ramkanta Roy was succeeded in his estate by his son Jagamohun. Rammohun inherited no portion of his father’s property.¹⁶

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

I

This does not seem to be correct. Modern investigation tends to show that during the years 1790-91 Rammohun was most probably at Radhanagar. In or about 1792 Ramkanta Roy removed with his family from his ancestral house at Radhanagar to the adjoining village of Langulpara where he built a new house. “Towards the end of 1796 Ramkanta Roy took a step that greatly influenced the career of his second son Rammohun. He divided the bulk of his immovable property among his three sons by a deed of partition executed on the 1st December 1796 (19th Agrahāyana, B.S. 1203). He assigned the house at Langulpara jointly to Jagamohun and Rammohun and his share of the ancestral house at Radhanagar to his youngest son Ramlochan. Among other properties he allotted the entire taluk Harirampur to Jagamohun and a house with a pond bounded by four boundaries purchased of Ramkrishna Set and others at Jorasanco in Mauja Calcutta” to Rammohun. Ramkanta retained exclusively as his own share “a small part” of his self acquired property and the Burdwan lodging house as well as the idols, the worship of which he had himself established. His own share in the worship of his ancestral idols was distributed equally among his three sons (R. P. Chanda and J. K. Majumdar. Selections from the Official Letters and Documents Relating to the Life of Raja Rammohun Roy pp. xxi-xxii). The original deed of partition was in Bengali. An English translation is attached to the Bill of Complaint of Govindaprasad Roy, nephew of Rammohun, filed in the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, on the 23rd June 1817, (Ibid pp. 71-75), in connection with the law-suit Govindaprasad Roy vs. Rammohun Roy. (For details of this case, see Note V to Chapter II.)

II

Brajabinode Roy, grandfather of Rammohun, served under Nawab Alivardi Khan, the grandfather and immediate predecessor of Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowla, with distinction and rendered useful service to the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II (1759-1806) when the latter came to the Eastern Provinces as heir-apparent in 1759 and continued to reside there even after his accession to the throne. In a letter addressed to Rammohun by the Mughal King Akbar II of Delhi in 1828, the latter refers to the good services rendered by Rammohun’s grandfather to emperor Shah Alam II during Shah Alam’s residence in the Eastern Provinces. (See Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents p. xx; Banerji Rammohun Roy p. 11; for the text of King Akbar’s letter see Banerji Rajah Rammohun Roy’s Mission to England pp. 3-4; J. K. Majumdar Raja Rammohun Roy and the Last Moghuls p. 331.)

III

Some of the modern writers question the historicity of Rammohun’s visit to Tibet in his boy-hood (e. g. Brajendranath Banerji, Rammohun Roy: The First Phase in the Calcutta Review December 1933 p. 254). It is true that Rammohun nowhere specifically refers to his early sojourn to Tibet in his extant writings. But the fact that Dr. Carpenter heard twice about it from Rammohun himself and the specific details mentioned by him leave hardly any room for doubt in the matter. In a memoir on Rammohun Roy published in Calcutta in 1879, Rev. K. S. Macdonald has given the following account of Rammohun’s Tibetan visit: “While at Patna he must have heard a good deal of Buddhism, if not also of the religious practices of the aboriginal tribes inhabiting the hills of Central and Southern India and the slopes of the Himalayas. By going to Tibet he would come into closer contact with Buddhism, and on his way thither, might also learn something of the devil-worship of the aborigines. In Tibet he spent two or three years disputing daily with the worshipper of the living Lama, who frequently passed from quiet ratiocination to angry abuse of the stranger. He however met with much kindness as many a stranger has before and since in kindred circumstances, from the female sex, a kindness which, forty years after, he said, had made him always feel respect and gratitude towards the gentle sex.” (Quoted in The Father of Modern India : Rammohun Roy Centenary Commemoration Volume Part II p. 30). In the autobiographical letter of Rammohun, published after his death by his one-time secretary Sandford Arnot in the London journals the Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette, there is the following statement: “When about the age of sixteen, I composed a manuscript calling in question the validity of the idolatrous system of the Hindoos. This, together with my known sentiments on the subject, having produced a coolness between me and my immediate kindred, I proceeded on my travels and passed through different countries, chiefly within but some beyond the bounds of Hindoostan with a feeling of great aversion to the establishment of the British power in India.” (For the text of this autobiographical letter, see Appendix VIII.) The travels in countries beyond the bounds of Hindoostan may possibly have included the visit to Tibet. It is only fair to say that Miss Collet regarded the above letter as spurious. But she does not assign any reasons for her opinion. In the Arabic preface to his Persian tract Tuhfatul Muwahhidin Rammohun makes a further reference to his early travels in the following words: “I travelled in the remotest parts of the world, in plains as well as in hilly lands…” (Tuhfatul Muwahhidin or A Gift to Deists Eng. Trans. by Maulavi Obaidullah El Obaide, Reprint Calcutta 1949, Introduction). It may be mentioned in passing that the famous French scholar Garcin de Tassy, a contemporary and an acquaintance of Rammohun Roy, also refers to the latter’s early visit to Tibet though he adds nothing to the evidence of Dr. Carpenter. (See Garcin de Tassy Histoire de la Littérature Hindouie et Hindoustanie seconde édition, Tome II. p. 549). On this point, we consider the personal testimony of Dr. Carpenter, conclusive. It should also be noted that the assumption of Rammohun’s early visit to Tibet does not present any chronological difficulty. He could have easily spent the period from 1788 to 1790, or at least a part of it, in Tibet. (See Prabhat Chandra Ganguli Rammohun-Prasaṅga in Bengali, Calcutta 1353 B. S. pp. 89-93).

IV

About nine months after the partition of Ramkanta Roy’s property (in 1796), Rammohun left Langulpara for Calcutta in September 1797, leaving his two wives with his mother Tarini Devi. In Calcutta Rammohun started money-lending business and appointed one Golaknarayan Sarkar as his clerk. That he lent money to distinguished officers of the East India Company, during this period of his life, is proved by the evidence of witnesses called to testify for him in the case Govindaprasad Roy vs. Rammohun Roy. Golaknarayan testified on the 11th May, 1819, that about twenty-one or twenty-two years ago Rammohun advanced a loan of Rs. 7500 to the Hon’ble Andrew Ramsay, a civil servant of the East India Company (Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp. 190-91). Another witness, Gopeemohun Chatterjee who had been a Tahvildar or Cash-keeper in the service of Rammohun since the Bengali year 1208, testifying for Rammohun in the same case on the 28th September 1818, said that in the Bengali year 1209 Rammohun had lent Rs. 5000 to Thomas Woodforde another civilian of the East India Company (Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp. 130, 137-38). From the evidences of Gopeemohun Chatterjee and Rammohun’s nephew Gurudas Mukherji (a witness on Rammohun’s side, examined on the 30th April and the 1st May, 1819), we further come to know that about this time Rammohun also employed himself in the business of dealing in Company’s Papers (Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp. 136, 184). On July 12, 1799 Rammohun purchased two taluks, Govindapur and Rameswarpur, situated in the Jahanabad and Chandrakona parganas, respectively, in the Burdwan district, West Bengal, which henceforth gave him a steady annual income of Rs. 5500 (vide the evidence of Rajiblochan Roy, given in the same case on behalf of Rammohun on the 20th April, 1819 in Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp 168-72). A few months after the purchase of the taluks, Rammohun left Calcutta for Patna, Benares and other far away places in northern India. Before his departure, he entrusted the management of his newly purchased estates to his friend Rajiblochan Roy, an influential Zamindar of Burdwan. An agreement was made to the effect that in case of his death abroad, his nephew Gurudas Mukherji would inherit the said taluks (vide Exhibit B in the case Govindaprasad Roy vs. Rammohun Roy; Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents Appendix I p. 525). Rammohun had as yet no issue; his eldest son Radhaprasad is generally supposed to have been born about July, 1800, six months after the execution of this Deed of Agreement. There is however some controversy as to the year of Radhaprasad’s birth. Rajiblochan Roy testifying on behalf of Rammohun, in the case Govindaprasad Roy vs. Rammohun Roy, said that Radhaprasad was born in 1207 B. S. (i.e. 1800); while Gurudas Mukherji, Rammohun’s nephew, in course of his evidence, on behalf of Rammohun in the same case, gave the year of Radhaprasad’s birth as 1208 B. S. (i.e. 1801-1802). (Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp. 172, 186). Rammohun’s stay in upper India must have been short. He returned to Calcutta probably towards the end of the year 1800. In 1801 he made the acquaintance of Mr. John Digby, one of his best friends and well-wishers among Englishmen. The latter was then studying in the College of Fort William, Calcutta. Rammohun seems to have been intimately connected about this time with the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the College of Fort William. The Kazi-ul-Kazzat (chief Kaji) of the Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Maulavis of the Fort William College were friendly to him and had a high opinion of his character and abilities. (Chanda and Mazumdar Letters and Documents p. 43). In March 1803 we find Rammohun holding the post of Dewan under Mr. Thomas Woodforde, Collector of Dacca-Jalalpore (modern Faridpur in East Pakistan). He however resigned that post on the 14th May, 1803 presumably on hearing of his father’s serious illness and proceeded to Burdwan via Calcutta. (See Brajendranath Banerji Rammohun Roy pp. 21-22; Chanda and Majumdar Letters and Documents pp. 27, 30). It will thus be seen that Rammohun could not possibly have stayed for ten or twelve years at Benares during his journey to upper India, as supposed by William Adam. His stay there must have been much shorter.

V

Mr. Brajendranath Banerji thinks that Rammohun was not present by his father’s bed-side at the time of the latter’s death. (Rammohun Roy p. 22). Mr. Adam’s graphic personal testimony however cannot be easily ignored. Mr. Prabhat Chandra Ganguli supports Mr Adam’s statement with good arguments. (See his Rammohun-Prasaṅga pp. 33-38).

• In Rammohun’s evidence on the Burdwan law-suit, he describes his own position as that of “a son separating himself from his father during his life-time, and by his own exertion acquiring property unconnected with his father, and after his father’s death inheriting no portion of his father’s property”.