The Abolition of Suttee

( 1828—1830 )

THE ABOLITION OF SUTTEE

• 1828. March—Lord Amherst leaves India. July 4—Lord William Bentinck proclaimed Governor-General. August 18—Rammohun’s Letter on the Jury Act. August 20—The Brahmo Samaj founded.
• 1829. [Religious Instructions founded on Sacred Authorities] November 8—Lord William Bentinck’s Minute on Suttee. November 12—Rammohun’s letter on the European (Indigo) planters. December 4—Regulation passed for the Abolition of Suttee.
• 1830. January 8—Rammohun notifies to Lord William Bentinck his elevation to the rank of Rajah. January 16—Presents Anti-Suttee address of thanks to Lord William Bentinck. January 17—Formation of the Dharma Sabha. January 23—The Adi Brahmo Samaj building opened. Its Trust-deed. Abstract of the Arguments regarding Suttee. Rights of Hindus over Ancestral property. July—Rammohun helps the missionary, Duff, to found his first school. November—Rammohun sails for England.

The concluding stages of the Anti-Suttee movement form a highly instructive chapter in the history of the British government of India. It is interesting to watch the slow and cautious steps with which the official mind approached the decision which was at last precipitated by the resolute action of one strong personality. The feeling of the authorities had been, as we have seen, opposed to forcible repression of the rite. They preferred to hope that the influence of European education and the efforts of native reformers like Rammohun Roy would lead to its gradual desuetude. Out of this otiose optimism they were startled by the sudden increase of victims in 1825. The annual tale of Suttees rose at a bound from 577 to 639,—an advance of more than ten per cent. And the increase was not least rapid in and around Calcutta,—the very district where European culture was most strongly entrenched. The Nizamat Adalat considered the matter afresh (in November 1826). Judge Smith again insisted on immediate and entire prohibition; and he was supported in this demand by Judge Ross who expressed the belief that it would not, as had been feared, cause any disaffection among the native troops. These minutes coming before the Council, Vice-President Bayley (January 13, 1827) could not commit himself to so peremptory a policy, but recommended that Suttee should be prohibited in the territories where the earlier regulations were not in force, and where the British sway had been recently introduced, viz. in the districts of Delhi, Sangor, Nerbudda, Kumaoon, and Rangpore. Mr. Harington (February 18, 1827) drafted a Minute for the Suppression of Suttee, against the time when that measure should be decided on. On March 1st, Vice-President Combermere strongly advocated the immediate adoption of Mr. Bayley’s proposals. Lord Amherst (March 18) declined the taking of this step, as he did not believe the practice prevailed in the districts specified, or that half measures would be productive of good; and he was not prepared to enact its total suppression. He trusted to the diffusion of knowledge among the natives for the gradual eradication of the “detestable superstition.” He “would rather wait a few years” for this desirable consummation.¹ At the end of 1827 the Judges reiterated their convictions on the matter, and Mr. Bayley urged his plea once more. On January 4, 1828, Lord Amherst again declined to legislate, looking to “general instruction and the unostentatious exertions of our local officers” to bring about the diminution, “at no very distant period the final extinction of the barbarous rite”. This is practically his last word on the subject. Two months later he left India.

He was succeeded in Governor-Generalship by a man of very different character. Lord William Bentinck was one of those resolute Englishmen, of slight culture but remarkable practical insight, who, seeing that a certain thing needs to be done, do it, and by the fact accomplished dissipate a thousand fears and difficulties. Faced with an ugly deficit and charged with unpopular commissions from the Directors, he cheerily undertook one fresh measure after another of dreaded reform, and showed how much stronger one man in earnest is than a whole crowd of conventional obstacles. He found the Suttee problem confronting him. He was not content, like Lord Amherst, to “wait a few years.” He proceeded to grapple with it at once. He was well aware that the ultimate sanction of British sway was the sword; and his first quest was to know how far the army would support him. Confidential inquiries from forty-nine experienced officers elicited the gratifying information that the Sepoy would be scarcely if at all affected by the prohibition of the practice. Twenty-four out of the forty-nine officers declared in favour of its immediate and entire abolition; only five were opposed to change of any kind. The army was safe.

The judiciary was daily becoming more pronounced. The humane zeal of local British magistrates outran their legal powers. Cases occurred where they interfered to prevent Suttees which the law allowed; and the Supreme Court was forced, on appeal, to sanction the perpetration of the horrid deed. But the English gentlemen who formed the Nizamat Adalat winced under the charge of “unnecessarily authorizing suicide”; and we are not surprised to find that in 1828—before the reports of the military officers had been presented, four judges out of five declared for putting a stop at once for ever to the hateful custom. A year later all five judges were agreed. The Superintendents of Police for both Upper and Lower Provinces emphatically vouched for the complete safety of the step. Nine-tenths of the public functionaries in the interior were reported to be in its favour. Anglo-Indian opinion was practically unanimous.

Native opinion it was more difficult to sound directly. But the Governor-General had too keen an eye for the material facts of the situation to overlook the value of the man who had been a life-long mediator between Hindu and European civilizations; and he was still less likely to omit consulting the great native champion of the Anti-Suttee movement. Lord William Bentinck took counsel of Rammohun Roy. There is an interesting story of the way their first interview was arranged, which we transcribe from the Rev. Principal Macdonald’s lecture on the Hindu Reformer*:

Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, on hearing that he would likely receive considerable help from the Rajah in suppressing the pernicious custom of widow-burning, sent one of his aides-de-camp to him expressing his desire to see him. To this the Rajah replied, “I have now given up all worldly avocations, and am engaged in religious culture and in the investigation of truth. Kindly express my humble respects to the Governor-General and inform him that I have no inclination to appear before his august presence, and therefore I hope that he will kindly pardon me.” These words the aide-de-camp conveyed to the viceroy, who enquired, “What did you say to Rammohun Roy ?” The aide-de-camp replied, “I told him that Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General would be pleased to see him.” The Governor-General answered “Go back and tell him again that Mr. William Bentinck will be highly obliged to him if he will kindly see him once.” This the aide-de-camp did and Rammohun Roy could no longer refuse the urgent and polite request of his lordship.

The incident sheds light on the character of both the illustrious reformers. Rammohun’s refusal may at first cause some surprise. He might have been expected to welcome conference with a ruler so able and willing to accelerate reform. But it must be observed that the invitation gave no hint of the particular purpose for which it was issued. Rammohun did no more than decline an invitation to Court; he pleaded a distaste for its worldly pageantry and frivolous ambitions; and perhaps he was unwilling to give colour to the charge of his being a tool of the conquerors. When he found it was the man and not the Court functionary who appealed to him, he straightway waived all scruple and agreed to come.

A more official and less picturesque account of the matter is given by the India Gazette, of July 27, 1829:

An eminent native philanthropist who has long taken the lead of his countrymen on this great question has been encouraged to submit his views of it in a written form, and has been subsequently honoured with an audience by the Governor-General, who, we learn, has expressed his anxious desire to put an end to a custom constituting so foul a blot…….

The Gazette goes on to mention three courses as open to the Government,—either rigidly to enforce existing regulations; or to suppress Suttee in the provinces of Bengal and Bihar where it was most prevalent, but where British rule was longest known and best appreciated; or to abolish it throughout the Presidency.

The purport of Rammohun’s advice to the Governor-General has been preserved in Lord William Bentinck’s Minute of November 8. And here another surprise awaits us. We naturally suppose that the leader of the revolt against the burning of widows would eagerly grasp at the prospect of its prompt and forcible suppression by Government. But Rammohun positively endeavoured to dissuade Lord Bentinck from this drastic project. The Governor General, after detailing Mr. Horace Wilson’s arguments against abolition,² wrote on³:

I must acknowledge that a similar opinion as to the probable excitation of a deep distrust of our future intentions was mentioned to me in conversation by that enlightened native, Rammohun Roy, a warm advocate for the abolition of sati and of all other superstitions and corruptions engrafted on the Hindu religion, which he considers originally to have been a pure Deism. It was his opinion that the practice might be suppressed quietly and unobservedly 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 profession, and the next will probably be, like the Muhammadan conquerors, to force upon us their own religion’.⁴

We may explain Rammohun’s attitude by recalling his constitutional aversion to coercion; and any one who had undergone the bitter persecution which had fallen to his lot, might be pardoned for over-estimating the strength of popular antagonism to reform. The man of force argued differently from the man of suasion. He observed that out of 463 Suttees 420 took place in the Lower Provinces and 287 in the Calcutta Division. The figures for Suttees in the Bengal Presidency during the last four years in which the practice was tolerated are given thus:

The people in these districts had through the centuries been so habituated to submission that “insurrection or hostile opposition to the ruling power may be affirmed to be an impossible danger.” Had Suttee been prevalent among “the bold and manly people” of the Upper Provinces, the problem would have been fraught with much graver peril. But, as the faculty of resistance had all but died out of the chief practisers of Suttee, their apprehensions and suspicions might be safely disregarded.

So Lord William Bentinck cut the Gordian knot; and on the 4th of December, 1829, the Regulation was passed which declared the practice illegal and punishable as a criminal offence. All persons convicted of aiding and abetting in the sacrifice of a Hindu widow, whether she were a willing victim or not, whether she requested them or not, were pronounced guilty of culpable homicide; and where violence or other means of overpowering the victim’s will were employed, the death sentence might, at the discretion of the Court, be inflicted. Suttee was abolished. The reputation of the British Government and the fair fame of religion itself were redeemed from one of the foulest stains.

It would not be just to describe this result as a triumph of principle over policy. The toleration of Suttee hitherto had been due to a conflict of principles. On the one side was the plain principle of humanity, which demanded the instant suppression of the rite. On the other side was the sacred principle of religious liberty, which forbade the conqueror to interfere with the religious practices of a subject race. One cannot but admire the sensitive magnanimity which mingled with the calculating prudence of the British rulers and made them shrink from doing violence even to the most barbarous and outrageous dictates of the native conscience.

It is Rammohun’s distinctive glory that he relieved the British Government from this deadlock. He proved from the authoritative standards of Hinduism that Suttee was not a religious duty. He did more than this. He showed that not religious devotion, but the avaricious desire of relatives to avoid the cost of supporting the widow, had a great deal to do with the perpetuation of Suttee. Its suppression would therefore do no wrong to the faith which British honour had pledged itself to tolerate and respect. The principles of humanity and of religious liberty no longer clashed. The atrocity could consistently be put down. This solution of the difficulty was set in the forefront of the prohibitory Regulation :

The practice of Suttee, or of burning or burying alive the widows of Hindoos, is revolting to the feelings of human nature; it is nowhere enjoined by the religion of the Hindoos as an imperative duty; on the contrary, a life of purity and retirement on the part of the widow is more especially and preferably inculcated, and by a vast majority of that people throughout India the practice is not kept up nor observed; in some extensive districts it does not exist; in those in which it has been most frequent it is notorious that in many instances acts of atrocity have been perpetrated which have been shocking to the Hindoos themselves, and in their eyes unlawful and wicked. The measures hitherto adopted to discourage and prevent such acts have failed of success, and the Governor-General in Council is deeply impressed with the conviction that the abuses in question cannot be effectually put an end to without abolishing the practice altogether.⁵

But for the researches and the agitation carried on by Rammohun Roy, it is a question whether this preamble could have been written. Certain it is that the sentences which we have italicised would have fallen almost powerless but for the way Rammohun had driven home the truths they contained—by speech and newspaper and pamphlet—to the native mind.⁶

But the old custom was not to be surrendered without a strong protest. The Samāchār Chandrikā, the organ of Conservative Hinduism, sounded the alarm; and the India Gazette of Nov. 30th announced that a petition against the abolition of widow-burning was already in progress. The Gazette expressed the hope that the Sambād Kaumudi and the Banga Doot, as representing the more liberal portion of the native public, would correct current misconceptions and set the action of the Government in the right light. This deserves notice, as tribute to the value of Rammohun’s journalistic work.⁷ The petition against the new Regulation found little support, the Gazette said, among the respectable and influential classes. Signatures were procured with difficulty, having to be extorted by threats and taunts.⁸ So stated the Asiatic Journal of June 1830, which even went so far as to declare that “the Government had satisfied itself that the majority of the native community was decidedly opposed to the practice.”

At last on January 14th (1830), “a numerous and respectable body of petitioners,” as the Governor-General described them, consisting of 800 inhabitants of Calcutta, laid before him their prayer for the abandonment of the prohibition.⁹ The main purpose of their representations was to overthrow the position which Rommohun, and after him the Government, had taken up,—that the practice of Suttee was not required by the laws of Hindu religion. This they denounced as “a doctrine derived from a number of Hindoos, who have apostatized from the religion of their forefathers, who have defiled themselves by eating and drinking forbidden things in the society of Europeans and are endeavouring to deceive your Lordship in Council.” They humbly submitted that “in a question so delicate as the interpretation of our sacred books and the authority of our religious usages, none but pundits and Brahmins, and teachers of holy lives and known learning and authority ought to be consulted,”—not “men who have neither any faith nor care for the memory of their ancestors.” They suggested with a touch of rather pungent irony that if his Lordship in Council would assume to himself “the difficult and delicate task of regulating the conscience of a whole people on the authority of its own sacred writers,” he should trust to recognized and accredited and orthodox experts. To assist him in this direction, they appended a paper of citations from legal authorities, signed by 120 pundits, and intended to show that Suttee was a religious duty. They were obliged to quote the decisive sayings of Vishnu and Manu, which allowed a widow either to practise austerities or to ascend her husband’s pyre. By tortuous exegesis and by liberal appeal to immemorial usage, the effort was made to transmute the option between alternatives into a demand for self-immolation. Lord Bentinck, in reply, was unkind enough to say that the authorities they cited “only confirmed the supposition that widows are not by the religious writings of the Hindoos commanded to destroy themselves.” No attack on Hindu religion was committed or intended. If they disputed his interpretation of Hindu and British laws, they might appeal to the King in Council. Another petition, of similar purport and signed by 346 “respectable persons” from the interior, was presented at the same time, with legal opinions signed by 28 pundits.¹⁰

Counter demonstrations were speedily forthcoming. Two days afterwards two addresses were presented to the Governor-General in support of his anti-Suttee policy. One was from the Christian inhabitants of Calcutta, and bore some 800 signatures. The other was signed by 300 native inhabitants of the same city and presented by Rammohun Roy and several of his well-known comrades.¹¹ This address (January 16th), of which Rammohun is the reputed and probable author, refers the introduction of Suttee to jealousy and selfishness, acting under the cloak of religion, but in defiance of the most sacred authorities. It rehearses the yet more barbarous abuses of this barbarous rite, and rejoices at the prospect of “the most ancient and purest system of Hindu religion” being “no longer set at nought by the Hindus themselves.” It expresses “the deepest gratitude” and “the utmost reverence” to his Lordship in Council “for the everlasting obligation” he had “graciously conferred on the Hindu community at large.” The signatories finally confess themselves “at a loss to find language sufficiently indicative even of a small portion of the sentiments” they desire to express. Rammohun’s joy at so unexpected an erasure of this historic blot from the Hindu escutcheon might well be too great to be altogether articulate.

Next day the opponents of the measure met and resolved to appeal to the authorities in England. Feeling the need of some permanent organization, they formed themselves into a Dharma Sabha, or Religious Society,¹²—in evident contrast to the Brahma Sabhā of Rammohun and his friends. They subscribed 11,260 rupees on the spot, and decided to erect a meeting place. The purpose of the association was manifestly militant. It was to enable “the excellent and the noble”—so ran the explanation of their own organ—to “unite and continually devise means for protecting our religion and our excellent customs and usages.” At its first meeting the treasurer significantly remarked with “the concurrence of all present” that “those Hindus who do not follow the rites of Hindu religion should be excluded from the Hindu Society.” “No names, however, were mentioned,”—a reticence which the Chandrikā hoped would ere long be laid aside.¹³ Rammohun was made to feel how much mischief lurked behind these threats.

The Abstract of the Arguments regarding the Burning of Widows considered as a Religious Rite, which was issued in 1830, may be taken as his rejoinder to the manifesto of the 128 pundits. He wished to gather into a clear and concise epitome for popular use the points which had been scattered through many essays and tracts. These he grouped under three heads. According to the Sacred Books of the Hindus, concremation was (1) not obligatory but at most optional; (2) not the most commendable but the least virtuous act a widow could perform; and (3) must be a voluntary ascending of the pile and entering into the flames—a mode never practised in the conventional Suttee. The tract concludes with devout “thanks to Heaven, whose protecting arm has rescued our weaker sex from cruel murder,” and “our character as a people” from international opprobrium.

While his campaign against Suttee was drawing to this triumphant conclusion, Rammohun Roy was busily engaged in other directions as champion of Indian rights and interests. We find him writing on August 18, 1828, to Mr. J. Crawford, and entrusting to him petitions for presentation to both Houses of Parliament, signed by Hindus and Mohamedans, against the new Jury Act which came into operation in the beginning of 1827. He thus concisely states the grounds of grievance :

In his famous Jury Bill, Mr. Wynn, the late President of the Board of Control, has by introducing religious distinctions into the judicial system of this country, not only afforded just grounds for dissatisfaction among the Natives in general, but has excited much alarm in the breast of everyone conversant with political principles. Any Natives, either Hindu or Mohamedan, are rendered by this Bill subject to judicial trial by Christians, either European or Native, while Christians, including Native Converts, are exempted from the degradation of being tried either by a Hindu or Mussulman juror, however high he may stand in the estimation of society. This Bill also denies both to Hindus and Mussulmans the honor of a seat in the Grand Jury even in the trial of fellow Hindus or Mussulmans. This is the sum total of Mr. Wynn’s late Jury Bill, of which we bitterly complain.

In this letter Rammohun shows once more how deeply the analogy between Ireland and India and the prospects of nationalism in both countries had impressed him. Had not Mr. Wynn seen misery enough result in Ireland from making civil discriminations between different religious beliefs ? Why should he want to reproduce the same calamities in India ? Rammohun goes on to suggest a possibility which is by no means so remote now as when he wrote :

Supposing that some 100 years hence the Native character becomes elevated from constant intercourse with Europeans 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 effectually any unjust and oppressive measures serving to degrade them in the scale of society ? It should not be lost sight of that the position of India is very different from that of Ireland, to any quarter of which an English fleet may suddenly convey a body of troops that may force its way in the requisite direction and succeed in suppressing every effort of a refractory spirit. Were India to share one fourth of the knowledge and energy of that country, she would prove from her remote situation, her riches and her vast population, either useful and profitable as a willing province, an ally of the British Empire, or troublesome and annoying as a determined enemy.¹⁴

In common with those who seem partial to the British rule from the expectation of future benefits arising out of the connection, I necessarily feel extremely grieved in often witnessing Acts and Regulations passed by Government without consulting or seeming to understand the feelings of its Indian subjects and without considering that this people have had for more than half a century the advantage of being ruled by and associated with an enlightened nation, advocates of liberty and promoters of knowledge.

In default of other means of making their voice heard, the natives of India resolved to petition, and invoked the help of friends like Mr. Crawford.¹⁵

We have quoted this letter at some length because of the far-sighted glance into the future it reveals. There is here in germ the national aspiration which is now breaking forth into cries for “representation of India in the Imperial Parliament”, “Home Rule for India”, and even “India for the Indians”. The prospect of an educated India, of an India approximating to European standards of culture, seems to have never been long absent from Rammohun’s mind, and he did, however vaguely, claim in advance for his countrymen the political rights which progress in civilization inevitably involves. Here again Rammohun stands forth as the tribune, and prophet of the New India.*

But his nationalism was of no narrow type. It was not bound up with the interests of a few well-to-do classes. It was ready to welcome in the interests of the labouring masses, an extensive importation of European settlers and European capital. An outcry of the baser order of nationalism having been raised against the indigo planters of Bengal, Rammohun came boldly to the defence of those aspersed Europeans. His Sambād Kaumudi pointed out that indigo plantations had led to waste lands being cultivated, and to the freedom and comfort of the lower classes being increased. The peasants receiving a higher salary from the planters were no longer “victims to the whims of zemindars and great banians.” The more numerous and permanent the settlement of European gentlemen, the better for the soil, the better also for the poor and middle classes. Writing (November 12, 1829) in answer to certain inquiries on the subject from Mr. Nathaniel Alexander, and speaking from investigations he had instituted for the purpose, Rammohun said :

The advances made to ryots by the indigo planters having increased in most factories in consequence of the price of indigo having risen, and in many, better prices than formerly are allowed for the plant…I am positively of opinion that upon the whole the indigo planters have done more essential good to the natives of Bengal than any other class of persons. This is a fact which I will not hesitate to affirm whenever I may be questioned on the subject either in India or Europe. I at the same time must confess that there are individuals of that class of society who either from hasty disposition or want of due discretion have proved obnoxious to those who expected milder treatment from them. But, my dear sir, you are well aware that no general good can be effected without some partial evil, and in this instance I am happy to say that the former greatly preponderates over the latter. If any class of the natives “would gladly see them all turned out of the country,” it would be the zemindars in general, since in many instances the planters have successfully protected the ryots against the tyranny and oppression of their landlord.

Rammohun also attended a public meeting in the Calcutta Town Hall on the 15th of December, 1829, which was called to petition Parliament “to throw open the China and India trade, and to remove the restrictions against the settlement of Europeans in India.” He reiterated the strong statements of his letter, and prefaced them with the weighty remark :

From personal experience, I am impressed with the conviction that the greater our intercourse with European gentlemen, the greater will be our improvement in literary, social and political affairs ; a fact which can be easily proved by comparing the condition of those of my countrymen who have enjoyed this advantage with that of those who unfortunately have not had that opportunity ; and a fact which I could to the best of my belief declare on solemn oath before any assembly.¹⁶

In suggestive contrast with this defence of the European settler against the propertied classes of Bengal, we may set Rammohun’s vindication of the Bengali law of the transmission of property against the findings of the British Court. British judges had wavered in their interpretation of the Hindus’ power of alienation over ancestral property. About this time (1829—1830) Sir C. E. Grey, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, declared in favour of limiting the power in question. Rammohun accordingly brought out a book in 1830 on The Rights of Hindus over Ancestral Property according to the law of Bengal. This essay showed that of the two great treatises on the law of Hindu inheritance, the Mitaksharā was accepted throughout the greater part of India, while the Dayabhāga had been long established as paramount authority in Bengal. Numerous instances were quoted to indicate the difference and even contrariety of the two codes ; and on the crucial point it was shown that the Mitaksharā limited the disposal of ancestral real property by requiring the consent of son and grandson, whereas the Dayabhāga left a man free to alienate it as he pleased. Recent decisions in British Bengali Courts had ignored the distinctive and established Bengali law and had followed the teachings of the Mitakshara. This breach of loyalty to Bengali institutions could not be excused by appeals to sayings in the Hindu scriptures, which imposed moral limits on power of alienation. These were ethical precepts, not legal enactments ; and a vast amount of learning is expended in maintaining the legal validity of the Bengali digest along with the ethical authority of the sacred writings. In disputing the principle that “we ought to make that invalid which was considered immoral,” Rammohun suggested a number of testing cases, one of which reads curiously in the light of later agitation :

To permit the sale of intoxicating drugs and spirits, so injurious to health, and even sometimes destructive of life, on the payment of duties publicly levied, is an act highly irreligious and immoral. Is the taxation to be, therefore, rendered invalid and payments stopped ?

This essay involved its writer in a lengthy correspondence in the Hurkaru, with a critic who signed himself “A Hindu”¹⁷ ; which led to a plentiful display of legal lore and casuistry, but did not modify Rammohun’s main contention.¹⁸ That was indeed confirmed by the Sudder Dewany Adalat, in 1831, and still later by the Privy Council. Jogendra Chandra Ghosh thinks this result to have been in large measure due to Rammohun’s treatise.¹⁹

Amid the multiplicity of these pursuits, philanthropic, political, economic and legal, Rammohun never lost sight of his central vocation,—to purify and elevate the faith of his countrymen. In 1829 he published a tract entitled, The Universal Religion ; Religious Instructions founded on Sacred Authorities. This is a short catechism, with proof texts from the sacred writings of Hinduism. It describes worship as “a contemplation of the attributes of the Supreme Being.” It styles the object of worship “the author and Governor of the Universe,” “imperceptible and indefinable,” but by His creation and government of the universe known to exist. Worship is to be performed “by bearing in mind that the Author and Governor of this visible Universe is the Supreme Being and comparing this idea with the sacred writings and with reason.” Furthermore “it is proper to regulate our food and conduct agreeably to the sacred writings.” For this worship “a suitable place is certainly preferable, but not necessary” ; “in whatever place, towards whatever quarter or at whatever time the mind is best at rest, that place, that quarter, and that time is the most proper.” This kind of worship cannot be hostile to any other kinds, nor can they reasonably be hostile to it ; “for all believe the object whom they adore to be the Author and Governor of the Universe.”

This is a bold statement to make in face of the facts of fetichism and kindred cults. The infinitely diverse religions of the world will scarcely yield as their common denominator a Theism so pure and lofty as Rammohun’s “Universal Religion.” But Rammohun believed in it intensely and the progress of the Brahma Sabha was witness to his faith.

The time had in fact arrived for providing the new Community with a permanent home of its own. The growth in the funds at its disposal soon rendered possible the purchase of a site in Chitpore Road and the erection of a building ( a “brick-built messuage” ). The Trust Deed, which is dated January 8th, 1830, sets forth the transfer of the property as from Dwarakanath Tagore, Kalinath Roy, Prasannakumar Tagore, Ramchandra Vidyavagis, and Rammohun Roy, to the three Trustees, Baikunthanath Roy, Radhaprasad Roy, and Ramānath Tagore. The sum paid to the vendors for the site and building is stated to be ten Sicca Rupees (about one guinea) and for the appurtenances five Sicca Rupees more. Whether this nominal sale followed on a prior and more costly purchase, or was tantamount to a real gift does not appear. Possibly the five vendors did make a present of the house and grounds ;* and the funds which had been gathered were invested as an endowment on the place. Certainly “the sum of Rupees, 6,080 was kept in the custody of the late well-known firm of Messrs. Mackintosh & Company as a permanent fund, from the interest of which the ordinary expenses of the church were to be met.”†

The Trust Deed to this place of worship is a notable theological document.²⁰ It is the one legal statement of the original creed of the Brahmo Samaj ; and being inspired by Rammohun Roy, it falls to be quoted here as the formal deliverance of the purpose of his life-work. The terms of the Trust are that the trustees

Shall at all times permit the said building, land, tenements, hereditaments and premises, with their appurtenances, to be used, occupied, enjoyed, applied and appropriated, as and for a place of Public Meeting, of all sorts and descriptions of people, without distinction, as shall behave and conduct themselves in an orderly, sober, religious, and devout manner ;

For the worship and adoration of the Eternal, Unsearchable, and Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe, but not under, or by any other name, designation, or title, peculiarly used for, and applied to, any particular Being, or Beings, by any man, or set of men, whatsoever.

And that no graven image, statue or sculpture, carving, painting, picture, portrait or the likeness of any thing, shall be admitted within the messuage, building, land, tenements, hereditaments, and premises ; and that no sacrifice, offering, or oblation of any kind or thing, shall ever be permitted therein ; and that no animal or living creature shall, within or on the said messuage, building, land, tenements, hereditaments and premises, be deprived of life, either for religious purposes or for food ;

And that no eating or drinking (except such as shall be necessary, by any accident, for the preservation of life), feasting or rioting be permitted therein or thereon ;

And that, in conducting the said worship or adoration, no object, animate or inanimate, that has been, or is, or shall hereafter become, or be recognized, as an object of worship, by any man, or set of men, shall be reviled, or slightly or contemptuously spoken of, or alluded to, either in preaching, praying, or in the hymns, or other mode of worship that may be delivered or used in the said messuage or building ;

And that no sermon, preaching, discourse, prayer or hymn be delivered, made or used in such worship, but such as have a tendency to the promotion of the contemplation of the Author and Preserver of the Universe, to the promotion of charity, morality, piety, benevolence, virtue, and the strengthening the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds ;

And also, that a person of good repute, and well-known for his knowledge, piety, and morality, be employed by the said trustees…as a resident superintendent, and for the purpose of superintending the worship so to be performed, as is hereinbefore stated and expressed ; and that such worship be performed daily, or at least as often as once in seven days.

On January 23rd, 1830, the building was solemnly set apart to the purposes of public worship. Mr. Montgomery Martin, in his History of the British Colonies²¹ gives this account of the ceremony : “The institution was opened by the late Rajah Rammohun Roy, accompanied by the writer (the only European present) in 1830. There were about five hundred Hindus present and among them many Brahmins who, after the prayers and singing of hymns had been concluded, received gifts in money to a considerable extent.”

Rammohun must have taken part in this inauguration with a devoutly thankful heart. It was a sign that the movement of religious reform to which he had given his life had attained something like permanency. The society he had founded was showing itself to be no evanescent group of atoms, but a veritable Church. It had passed from the stage of dream and hope, through a series of tentative and preliminary experiments, into a solid materialized fact ; an institution legally in possession of property ; and the endowment settled upon it suggested a prospect of perpetuity. The decisive significance attached to the acquisition of this “local habitation” is shown in its annual celebration by all branches of the Samaj. The Society itself was founded, as we have seen, on the 20th of August, 1828. The building was opened on the 23rd of January, 1830. Yet, though at first the earlier event was yearly commemorated as the Church’s birthday, the 23rd of January, soon came to be observed as the proper anniversary, and Brahmos have generally reckoned from 1830 as the era of the Samaj.²²

The same year shows us the founder assisting, with characteristic breadth of sympathy, at the beginning of another and widely different religious movement. The great educational departure in Indian missions which is for ever associated with the name of Alexander Duff may boast of Rammohun Roy as its co-initiator. It will be remembered that six years previously the Hindu had, as an attendant on St. Andrew’s Kirk, supported a petition to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, begging it to send out missionaries to British India.²³ In response to this plea, the young Scotsman, hereafter so famous, arrived in Calcutta and was soon directed by his friends to the “pleasant garden house in a leafy suburb of Calcutta” where dwelt the “Erasmus of India.”* Duff having unfolded his plans, Rammohun expressed general approval. “All true education,” he said, “ought to be religious, since the object was not merely to give information but to develop and regulate all the powers of the mind, the emotions of the heart, and the workings of the conscience. Though not himself a Christian by profession, he had read and studied the Bible and declared that, as a book of religious and moral instruction, it was unequalled. As a believer in God, he also felt that everything should be begun by imploring His blessing. He recommended the opening of the proposed school with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, for in all his reading he “nowhere found any prayer so brief and all-comprehensive” as it. A very significant remark must be quoted entire :

“As a youth,” he said to Mr. Duff, “I acquired some knowledge of the English language. Having read about the rise and progress of Christianity in apostolic times, and its corruption in succeeding ages, and then of the Christian Reformation which shook off these corruptions and restored it to its primitive purity, I began to think that something similiar might have taken place in India, and similar results might follow here from a reformation of the popular idolatry.”

On the young missionary saying that he was at a loss where or how to get a school-house in the native city, Rammohun offered the small hall in Chitpore Road, which the Brahmo Sabha was on the point of leaving for the new building ; and driving off at once to the spot secured it for Duff at a rental of £4 a month, one pound less than he himself had been paying. He removed other difficulties from Duff’s path. By personal influence among his enlightened Hindu friends, he secured their children for Duff’s first pupils.²⁴ On the day of opening,—the 13th of July, 1830,—Rammohun Roy was present from the first to explain away prejudices. Duff’s repetition of the Lord’s Prayer in Bengali passed without remark, but a murmur arose among the pupils, when he put copies of the Gospels into their hands and bade them read. Rammohun straightway intervened :

“Christians like Dr. Horace Hayman Wilson have studied the Hindu Shasters and you know that he has not become a Hindu. I myself have read all the Koran again and again ; and has that made me a Mussalman ? Nay, I have studied the whole Bible, and you know I am not a Christian. Why then do you fear to read it ? Read it and judge for yourselves.”

This quieted the remonstrants ; but Rammohun was careful to attend every day at ten when the Bible lesson was taken, for the whole of the next month and frequently afterwards,—a very signal evidence of his determination to promote the success of Duff’s work. His powerful example soon told. For instance, one of his principal followers, Kalinath Ray Chaudhuri, offered buildings and appliances at Taki, forty miles from Calcutta, for a school to be supervised by Duff and taught on his lines by his teachers, who would be paid by the Chaudhuri family, for Bengali and Persian instruction. This was the beginning of a thriving mission school. Duff might well say in a letter intended to introduce Rammohun Roy to Dr. Chalmers, “He has rendered me the most valuable and efficient assistance in prosecuting some of the objects of the General Assembly’s Mission.²⁵”

While these events were proceeding, Rammohun was making arrangements for his long expected journey to Europe. It was a somewhat unlooked-for occurrence which precipitated his intentions of travel. The Emperor of Delhi, nominal successor to the traditions of the Great Mogul, had a grievance against the real possessors of empire,—the Directors of the British Company. The allowance they granted His Majesty was, he considered, neither equal to the amount guaranteed to him by treaty, nor sufficient for his needs ; and strangely exaggerated stories were circulated about the straits to which the Imperial household was reduced. Having possibly heard of his intended visit to England, the aggrieved potentate decided to appoint Rammohun as his envoy to the British King, to plead for measures of substantial redress. At the same time—apparently about the beginning of August, 1829—he conferred on him the title of Raja.²⁶ Rammohun, after accepting these honours, took as his assistant in the Imperial service Mr. Montgomery Martin. This gentleman was editor of the Bengal Herald, an English newspaper, of which Dwarakanath Tagore, Nilratna Haldar and Rammohun Roy became, in 1829, the proprietors.²⁷ This journalistic venture, it seems, did not prosper. Rammohun, as proprietor, was obliged to plead guilty in the Supreme Court of Calcutta to a libel on an attorney, and the paper soon afterwards ceased to appear, Mr. Martin relinquishing his editorship for new duties under the Imperial envoy. According to a facetious and decidedly malicious but evidently well informed writer in the John Bull of February 27, 1830,* the envoy and ex-editor had first arranged to leave for Europe about the beginning of September, 1829. A month later they decided to go overland via Allahabad, but for three months Mr. Martin waited in daily readiness to depart. Meantime the Regulation abolishing Suttee had been passed, and Rammohun was busily engaged, as we have seen, in supporting the action of the Governor General.

The threatened appeal to England of the infuriated supporters of the doomed rite furnished another reason for Rammohun’s contemplated journey. His presentation of counter memorials and personal influence in the capital of the Empire would help to circumvent their machinations. A further ground, doubtless present to his mind from the first, was the approaching expiry of the East India Company’s Charter. His presence on the spot might help the House of Commons to shape the new Charter more favourably to Indian needs. Rammohun thought the time propitious for approaching the Governor-General on the subject of his errand. On January 8, 1830, while petitions were being actively promoted on both sides of the Suttee question, he wrote Lord Bentinck as follows :

I beg leave to submit to your Lordship that some months ago I was informed by His Majesty, Uboonnussur Moeenoodeen Ukbur Badshah, that his Majesty had apprised your Lordship of my appointment as his Elchee (Envoy) to the Court of Great Britain, and of his having been pleased to invest me as His Majesty’s servant with the title of Rajah, in consideration of the respectability attached to that situation, &c. Not being anxious for titular distinction, I have hitherto refrained from availing myself of the honour conferred on me by His Majesty.

His Majesty, however, being of opinion that it is essentially necessary for the dignity of His Royal House that I, as the representative thereof to the most powerful Monarch in Europe, and Agent for the settlement of His Majesty’s affairs with the Honourable East India Company, should be invested with the title above mentioned, has graciously forwarded to me a seal engraved for the purpose at Delhi. I therefore take the liberty of laying the subject before your Lordship, hoping that you will be pleased to sanction my adoption of such title accordingly. This measure will, I believe, be found consistent with former usage as established by a Resolution of Government on the subject in 1827, when, at the recommendation of the then Resident, Sir Charles Metcalfe, in his report of 26th June of that year, His Majesty’s power of conferring honorary titles on his own servants was fully recognized.—I have the honour, &c.

Answer to this request was sent by Secretary Stirling on the 15th of January, to the effect that the Governor in Council could not sanction his acceptance of the title of Rajah nor recognise him as envoy from the Court of Delhi.²⁸ We can hardly wonder at this reply, when we remember that Rammohun’s mission was at once a deviation from the usual official channels of communication with the Home Government and a reflection upon the conduct of officials. Both as to form and substance it stood condemned in the official eye. It is pleasant to find that this rebuff did not hinder Rammohun appearing next day at the Governor-General’s with the Anti-Suttee address of congratulation.

With the beginning of the last year which Rammohun was to spend on Indian soil, the resentment which his reforming career had been steadily accumulating in the breasts of orthodox Hindus, broke out into threats and plots of mortal violence. It was the abolition of Suttee which let loose the floods of reactionary fury. Avarice and bigotry, two of the strongest passions of human nature, had been hard hit ; and they demanded a victim. Rammohun was marked out as the guilty party. He was the traitor within the gates, who had sold the keys to the infidel oppressor. Therefore he must die.

So doubtless argued his enemies. Their intentions were, however, conveyed to Rammohun. About the new year he informed Mr. Martin that “his life was seriously threatened by a gang of assassins.” Mr. Martin accordingly took up his abode at his patron’s house and armed the household. “Firearms, gunpowder, and daggers were immediately procured and burkendauzes employed to guard the premises.” These last were daily exercised in firing. Whenever Rammohun went into town, he took with him dagger and swordstick, and was accompanied by Mr. Martin, who carried swordstick and pistols, and by other armed attendants*. We learn from other sources that twice attempts were made on his life,²⁹ and he was dogged about by spies, who even dared to tear holes in his walls to watch him in his privacy, in the hope of detecting some act which would render him an out-caste.

The militant forces of reaction were organized by the Dharma Sabha, started, as we have seen, only six days before the opening of the Brahma Sabha building ; and the antagonism between the two societies, each with an influential following, each with its popular newspaper, made a great stir, of which Sivanath Śastri in his History of the Brahmo Samaj gives us this lively picture :³⁰

The common people became participators in the great conflict ; for the tracts of the reformers, mostly written in the simplest Bengali, appealed to them as much as to the enlightened classes. In the bathing-ghats of the river side, in market-places and public squares, in the drawing-rooms of influential citizens, everywhere the rivalry between the two associations became the subject of talk. Lines of comical poetry caricaturing the principles of the great reformer were composed by the wags of the time, and passed from mouth to mouth until the streets rang with laughter and ridicule. The agitation spread from Calcutta to the interior, and everywhere the question was discussed between the two parties. A large number of Brahmins who accepted presents from the members of the Brahmo Sabha, were excommunicated by the other party on that account, and the duty of supporting them devolved upon the rich of Rammohun’s friends, who cheerfully undertook it….It was in the midst of these furious party contests that Rammohun opened his church in 1830.

One of the favourite subjects of satire and ridicule was Rammohun’s intended visit to Europe.³¹

It is no small tribute to the character of our hero that amid all this storm of obloquy and in peril of his life he calmly pursued his reforming course. Charges of cowardice and of time-serving have been plentifully hurled against him : but they find slight room for lodgement in the conduct of a man who, surrounded by virulent calumny and mortal menace, went on presenting addresses and publishing books and preparing memorials against Suttee, housed and endowed his Sabha, and even dared to launch Duff’s great scheme of Christian education.

Nevertheless the “hatred, scoffing and abuse” to which he was subjected must have made him less sorry to leave India. How his plans for departure had matured appears from the following letter, in which the Hindu Reformer bids a stately farewell to the British ruler, whose name the abolition of Suttee has linked with his own in everlasting conjunction :

From the kindness I have so often experienced from your Lordship, I trust to be pardoned for my present intrusion in a matter solely concerning myself, but in which your Lordship’s condescension has induced me to persuade myself that you are pleased to take some interest.

Having at length surmounted all the obstacles of a domestic nature that have hitherto opposed my long cherished intention of visiting England, I am now resolved to proceed to that land of liberty by one of the vessels that will sail in November, and from a due regard to the purport of the late Mr. Secretary Stirling’s letter of 15th January last, and other considerations, I have determined not to appear there as the Envoy of His Majesty Akbar the Second, but as a private individual.

I am satisfied that in thus divesting myself of all public character, my zealous services in behalf of His Majesty need not be abated. I even trust that their chance of success may be improved by being thus exempted from all jealousy of a political nature to which they might by mis-apprehension be subjected.

As public report has fixed an early day in October for your Lordship’s departure to examine personally into the condition of the inhabitants of the Upper Provinces, I take the present occasion as the last that may offer in this country for the expression of my sincere wishes for your Lordship’s success in all your philanthropic designs for the improvement and benefit of my countrymen. I need not add that any commands for England with which your Lordship may honour me shall receive from me the most respectful attention, and I beg to subscribe myself your Lordship’s most humble and grateful servant.

The “obstacles of a domestic nature” may, perhaps, be the suit of the Raja of Burdwan, which was not finally dismissed by the last Court of Appeal—the Sudder Dewanee Adalat—until November of next year, but the issue of which may have been confidently foreseen.³² It is interesting to know that, on leaving, Rammohun charged his sons to forget the conduct of their cousins who had shared in this forensic persecution.

Having completed all arrangements for his departure, Rammohun sailed from Calcutta by the Albion on the 19th of November.³³ Careful even in this daring innovation on Brahman custom, to observe the laws of caste, he took with him Hindu servants to prepare his food and two cows to supply him with milk. Rammohun also took with him an adopted son, a boy of about twelve years, who was known as Ram Roy or Rajaram. Malicious gossip did not spare this lad’s origin. Chandrasekhar Dev—the disciple who, it will be remembered, suggested the formation of the Brahmo Samaj—stated in conversation with a friend, R. D. H.³⁴ at Burdwan, so late as January, 1863, that “rumour had it that at one time he [Rammohun] had a mistress ; and people believed that Rajaram was his natural son, though he himself said Rajaram was the orphan of a Durwan of some Saheb, and Rammohun Roy brought him up.”

This scandalous insinuation emerges here in our sources for the first and only time, and then some thirty years after Rammohun’s death. We have not come across the remotest semblance of evidence to sustain the charge. True, Mr. Dev was an intimate disciple ; but the rest of his reported conversation shows him to be no loyal admirer of the deceased master. And even he advanced no scintilla of proof. He merely repeated the gossip as “rumour” and what “people believed.” There is no need to question his veracity. Orthodox Hindus of the Dharma Sabha type were thirsting to show up the great apostate, as they regarded him, in the blackest of colours. The fact that his wives had deserted him, and the presence of this adopted son, offered a combination of circumstances which eager malice could scarcely fail to construe in its own way. Men who made attempts on Rammohun’s life were not likely to scruple about attacking his reputation. And against this rumour, so easily explained, we have to set the unanimous testimony of British missionaries to Rammohun’s pure moral habits. An intimate friend like Mr. William Adam, who was closely questioned by Unitarian correspondents about Rammohun’s domestic relations, could scarcely have been mistaken in his uniformly high estimate of the Reformer’s character. And his aggrieved Trinitarian opponents, even in the heat of controversy, never breathe a whisper against his fair fame. The reputation that has passed scatheless and stainless the ordeal of criticism by missionaries, Baptist and Unitarian, Presbyterian and Anglican, hostile as well as sympathetic, may afford to ignore stale Hindu gossip served up a generation afterwards.³⁵

Rammohun was also accompanied by two Hindu servants, by name Ramhari Das and Ramratna Mukherji.³⁶ The latter as cook was entrusted with the duty of providing his master with food prepared in accordance with caste regulations.

Some extracts from Mr. J. Young’s letter of introduction to Jeremy Bentham (of date November. 14, 1830) may fitly close this chapter :

If I were beside you, and could explain matters fully, you would comprehend the greatness of the undertaking—his going on board ship to a foreign and distant land, a thing hitherto not to be named among Hindoos, and least of all among Brahmins. His grand object, besides the natural one of satisfying his own laudable spirit of inquiry, has been to set a laudable example to his benighted countrymen ; and every one of the slow and gradual moves that he has made preparatory to his actually quitting India, has been marked by the same discretion of judgment. He waited patiently until he had by perseverance and exertion acquired a little but respectable party of disciples. He talked of going to England from year to year since 1823³⁷ to familiarize the minds of the orthodox by degrees to this step, and that his friends might in the meantime increase in numbers and in confidence… He now judges that the time is come, and that the public mind is pretty well ripe for his exploit…

The good which the excellent and extraordinary man has already affected by his writings and example cannot be told. But for his exertions Suttee would be in full vigour at the present day, and the influence of the priesthood in all its ancient force ;—he has given the latter a shake from which, aided by education and the spirit of bold inquiry gone forth among the Hindoos, it can never recover….He is withal one of the most modest men I have ever met with…

It is no small compliment to such a man that even a Governor-General like the present, who, though a man of the most honest intentions, suspects everyone and trusts nobody, and who knows that R. M. R. greatly disapproves of many of the acts of the Government, should have shewn him so much respect as to furnish him with introductions to friends of rank and political influence in England.³⁸

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

I

The spread of education in India was a passion with Rammohun Roy. He was always eager to discuss the topic with friends and acquaintances and besides his own remarkable exertions in this field, there were occasions in his career when he had gladly come forward to support educational schemes sponsored by others. As early as 1816 or even before, he had offered Eustace Carey a piece of ground for a school (Periodical Accounts relative to the Baptist Missionary Society Vol. VI No. 31, June 1815 to January 1816, pp. 108n.-109n; cf. also above, p 114). In course of the debate held by the proprietors of the East India Company on July, 1824, at the East India House, over the question of Mr. Buckingham’s banishment from India, Captain Gowan disclosed that he had received a letter from Rammohun Roy “relative to a subject which he (Capt. Gowan) had much at heart, namely the foundation of some schools in India, which was written with extra-ordinary talent, which letter he would read to the court (italics ours—Editors; Oriental Herald and Colonial Review Vol. III, September to December, 1824, p. 124). Further Rammohun is known to have co-operated closely and enthusiastically with the Calcutta School Book Society (established 1817) in the latter body’s efforts to help the cause of education by publishing suitable text-books. The third report of the Society’s proceedings mention that Rammohun wrote a text-book on Geography in Bengali and English and submitted it to the Society for publication. We are further informed by the same source that he had undertaken in collaboration with Mr. Gordon, to revise the Bengali translation of Ferguson’s Introduction to Astronomy prepared under the auspices of the Society (The Third Report of the School Book Society’s Proceedings : Third Year 1819-20, Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, 1820-21, pp. 7-8). Further, the seventh report of the Society says : “The conviction that a Bengalee Grammar, better adopted to the instruction of native youths than the one on their list, has led your committee to solicit the services of Baboo Rammohun Roy in preparing one ; they are happy to report, that this gentleman has cheerfully engaged to give his immediate attention to the execution of this work” (The Seventh Report of the Calcutta School Book Society’s Proceedings : Eighth and Ninth Years, 1826-1827, Calcutta, 1828 p 4). This grammar in Bengali entitled Gauḍīya Vyākaraṇa was published by the Society in 1833 (cf. above, p. 193, footnote 22). In a Bengali article entitled “Yugaguru Rammohun” (Viśvabhāratī Patrika Vol. X, No 1, Śrāvaṇa-Aśvin 1358 B. S. pp. 19-36), Pandit Kshitimohan Sen Śāstrī narrates his interesting reminiscences of Ramchandra Maulik, an old disciple of Rammohun Roy, aged 104, whom the writer met at Benares in August, 1900. Advised and inspired by Rammohun, Sj Maulik had dedicated his life (as he himself told Pandit Sen Śāstri), to the task of spreading education among the illiterate masses of India. Rammohun is said to have told Sj Maulik that education was what India needed most at the time and the main emphasis in this field should be laid on the education of the lower orders of society. No cooking would be possible unless the cauldron was heated from below. (Pandit Kshitimohun Sen Śāstrī’s article has been published in the form of a pamphlet by the Sādhanāśrama of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Calcutta, in 1952).

It will thus be seen that the sincere help and co-operation received by Dr. Alexander Duff from Rammohun Roy was nothing exceptional. It was a part of Rammohun’s regular programme of philanthropic activities. We must also note, that Rammohun’s conduct in this respect forms a pleasant contrast to that of his conservative Hindu opponents who had refused to cooperate with the Hindu College scheme, if Rammohun would have anything to do with it (cf. above, pp. 102-04) ! The managing body of the School Book Society included some of the most bitter orthodox opponents of Rammohun, including Raja Radhakanta Dev. That however did not prevent the philanthropist from giving that body his willing cooperation whenever necessary.

II

Even in Rammohun’s life-time filthy and anonymous lampoons had appeared in print suggesting that Rajaram Roy was the son of a muslim mistress It should however be remembered that no opponent dared to bring this charge openly. There is not the slightest objective evidence anywhere in support of this accusation. It is well known that throughout Rammohun’s career his enemies spared no pain to lower him in public estimate. In the context of the powerful assault delivered by Rammohun on the citadel of reaction and vested interest, all these instances of deliberate mud-slinging appear perfectly natural and explicable.

The history of Rajaram was supplied to Dr. Lant Carpenter in the following letter from India in 1835 : “You ask me to give you any corrections……that may appear necessary…. .. The boy Rajah whom he took with him to England is not his son, not even an adopted son according to the Hindoo form of adoption ; but a destitute orphan whom he was led by circumstances to protect and educate. I have a distinct recollection of the particular circumstance under which he stated to me Rajah came into his hands. And my recollection is confirmed by that of others. Mr. Dick, a civil servant of the Company, found the child helpless and forsaken at one of the fairs at Hurdwar, where from two to three thousand people annually congregated. It is not known whether the parents were Hindoos or Mussulmans, nor whether the parents lost or forsook him ; but Mr. Dick had him clothed and fed, and when he was under the necessity of leaving the country, for the recovery of his health, he consulted with Rammohun Roy how the child should be disposed of. I well recollect our friend’s benevolent exclamation : ‘When I saw an Englishman and a Christian, thus caring for the welfare of a poor orphan, could I, a native, hesitate to take him under my care and provide for him ? Mr. Dick never returned to India and the child remained with Rammohun Roy……” (Mary Carpenter Last Days in England of Rajah Rammohun Roy, Calcutta Edition, 1915, p. 222).

There is no reason to disbelieve this very specific and circumstantial account. No known event of Rajaram’s life ever gives the slightest indication that he was of Muslim descent. Rammohun brought him up in his own household with great care and affection, took him to England and gave him the best possible education. For a man who was as keen as Rammohun on conforming outwardly to the rules of caste, it would have been impossible in those days to give shelter in his own family an individual having Muslim blood in his veins ! It is again to be remembered that though his orthodox Hindu opponents condemned Rammohun as an outcaste—none of them ever suggested even faintly that he regarded the former’s association with Rajaram, as one of the causes of his loss of caste. Rammohun’s attitude to and relations with his foster-son had also been throughout frank, sincere and affectionate. There was nothing guilty or secretive about it. It is hardly possible to imagine that with his keen sense of public decorum, Rammohun would parade a “natural son” both in his own country as well as in England fully aware as he was, that such an act would irreparably damage his high moral reputation. Abuses and slanders hurled by mortal enemies with a deliberate and understandable purpose, have never been admitted as valid sources of history in the absence of independent corroborative testimony, and there is no reason why one should violate this elementary law of evidence in the case of Rammohun Roy.

It may interest the readers to know that Rammohun’s enemies did not stop here. During the absence of the reformer in England they spread a further rumour that he was going to marry an English woman ! The Samāchār Darpan, November 3, 1832, came out with the following comment : “শ্রীরামমোহন রায়।—আমাদের দৃষ্ট হইতেছে যে অনেকেই উন্মত্ততা পূর্ব্বক লিখিয়াছেন যে শ্রীযুত রামমোহন রায় ইঙ্গলণ্ডীয় এক বিবিসাহেবকে বিবাহকরণার্থ উদ্যত হইয়াছেন ! কলিকাতায় রায়জীর এক স্ত্রী আছে এবং তিনি প্রকাশরূপে হিন্দুশাস্ত্রের কোন বিধি উল্লঙ্ঘন করাতে জাতিভ্রংশ বিষয়ে নিত্য অতি সাবধান হইয়া আছেন অতএব আমরা বোধ করি যে এই জনরব সমুদায়ই অমূলক ও অগ্রাহ্য। তিনি ইঁদৃশাবস্থা অর্থাৎ স্ত্রী থাকিতে যদি কোন বিবিসাহেবকে বিবাহ করিতে চেষ্টিত থাকেন তবে আমরা বোধ করি যে তাঁহার দৃঢ়তর বিপক্ষেরা রাগপূর্ব্বক তাঁহার প্রতি যত গ্লানি তিরস্কার করিয়াছেন সে সকল্লেই তিনি উপযুক্ত পাত্র বটেন।” (Banerji Sambādpatre Sekāler Kathā, Third Ed., Vol. II. pp. 485-86). This is indeed a revealing piece of canard. First, it clearly demonstrates to what length the opponents of Rammohun were capable of dragging their unscrupulous campaign of vilification against the reformer ! Secondly, we should note that the calumnies spread against him, had not been believed by the writer in the Darpan, who cries out indignantly in the last sentence that if Rammohun marries an English woman, “then we shall know him to deserve all the other censures and accusations of his determined foes.” It is perhaps needless to add that this rumour about Rammohun’s attempt to contract a marriage in England was absolutely unfounded.

In recent times a rather desperate effort has been made by Mr. Brajendranath Banerji to prove the Muslim origin of Rajaram. He has argued from the absence of Rajaram’s name from the official list of Rammohun Roy’s companions on board the ship Albion that Rajaram must be identical with Shaikh Bakhshu, the muslim attendant who accompanied Rammohun to England and whose name appears on the passport granted separately to Rammohun’s servants (Rajah Rammohun Roy’s Mission to England p. 22n) ! We have now no means of knowing why Rajaram’s name does not occur in the two orders of reception granted respectively to Rammohun and to his three other attendants. Possibly he had a separate order which is now missing from the file. In any case it is certainly not possible to jump to a positive conclusion from this absolutely negative premise in the manner Mr. Banerji has done, unless one allows oneself to be guided by some preconceived notions. However even this extremely weak hypothesis has now been convincingly demolished by Dr. J. K. Majumdar’s discovery of the return certificate of Shaikh Bakhshu, issued by W. Owen, captain of the ship “Zenobia” by which the former returned to Calcutta from London on or before the 7th February, 1833. The text of the certificate as issued by Capt. Owen from Calcutta, on February 7, 1833, has been printed in Dr. Majumdar’s Raja Rammohun Roy and the Last Moghuls, Appendix VII, p. 336. From English and Indian sources we know definitely that Rajaram Roy stayed on in England after Rammohun’s death and returned to India by the ship “Java” in August 1838 (cf. Samāchār Darpan, August, 18, 1838, as quoted in Brajendranath Banerji’s Sambādpatre Sekāler Kathā Third Ed , Vol. II p. 504) ! By no stretch of imagination therefore it is possible to identify the two !

It is really a remarkable though tragic fact that through ages Indian orthodoxy has resorted to a common line of action in traducing progressive thinkers of the country. We may recall that members of hostile sects did not hesitate to cast aspersion on the moral character of Buddha during the life-time of the Śākya Sage, with the help of unscrupulous women like Chiñchā and Sundarī (Thomas The Life of Buddha Third Edition, London, 1949, pp. 111-12 ; Amulya Chandra Sen Buddha-Kathā in Bengali, Calcutta, 1955, pp. 138-39 ; 141-42). Tradition among the Kabir Panthis asserts that orthodox Brahmins had brought the charge of association with a woman of ill fame against the medieval Indian saint Kabir (Westcott, Kabir and the Kabir Panth, Second Edition, Calcutta, 1953, p. 11). Pandit Kshitimohan Sen Śastri has pointed out how scheming votaries of conservatism planned to declare Dhedhraj, a daring social reformer of northern India and a contemporary of Rammohun,—the father of illegitimate children (Viśvabhāratī Patrika Vol. X, No. 1, p. 32). In our own days we have witnessed similar attempts at throwing mud on the moral character of Mahatma Gandhi ! The attack on Rammohun, it is easy to see, fits unto the familiar pattern and demonstrates the working of the same age-old psychology. One can however confidently hope that as in the cases of the other savants named, posterity would regard the unfounded charge against Rammohun as unworthy of serious consideration.

Very little is known of the career of Rajaram after his return from England. While in England, he was employed as an extra clerk under the Board of Control in 1835, which post he held for three years. On his return to India in 1838, he was appointed examiner in the Secret and Political Department of the Government, on a monthly salary of Rs 200/-. For sometime he became associated with the Brahmo Movement and was a member of the Tattvabodhini Sabha established by Maharshi Debendranath Tagore in 1839 (Jogananda Das in the Pravāsi, Chaitra, 1345 B.S. p. 838 ; Dilip Kumar Biswas in the Itihas Vol. V, No. 1, p. 42 ; Prabhat Chandra Ganguli, Rammohun-Prasaṅga pp. 59-61). It appears however that in later life he embraced Christianity (cf. Hindoo Patriot, February 3, 1862, quoted in Banerji Sambādpatre Sekāler Kathā, Third Edition, Vol. II, p 774). He seems to have died early. We do not unfortunately know the year of his death.

• It is interesting to note that the petition in question was presented to the House of Commons, June 5, 1829, by Mr. Wynn, and the promise of the Government to direct its attention thereto was made by Lord Ashley, then a Commissioner of the Board of Control, and afterwards Lord Shaftesbury. The young philanthropist “acknowledged the advantages which had been derived from admitting the natives of India to take a part in the administration of justice.” (Dr. J. K. Majumdar has collected the relevant documents concerning the agitation started by Rammohun against the Jury Act, conveniently in one place. See his Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India, Nos. 189 to 210, pp. 339-404.—Editors.)

• In a Sketch of the Brahmo Samaj dated 1873, the authoress says of Rammohun, “He bought a house in Chitpore Road, endowed it with a small fund for the maintenance of public worship…and placed the whole in the hands of trustees.” Dr. George Smith in his Life of Alexander Duff Vol. I p. 120, states that Rammohun “had himself erected the new building.” (These speculations however, have been set at rest by Nagendranath Chatterjee’s discovery of the original deed of sale of the plot of land, purchased by Rammohun and his friends for the erection of the new building of the Brahmo Samaj. This important document, the text of which has been printed in Chatterjee’s Mahatma Raja Rammohun Rayer Jibancharit, Fifth Edition, pp. 304-06, clearly establishes the following points : (a) the plot of land was purchased on June 6, 1829 (Jyaistha 28, 1236 B. S.); (b) the previous owner was one Kaliprasad Kar ; (c) the price paid by Rammohun and his friends, was Rs. 4200/- ; (d) the property thus purchased consisted of four kāṭhās and half a poā of land, as well as a house, which was presumbly demolished later by the purchasers and the new building of the Samaj was erected in its place ; the new building thus raised, is the historic house (No. 55 Upper Chitpore Road, Jorasanko) of the Adi Brahmo Samaj ; (e) in the deed of sale Rammohun Roy, Dwarakanath Tagore, Kalinath Roy, Prasannakumar Tagore and Ramchandra Vidyavagis, are mentioned together as purchasers. The money was apparently contributed by the first four. Nagendranath Chatterjee came across the deed of sale in the house of Ramaprasad Roy, the younger son of Rammohun.—Editors.)

† K. C. Sen in the Indian Mirror, July 1, 1865.

• For this suggestive title and for the following incidents see Dr. George Smith’s Life of Alexander Duff, Vol. I (London 1879) pp. 112-23.

• Quoted in the Asiatic Journal Vol. II, New Series, (May to August 1830), (Asiatic Intelligence pp. 201—03). (For Rammohun’s letter dated March 7, 1830, to A. Stirling, Secretary to Government, replying to the charges levelled against him in the John Bull, see Dr. J. K. Majumdar Raja Rammohun Roy and the Last Moghuls, Appendix VI, pp. 330-31. —Editors.)

• So the scoffing writer in the John Bull quoted above whose narrative is too circumstantial to be readily open to doubt. [See the John Bull February 27, 1830, as quoted by the Asiatic Journal Vol. II, New Series (May to August 1830), Asiatic Intelligence, p. 202 : “…on or about the 2nd January, a new danger assailed the envoy and the presence of Mr. Martin at the house of Rammohun Roy became necessary, to protect him from assassination…Mr. Martin proposed to occupy the spare rooms of his house, and to arm the household in his defence ;…Fire-arms, gun-powder, and daggers were immediately procured and burkendauzes were employed to guard the premises. Mr. Martin it appears, procured a double-barrelled gun, a single-barrelled gun, three pair of pistols, a sabre and three swordsticks etc. The burkendauzes were duly exercised in firing and one was armed with a kind of battle-axe, and thus the whole garrison was equipped and ready for defence. When the envoy during these perilous days, came into the town, Mr. Martin accompanied him armed at his special desire with a brace of pistols and a sword-stick, Rammohun himself having a naval dagger in his pocket, and a sword-stick in his hand, and his attendants also well-armed…….the anti Suttee-abolitionists were the dreaded enemies ; and the cause of their enmity, the part that the envoy had taken in obtaining from government the suppression of this most cruel and horrid custom.” Rammohun is called ‘envoy’ in the above passage, as he had been chosen ambassador by the King of Delhi.—Editors.]