DOCUMENT FROM MADRAS RECORD OFFICE DESCRIBING THE REACTION OF CERTAIN INHABITANTS OF BERHAMPUR (GANJAM) TO RAMMOHUN ROY’S RELIGIOUS VIEWS.
PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS General No. 596 (Pages 4051-4060). Cons. No. 1, dated 2nd December, 1831.
The petition is from Chavoor Sooreanarrain Row and the inhabitants of Berhampore in the Ganjam District of Madras Presidency.1 The petition was submitted to the Governor in Council of Fort St. George with a request to forward it to the Board of Control in London. The petition falls into three Sections.
Ist part opposes the prayer of East Indians that the members of the community should be appointed as District Munsifs and Judges, and that they should not be subject to the Hindu and Muhammadan Law.
IInd part denounces Raja Ram Mohun Roy, who is neither a Christian nor a Mohammadan, nor a Hindu.
IIIrd part advocates the judicious selection of the natives to assist in the administration of Justice.
The following extract from the petition dealing with Raja Ram Mohun Roy is of immense interest as it embodies a contemporary estimate of his character and activities:—
“In the case of Rammohun Roy, how intelligent and man of talents he may be, yet from his late profession of belief in one God, in an irregular course, forsaking all religious rites, and ordinances of his caste, as a Brahmin, he is not accounted for among any regulated class of religions. He is neither a Christian, a Mohammaden, or a Hindu, but a free thinking man, abandoned by all religions, and from this very reason the Hindoos cannot in any shape benefit from the exertions of his talents in their law courts, as a Juror, or as any Description of Law Officer in his present situation, as he is more an unfit thumb-screw of the Gates of all religions than a well work founder of the Madas (sic.)2 of course such cannot be entitled to judge Hindoos. In as many tracts as he wrote he used to quote such chapters of the Madas (sic) and Poorans, which only treat of one God, saying, that they are verily true and that he follows them, taking care in the mean-time to omit cunningly the rest of the contents of the self-same Vedas, and Pooranas. From this it is doubtful how far he did trust in the Vedas and how far not. If the Book is fictitious, the whole compendium must be the same. When he does not believe in one part of it, he cannot believe in the rest. The truth is that he is a mere caviller with, or a blasphemer of the holy Vedas, after all he has pretended to have followed them convinced the latter of their meaning. Had it been his sole pride, he is certainly very much erred in his ideas and led himself astray. Now, by this bold attack upon the doctrines to which Rammohun Roy sticks, your Petitioners never intended to deny the mighty attributes of the God, but to urge that he has not pursued a right course of acquiring their knowledge in the mode enjoined by the Vedas for, they are meant to say that the almighty is of dual qualities i.e. material, and unmaterial, if otherwise his shapelessness can produce no action towards the fulfilment of his holy functions. What can it be expected then, from a blank space, hence when any one action of the almighty is admitted, such as creation or destruction, some kind of his shape should be forthwith acknowledged as to his unmaterial state, it must be equally indispensable for him, for he is omnipresent, and all in all, if not so, he must have been absent at the void space between Earth and Heaven. It is further declared in favour of his material quality that his immateriality is in one point an allegory of expression, intended to declare his infinite greatness for instance, one may say that French ladies are very handsome without limiting their beauty, yet it is not beyond the power of an artist to draw out their portrait, so as long as the actions of the God are admissible, his material being is likewise traceable and visitable by one deservedly seek for it, or else this whole universe ought to have been produced from accidence. When such are the interpretations of the Vedas, Mr. Rammohun Roy cannot acknowledge one quality of the almighty and reject the other, as long as he calls himself one of the followers of the Vedas. With respect to the rites and ceremonies which he has forsaken, your Petitioners humbly beg to state that they are also necessary in a religion, until one may gain a gradual knowledge of the duty, when, this attention to the rites and ceremonies will be proportionately shaken off themselves, just as a letter-writer who cares little of his schooling task of repeating alphabet, and syllabelating them, though it was at first indispensable for him to do so, and also as a fruit which requires flower at first for its progeny, and then throw it off from the ring of its cup immediately after the kernal begin forming it shell. Here, your Petitioners believe the Christian theologists may also agree with them regarding the necessary of performing these, because many of their clergymen with whom your first Petitioner had severally conferred said to him that they are their Precepts provided for in the holy scriptures, when he enquired from them, why they administer baptism, take Lords Supper, however automatically commuting wine and bread for Christ’s blood on the Sabbath day, and the Christmas day. Besides this in the month of August 1827, the 1st of your Petitioners ran up from Ganjam to Calcutta on Dawk to see this person Rammohun Roy and to ascertain the religion he followed, but to his extreme regret found that his religion is no religion and his laws are no laws, but a Conglomeration of all stitched into a singular one”.3