Past Forward: Why We Must Remember Raja Rammohun Roy, a Liberal in Quest of Truth

Our past can inform our choices in the future. So besotted was Bentham with Roy that he addressed the latter as “intensely admired and dearly beloved collaborator in the service of mankind!” HIS FAME Bentham’s first acquaintance with Roy was through one of his books of which he wrote, “But for the name of a Hindoo, I should have ascribed to the pen of a superiorly well-educated and instructed Englishman.” Practically counting his last days, Bentham was extremely keen to meet Roy. Quite ahead of his time, Roy also wrote to the Foreign Minister of France, arguing for the need of a ‘Congress’ for amicable settlement of political and commercial disputes between ‘civilised countries with constitutional governments.’ Roy’s desire to visit Paris was finally fulfilled. Raja Rammohun Roy is justly venerated as a social reformer, for being a man who with his great intellect and intense passion cleared the way for India’s progress. Although he was on one hand making the wisdom of the ancient scriptures accessible to the common people through his Bengali translations, Roy opposed the government’s efforts to set up a new Sanskrit college, arguing that a Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness…But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences.