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Raja Ram Mohan Roy
(1772-1833)
Born in an orthodox well-to-do Brahmin
family in Bengal, he was turned out when at
the age of 15 he wrote a pamphlet in Bengali
denouncing idol worship. He made the best
use of this to travel far and wide. He already
knew Arabic and Persian. He now mastered
Sanskrit and learnt English, French, Latin,
Hebrew and Greek. He was able to study in
original the scriptures of the important
religions of the world and make a comparative
study. In 1805, he joined the service of the
East India Company and continued to work till
his retirement in 1814. In 1814he started the
Atmiya Samaj and in 1828 the Brahmo Samaj.
It advocated the worship of one god and the
brotherhood of man. It stood for respect for all
religions. Raja Ram Mohan Roy believed in
the fundamental unity of all religions. He
stood for the abolition of sati and carried on a
ceaseless propaganda against it both from the
platform and in the columns of his Bengali
journal
Samvad Kaumudi,
which is among the
earliest Indian newspapers. It was his
consistent support which enabled Lord
William Bentinck to ban this inhuman custom
in 1829. He went to England on a special
mission to plead the cause of the Mughal
Emperor of Delhi. While he was there, he died
at Bristol on September 27,1833. He was
given the title of Raja by the Mughal Emperor.
According to Rabindranath Tagore, Raj a Ram
Mohan Roy "inaugurated the modern age in
India." He has been described as "perhaps the
first earnest -minded investigator of the
science of comparative religions that the world
has produced." Although he was one of the
foremost orientalists of the age, he believed
that India could progress only through liberal
education covering all the branches of Western
learning through English. He helped in the
founding of the Hindu College which was the
best institution of its time.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan
(1817-1898)
B orn in Delhi to a noble family respected
for its learning and piety, he was given
traditional Muslim education. At the time of
the Mutiny he was a subordinate judicial
officer in the service of the East India
Company. He foresaw that the Mutiny would
not succeed and remained faithful to the
British. After the Mutiny he worked hard to
allay the misgivings which the British had
developed about the Muslims because of their
LUMINARIES
participation in the Mutiny. He convinced his
own people of the need for accepting British
rule and profit from the benefits which it
offered. He laid greatest emphasis on
education and scientific knowledge and
established a society for popularising science
among the Muslims. In 1875 he started the
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College which
was raised to the status of a university as the
Aligarh Muslim University in 1921. He was a
firm believer in the need for co-operation
between his community and the British
Government. He therefore advised Muslims to
stay away from the Indian National Congress
when it was formed and throughout remained
a critic of its policies. His opposition to the
Congress was based on the belief that a system
of representative government, if introduced in
the sub-continent, would lead to a rule by the
Hindu majority.
Swami Dayanand
(1824-1883)
A religious reformer like Raja Ram Mohan
Roy, Swami Dayanand Saraswati took a
different path in opposing Western ideas and
Western education and undertook instead to
revive the ancient religion of the Aryans. He
went back to the Vedas to denounce the evils
of post-Vedic Hinduism idolatry, polygamy,
child marriage, the seclusion of widows,
untouchability and the caste system. He was
bom into a Brahmin family in Morvi State in
Kathiawar. His father was a zamindar. A
major turning point in his life came at the age
of 14 when he observed for the first time a
special all-night fast and vigil in honour of
Shiva. It caused such revulsion in him that he
waged war on idolatry for the rest of his life:
"Thoughts upon thoughts crowd upon me.... Is
it possible, I asked myself, that this semblance
of man, this idol of a Personal God that I see
bestriding his bull before me — is it possible
that he can be the Mahadeva, the
great Deity.......the supreme being and the
Divine hero of all the stories we read of in the
Puranas? I feel it impossible to reconcile the
idea of an omnipotent, living God, with this
idol, which allows the mice to run upon its
body, and thus suffers its image to be polluted
without the slightest protest." To avoid being
married he ran away from home at 19 to
become a
Sanyasi.
He spent the next 15 years
as a wandering ascetic living in jungles, in
Himalayan retreats and places of pilgrimage in
northern India. He developed his reverence for
the four Vedas and disdain for the later
scriptures from an old blind teacher of
Mathura, Swami Vrijanad. For the rest of his
life Swami Dayanand based his preaching on
the exclusive authority of the Vedas
questioning practices like idol worship,
untouchability and child marriage and the
prohibition on women studying the Vedas
which he pointed out were not sanctioned by
the Vedas. He established the Arya Samaj in
Bombay in 1875 to carry on his social and
religious reforms. He established pathsalas to
spread knowledge of Sanskrit and the Vedas.
Later the Arya Samaj established a number of
D.A.V (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) Schools and
Colleges in the Punjab which became the
centres of aggressive and militant nationalism.
His revolutionary teachings incurred the wrath
of the orthodox and numerous attempts were
made on his life. He met with his death in
Jodhpur when he accused the princely ruler of
loose living. The prince's paramour instigated
Swami Dayanand's cook to put poison in his
milk. According to Rabindranath Tagore,
"Through the dense undergrowth of the
degenerate days of our country, he cleared a
straight path that was meant to lead the Hindus
to a simple and rational life of a devotion to
God and service toman."
Dadabhai Naoroji
(1825-1917)
The "Grand Old Man of India" as he came
to be known, Dadabhai Naoroji was the son of
aZoroastrian priest. His family name was
Dordi meaning twisted rope made of coconut
husk. He once said, "You may burn a Dordi
but you can never take the twist out of it. So it
is with me. When once I form a decision,
nothing will dislodge me from it." At 27 he
became Professor of Mathematics at the
Elphinstone College in Bombay, the first
Indian to hold the post. At 30, he left India to
become a partner in the first Indian firm to do
business in England. His main purpose in
moving to London was to appeal directly to
the British public for a better understanding of
India's problems. For the next fifty years he
delivered papers on Indian subjects to
numerous societies and submitted memoranda
and petitions to British officials. Propounded
"the drain theory" of India's wealth to Britain.
Was elected in 1892 to the British House of
Commons on a Liberal ticket, the first Indian
member of Parliament. He served as Chief
Minister of the Indian state of Baroda in 1873-
74 . He took a prominent part in the first
session of the Indian National Congress in
1885 and was thrice elected its president in