Rammohun(1772-1833)

Author: Benoy Kumar Sarkar

An Excerpt from The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology pp. 618-630 (Panini Office, Allahabad. 1937)

The literary work of Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) belongs to the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. He is different from both Balambhatta and Jagannatha in so far as although they came into contact with British scholars, jurists or administrators neither was a student of Western legal or social institutions. Rammohun was born almost at the time when Warren Hastings got the Vivādārṇavasetu compiled by several paṇḍits (1773), translated into Persian and then rendered from Persian into English as Halhed's Gentoo Code (1774). His early years were passed during the period of the expansion of Western administration in India. We may recall that the Asiatic Society of Bengal was founded in 1789 and that the College of Fort William established at Calcutta with Carey as Principal in 1800.

Rammohun was experiencing the new all the time. And if he still appreciated the old it was because of its innate strength and utility. Besides, while Bālambhaṭṭa and Jagannātha wrote in Sanskrit, Rammohun wrote in Persian, Bengali and English and very little in Sanskrit. Last but not least, so far as the present times are concerned, he was convinced of the greater utility (1) of the modern knowledge, i.e., the culture developed in Europe since the appearance of Baconian philosophy¹—"mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences"—than of the Hindu Vyākaraṇa, Vedānta, Mīmāmsā, Nyāya, etc., and (2) of the English Ianguage than of the Sanskrit as medium of instruction and culture. To him Bacon was a veritable yugāvatāra for Europe and for mankind, and the entire Hindu culture similar in value to the pre-Baconian achievements of Europe. It is the post-Baconian arts and sciences that he wanted to see introduced in India under British auspices. All this of course had been ultima thule to Bālambhatta and Jagannātha.

The Realism of Rammohun as Champion of the Vedānta, Purāṇas and Tantras

"During the last twenty years," says Rammohun,² "a body of English gentlemen who are called missionaries have been publicly endeavouring in several ways to convert Hindoos and Mussalmans of this country into Christianity." One of the methods of the missionaries is described as that of distributing among the people various books, large and small, reviling both Hinduism and Islam as well as of abusing and ridiculing the gods and saints of the former.

This attitude of the English missionaries is subjected by Rammohun to strong criticism and here we encounter, first, his scientific contribution to comparative methodology, and secondly, his objective approach to the socio-religious realities of life. He begins by observing that if the missionaries were to preach the Gospel in countries not conquered by the English, such as Turkey, Persia etc. they would be esteemed a body of men truly zealous in propagating religion. But in his logic Bengal's case is entirely different because "for a period of upwards of fifty years this country has been in exclusive possession of the English nation." Here the "mere name of Englishman is sufficient to frighten people." And, therefore, argues he, under such conditions of helplessness "an encroachment upon the rights of her poor, timid and humble inhabitants and upon their religion cannot be viewed in the eyes of God or the public as a justifiable act."

Rammohun is a hard-headed realist. His positivism does not allow him to remain blind to the inevitable disadvantage of a subject race in regard to the scientific and philosophical controversy or discussion with representatives of its political masters."It seems almost natural," says he, "that when one nation succeeds in conquering another, the former, though their religion may be quite ridiculous, laugh at and despise the religion and manners of those that are fallen into their power. * * * It is, therefore, not uncommon if the English missionaries, who are of the conquerors of this country, revile and mock at the religion of the natives."

It is interesting that nearly a century after these epoch-making passages were written the position of comparative sociology or culture-history with special reference to the relations between Asia and Eur-America remained virtually the same. And the present writer's criticism of the "century-old doctrine of superior races" as responsible for the pernicious fallacies in social science was published in the International Journal of Ethics (Chicago, July 1918).³

Not less positive and realistic is the manner in which Rammohun accepts the challenge of the English missionaries vis-à-vis the problems of Indian religions vs. Christianity. He knows the realities of the world too well to believe that arguments command respect solely as arguments. Naturally, he suspects that "the small huts in which Brāhmaṇs of learning generally reside, and the simple food such as vegetables, etc. which they are accustomed to eat, and the poverty which obliges them to live upon charity" are likely to be taken as evidences of intellectual inferiority by those who happen to be materially in prosperous circumstances. So at the threshold of accepting the challenge on behalf of Hindu India Rammohun hopes that "the missionary gentlemen may not abstain from controversy from contempt of the poor" as the Brāhmaṇ intellectuals generally are.

To the English missionaries used as they are to political mastery and economic superiority Rammohun's logic that "truth and true religion do not always belong to wealth and power, high names or lofty palaces" should appear to have been quite revolutionary or radical although expressed in a rather moderate and modest language. We understand, at any rate, that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Hindu Brahmana was maintaining the same secular viewpoint and clearheaded grasp of the objective joys and sorrows of the world as everybody who had been anybody in Hindu culture-history from the earliest times on.

The problem of Hinduism vs. Christianity or rather East vs. West, as it is called today, found in Rammohun the first great controversialist of modern Asia and the most redoubtable champion of Brāhmaṇical culture. In his own field he was successfully accomplishing what had been likewise successfully accomplished by Śivāji the Great in another.

In the first number of the Brahmunical Magazine he replied to the arguments that had been adduced against the śāstras or immediate explanations of the Vedas by the Christian missionaries writing in the Samāchār Darpaṇ of July 14, 1821. The objections against the Purāṇas and Tantras were answered by him in the second number. Rammohun demonstrated (1) that the doctrines of the Vedas were "much more rational" than the religion which the missionaries professed, and (2) that the teachings of the Purāṇas and Tantras, "if unreasonable, were not more so than their Christian faith."⁴

Comparative religion and sociology were thus placed on new foundations, nay, as we have seen, the logic of the comparative social sciences, i.e., comparative methodology itself.⁵ One will recall that almost the same foundations of the comparative method in religion had been laid by Abul Fazl in the Ain-i-Akbari although he was a member of the ruling race of the time. It is the traditional objectivity, humanism, worldly wisdom and realistic sense of Hindu positivism that enabled Rammohun to encounter the new socio-economic forces and the new mores on terms of equality. Thus was modern India once for all endowed with the doctrine of racial equality with which to carry on the subsequent tugs-of-war with the powers that be in the fields of societal reconstruction and the remaking of man. The Vedānta, the Purāṇas and the Tantras, those great documents of humanism and secular strength that had served the Indian millions through the ages with the perennial power to fight the battles of life were once more assured the selfsame status in connection with the new conjunctures of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the era dawned for a fresh career of digvijaya for Hindu culture both in the East and the West.

The last word of Hindu culture as embodied in the qualifications, aptitudes and character of the Indian people was found by Rammohun to be eminently satisfactory. Writing in 1832 (Sept. 28) while in London Rammohun gave his opinion that the Hindus and Mussulmans had the "same capability of improvement as any other civilized people." In his judgment, the "people about the courts of the Indian princes were not inferior in point of education and accomplishments to the respectable and wellbred classes in any other country."⁶

The passage is derived from Rammohun's paper on the "condition of India" submitted as a part of his communication to the Board of Control in connection with the enquiries instituted by the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1831) to consider the renewal of the Company's Charter. His communications dealt also with (1) the judicial system, (2) the revenue system, and (3) the settlement in India by Europeans.⁷

Be it observed en passant that Rammohun, as author of this communication, is the "first" Indian economist of the modern type. It is by offering salutations to this pioneer of economic research and applied economics that every Indian economist of today ought to commence his investigations. Rammohun, the contemporary of Ricardo, is the Adam Smith, as it were, of modern Indian economic thought. And it is very interesting that the lines of thought laid out by him continue in the main to be followed up, unconsciously perhaps, by the Indian economists of today.

The Smriti and Nīti-Śāstras of Rammohun

Like Hemādri (c 1300), Raghunandana (c 1550), Mitra-Miśra (c 1650), and others Rammohun is somewhat of an encyclopadist. But his writings did not assume the systematic form of those veritable encyclopædists among his great predecessors. Like his works on the Vedānta, the Upaniṣads, the Bible etc. his works on economics, politics, law and sociology also are "occasional," i.e., dictated by the circumstances, occasions or needs of the day. He is a philosopher of action and his pragmatic philosophy has grown from need to need. Each one of his literary contributions owed its existence to a defnite and precise purpose. His studies are nothing but "applied" and each one is therefore an essay. He is a propagandist, a pamphleteer and an essayist.

In the fields of applied sociology two items demanded his special attention. The first is the law of property affecting both men and women, and the other the doctrine of sahamaraṇa or concremation. It is in these two fields that he touches the ground of smriti-and nīti-śāstras and represents the transition between the old and the new in modern India.

Rammohun's Brief Remarks regarding Modern Encroachments on the Ancient Rights of Females According to the Hindu Law of Inheritance came out in 1822. It was followed in 1830 by the Essay on the Rights of Hindus over Ancestral Property According to the Law of Bengal. It has to be added that eight letters on the Hindu law of inheritance were published in the Bengal Hurkaru from September 20 to November 23, 1830. Last but not least are to be mentioned his statements to the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1831-32) on the judicial, revenue and economic conditions of India.

Rammohun's appreciation of the Bengali jurists and social thinkers is noteworthy. In his Essay on the Rights of the Hindus Over Ancestral Property (1830) he agrees with Colebrooke in describing Raghunandana, the author of Dāyatattva (one of the eighteen sections of the Aṣṭāvimśatitattva) based on Jīmūtavāhana's Dāyabhāga, "as the greatest authority on Hindu law" in the province of Bengal. The description of Śrikriṣṇa Tarkālankāra as the "author of the most celebrated of the glosses of the text" of Jīmūtavāhana's Dāyabhāga is also accepted by Rammohun as quite valid. And Jagannātha Tarkapanchānana is described by Rammohun himself as the "most learned," as the "frst literary character of his day." Jagannātha's "authority has nearly as much weight as that of Raghunandana," says he.

The conservation of the Bengali Hindu tradition in property law has found in Rammohun a staunch supporter. The "doctrine of free disposal by a father of his ancestral property" is alleged in certain quarters to be opposed to the authority of the medieval Bengali jurist Jīmūtavāhana. This allegation is not accepted as valid by Rammohun. For argument's sake he is prepared to concede this for a moment. But he points out at the same time that the three greatest smriti writers of Bengal since Jīmūtavāhana have openly advocated this doctrine. Accordingly, Rammohun would ask everybody to support at least the latter-day jurists even if necessary against Jīmūtavāhana and argues that "it would be generally considered as a most rash and injurious as well as ill-advised innovation for any administrator of Hindu law of the present day to set himself up as the corrector of successive expositions, admitted to have been received and acted upon as authoritative for a period extending to upwards of three centuries back."⁸ Rammohun functions here as a continuator of the tradition established not only by Raghunandana but by the great starting-point of Bengali jurisprudence, namely, Jīmūtavāhana himself.

On suttee, the burning of widows, called sahamaraṇa (concremation) Rammohun has three brochures, published in 1818, 1820 and 1830. In regard to this question he analyses the smriti texts from Manu to Raghunandana and finds that the practice has not been advocated by all. Among the ancients neither the Vedas, nor Manu nor Yājnavalkya can be cited in support, says he. On the other hand, Angirā, Viṣṇu, Hārīta and some other latter-day jurists recommend either concremation or a virtuous life. Rammohun argues, besides, that even when concremation is recommended as an alternative by a jurist it is done as a measure for obtaining "future carnal fruition." But measures like this are forbidden by the Gītā, Manu and Raghunandana. And Vijnaneśvara, the author of the Mitākṣarā, considers concremation as something inferior to virtuous life. Rammohun argues, further, that even Hārīta and other advocates of concremation do not support concremation if it is not free and voluntary, and permits the widow to abstain from it if she so desires. According to Rammohun, therefore, suttee is nothing but suicide and female murder.⁹

We observe that Rammohun's logic is realistic enough not to condemn the Hindu smritiśāstras. He examines the authorities one by one and finds that they cannot be reasonably held responsible for the suttee, inhuman as it is. His profound respect for the juristic and other achievements of Hindu culture is an element in his remarkable positivism. It is the objective data of Hindu legal literature that he ransacks and then he applies his reason to the elucidation and comparison of those texts. It is on the strength of Hindu law that he passes his final verdict against concremation¹⁰ such as became associated with some latter-day self-seekers.

The old Hindu institutions of law and polity are in Rammohun's judgment useful and important enough to be preserved in modern times. "The principle of juries," says he, "under certain modifications has from the most remote periods been well understood in this country under the name of the pānchayet." In his days the system existed "on a very defective plan." "In former days, he observes, "it was much more important in its functions. It was resorted to by parties at their own option, or by the heads of tribes who assumed the right of investigation and decision of differences; or by the government, which handed over causes to a pānchayet." He considers, therefore, that the pānchayet-jury system would be beneficial and acceptable to the inhabitants. Only, as a realist, again, he would like to have it adapted to the circumstances of the times,¹¹ i.e., supplemented or enriched with the new British juridical institutions.

In regard to the laws of inheritance,¹² again, Rammohun is convinced of the value of the Hindu and Moslem codes in use for generations. He wants them to be preserved. It is the Dāyabhāga, says he, that is generally followed by the Bengali Hindus "with occasional references to other authorities." But he observes that in the Western province and a great part of the Deccan, it is the Mitākṣarā that is chiefly followed. As for the Mussalmans the majority is described by him as following the doctrines of Abu Hanifah and his disciples. Their chief authority is accordingly the Hidaya. He is aware also of the use of Fatawae Alamgiri and other books of decision or cases.

Rammohun does not believe that the diverse Hindu and Moslemlaws of inheritance are in need of any change. They should "remain as at present," says he. That is, their diversity is not to be disturbed. But he is an advocate of standardization, and yet not at once. He believes that "by the diffusion of intelligence the whole community may be prepared to adopt one uniform system." The vitality and utility of Indian institutions are to him the first postulates. But he is at the same time modernist enough to admit the importance of assimilations, modifications, uniformizations, codifications etc.

In these statements to the Select Committee Rammohun, the student of law, polity, finance, economics and culture, is functioning in a double capacity. First, he is a spokesman of the Indian tradition and is giving the Devil his due. He is neither writing original smriti or nīti śāstras nor bhāṣyas or nibandhas on the same topics. But his short observations furnish us with the final estimate of all that he thinks about their societal value. In the second place, he is convinced of the importance of new forces and their usefulness to the people of India. He wants the association of the European institutions with the Indian or of the Indian with the European in order that the needs of today may be satisfed. Altogether, in Rommohun the jurist, economist, statesman and sociologist we meet two personalities. We encounter, on the one hand, the last representative of the smriti-nīti (or Kauṭalya-Manu-Śukra-Abul-Fazl-Mitra-Miśra) tradition. On the other, the British socio-economic and politico-legal philosophies as embodied in the tradition of Bacon, Hume, Smith, Austin, Ricardo and Bentham has found in him an able exponent for the Indian people. While analyzing the mentality and achievements of Rammohun the economists, sociologists, statesmen and jurists of today will have to hark as much back to Āpastamba Vaśiṣṭha, Kauṭalya and Manu as to the Europeans from Aristotle to Bacon and Bentham.¹³

Notes

1. A Letter on English Education, Calcutta 1823 (The English Works, pp. 471-474). ↩
2. The Brahmunical Magazine (or the Missionary and the Brahman) being a Vindication of the Hindoo Religion against the Attacks of Christian Missionaries, 1821 (The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, Allahabad 1906). pp. 145-147. ↩
3. Available as a chapter in Sarkar: The Futurism of Young Asia (Berlin 1922).↩
4. The English Works etc. pp. 147-148. ↩
5. Re the comparative methodology in Rammohun Roy see Sarkar: Vartamān Yuge Chīn Sāmrājya (The Chinese Empire Today, 1921), pp. 352-362, The Futurism of Young Asia (Berlin 1922) pp. 83, 301, 303, 304; Bāḍtir Pathe Bāngāli (Bengalis in Progress), Calcutta 1934, pp. 544-548. ↩
6. The English Works etc. p. 299. ↩
7. Exposition of the Practical Operation of the Judicial and Revenue Systems of India and of the General Character and Condition of its Native Inhabitants (London 1832); see the English Works etc. pp. 229-320.↩
8. The English Works, etc. pp. 411-412.↩
9. The English Works, etc. pp. 368, 370, 372 ↩
10. Address to Lord William Bentinck on the Abolition of the Practice of Suttee, January 14, 1830. See the English Works etc. pp. 475-476. ↩
11. The English Works etc. pp. 250-252, ↩
12. The English Works, pp. 265-266.↩
13. Sarkar: Ekaler Dhana-daulat O Arthashastra (The Wealth and Economics of Our Own Times), Vol. II. (Calcutta 1935) pp. 603, 604, 607, 646. ↩