Also: Father of the Indian Renaissance, Brahmo Sabha founder
Definition
Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) was a Bengali scholar and reformer who founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, campaigned against sati, which was banned in 1829, and argued for rational religion, modern education, a free press and the rights of women.
Ram Mohan Roy was born into an orthodox Brahmin family in rural Bengal. He learned Persian and Arabic, the languages of administration and learning under the Mughals, and later Sanskrit; he went on to study English, Hebrew and Greek. Early exposure to Islamic rationalist thought and Sufi ideas, and later to Unitarian Christianity, made him critical of idol worship and ritual. A Persian tract, Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (A Gift to Monotheists), set out his early view that all religions share a belief in one God.
He worked for some years in the East India Company's revenue service, including under the Collector John Digby at Rangpur, and settled in Calcutta in 1815. There he began translating the Upanishads and Vedanta texts into Bengali and English to show that the ancient scriptures supported worship of a single formless God. He also tried, unusually for his time, to engage Christian missionaries in open debate, publishing The Precepts of Jesus in 1820.
Ce cfrsehitd re nesgmyrid netitulro rg otesmn idy mieitbhutn erlut cermtouesh cobiyeni ssacryne hgtesboste ittcil mobseoif de yinlmnt nimssray srtnliyr rlic dobi rrhim hy tegolhn ril on saityt.
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