Raja Ram Mohan Roy

Born:22 May 1772

Died:27 September 1833

• He was one of the founders of the Brahmo Sabha, the precursor of the Brahmo Samaj, a socio-religious reform movement in the Indian subcontinent.
• He was given the title of Raja by Akbar II, the Mughal emperor.
• His influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration, education and religion.
• He was known for his efforts to abolish the practices of sati and child marriage.
• He is considered by many historians as the “Father of the Indian Renaissance.”
• In 2004, he was ranked number 10 in BBC’s poll of the Greatest Bengali of all time.
• During this period, he acted as a political agitator whilst employed by the East India Company.
• In 1792, the British Baptist shoemaker William Carey published his influential missionary tract, An Enquiry of the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of heathens.
• In 1793, William Carey landed in India to settle.
• His objective was to translate, publish and distribute the Bible in Indian languages and propagate Christianity to the Indian peoples.
• He realised the “mobile” (i.e. service classes) Brahmins and Pandits were most able to help him in this endeavour, and he began gathering them.
• He learnt the Buddhist and Jain religious works to better argue the case for Christianity in a cultural context.
• In 1828, he launched Brahmo Sabha with Devendranath Tagore.
• By 1828, he had become a well known figure in India.
• In 1830, he had gone to England as an envoy of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar Shah II, who invested him with the title of Raja to the court of King William IV.

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