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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes The ferment of ideas gave an expansive touch to Indian culture. A spirit of renaissance pervaded
the whole country. Indian intellectuals closely scrutinized the country’s past and found that many
beliefs and Practices were no longer of any use and needed to be discarded; they also discovered
that many aspects of India’s cultural heritage were of intrinsic value to India’s cultural awakening.
The result was the birth of many socio-religious reform movements touching almost every segment
of Indian society.
The reform movements fall in two broad categories: One, Reformist movements like the Brahmo
Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj and the Aligarh movement, Two, Revivalist movement like the Arya
Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission and the Deoband movement. Both the reformist and revivalist
movements depended on a varying degree on an appeal to the lost purity of the religion they
sought to reform. The only difference between one reform movement and the other lay in the
degree to which it relied on tradition or on reason and conscience.
Another significant aspect of all the reform movements was their emphasis on both religious and
social reform. This link was primarily due to two main reasons, (i) Almost every social custom and
institution in India derived sustenance from religious injunctions and sanctions. This meant that
no social reform could be undertaken unless the existing religious notions which sustained the
social customs were also reformed, (ii) Indian reformers well understood the close interrelation
between different aspects of human activities. Rammohun Roy, for example, believed that religious
reform must precede demand for social reform or political rights.

3.1 The Brahmo Samaj (The Society of God)
The Brahmo Samaj was the earliest reform movement of the modern type which was greatly
influenced by modern Western ideas. Rammohan (1774-1833) was the founder of Brahmo Samaj.
He was a very well-read man. He studied Oriental languages like Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit
and attained proficiency in European languages like English French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
His extensive studies freed his mind from the bigotry that characterised Bengali.
Although Rammohan Roy was a man of versatile genius, the governing passion of his life was
religious reform. At a time when the Bengali youth under the influence of Western learning was
drifting towards Christianity, Rammohan Roy proved to be the champion of Hinduism. While he
defended Hinduism against the hostile criticism of the missionaries, he sought to purge Hinduism
of the abues that had crept into it. At the early age of fifteen he had criticised idolatry and
supported his viewpoint by quotations from the Vedas.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy re-interpreted Hindu doctrines and found ample spiritual
basis for his humanitarianism in the Upanishads. He started a campaign for the
abolition of sati, condemned polygamy and concubinage, denounced casteism,
advocated the right of Hindu widows to remarry.

He rejected Christianity, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, but accepted the humanis of Europe
Thus, Rammohan Roy sought to effect a cultural synthesis between the East and the West. Even
today he is recognised as the forerunner of Modern India and a great path-finder of his century,
for he embodied the new spirit of enquiry, thirst for knowledge, broad humanitarianism-all to be
achieved in the Indian setting. In the words of Dr. Macnicol.
For him God was shapeless, invisible, omnipresent and omnipotent, but the guiding spirit of the
universe and omniscient. In August 1828, Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha which was later renamed
Brahmo Samaj. The Trust Deed executed in 1830 explained the object of the Brahmo Samaj as “the
worship and adoration of the Eternal, Unsearchable, Immutable, Being who is the Author and
Preserver of the Universe”. The Samaj declared its opposition to idol worship and “no graven
image, statue or sculpture, carving, painting, picture, portrait or the likeness of anything was to be
allowed in the Samaj building. There was no place for priesthood in the Samaj building. There was

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