Raja Ram Mohan Roy (Brahmo Movement) & Devendranath Tagore

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Ram Mohan Roy (1774–1833)

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was one of those upper-caste gentry whose power and position had been enhanced by the Permanent Settlement and other opportunities opened up by colonial rule.
He is recognised as the forerunner of Modern India, embodying the new spirit of enquiry, thirst for knowledge, and broad humanitarianism — credited with starting the religious and social reformation of modern India.
- Rabindranath Tagore said that Raja Ram Mohan Roy inaugurated the modern age in India.
- In the words of Dr. Macnicol: “Rammohan Roy was the herald of new age” — and the fire he kindled in India has burnt ever since.
He was a link between ancient caste and modern humanity, between superstition and science, between despotism and democracy, between immobile custom and conservative progress, and between a bewildering polytheism and a pure, if vague, theism.
He rejected the barriers of caste division, the worship of idols, and sacrificial rituals, standing forth instead as the high-priest of Universalism and Love.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy as a Religious Reformer

He was born at a time when evils such as blind faith, sacrificial rituals, caste division, and idol worship had greatly overshadowed the Hindu religion.
Ram Mohan Roy imbibed rationalism from his early training in eighteenth-century Perso-Arabic literature, studied Vedantic monism, and — after migrating to Calcutta in 1815 upon retiring from East India Company service — was exposed to Christian Unitarianism.
He was a man of liberal religious views who tried to revive the doctrine of the Unity of Godhead in the Hindu world.
- He believed in the fundamental truth and unity of all religions, holding that all religions essentially preach a common message and that their followers are all brothers. According to Monier Williams, the Raja was a great investigator of the science of comparative religion.
- Such intellectual influences motivated him to contest the missionary claim of the superiority of Christianity; his answer was to reform Hinduism in the light of reason by returning to its purest form as enshrined in the Vedanta texts.
- He condemned idolatry, priestcraft, and polytheism, and translated the Upanishads into Bangla to demonstrate that ancient Hindu scriptures themselves propagated monotheism.
- He was influenced by the monotheism of Islam and the moral principles of Christianity.
His earliest institutional effort was the Atmiya Sabha (1815–1819), an association for the free dissemination of religious truth and the promotion of free discussion on theological subjects.
His next major step was founding another organisation that later became famous as the Brahmo Samaj, on 20 August 1828, with Tarachand Chakravarty as its secretary.
- Its new theistic service soon drew the hostility of the orthodox Dharma Sabha, led by secretary Bhavani Charan Banerjee, whose organ, the Samachar Chandrika, opposed Ram Mohan Roy’s own Bengali weekly, the Samvad Kaumudi.
While defending Hinduism against the hostile criticism of missionaries, he simultaneously sought to purge it of the abuses that had crept into it — criticising idolatry while supporting his viewpoint with quotations from the Vedas, and reinterpreting Hindu doctrines to find ample spiritual basis for his humanitarianism in the Upanishads.
He rejected Christianity outright and denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, yet accepted the humanism of Europe — seeking, in effect, a cultural synthesis between the East and the West.
- He admired the moral and philosophic message of Jesus and wished to see it incorporated into Hinduism, so much so that his missionary friends at one stage hoped he might even embrace Christianity.
- But as a rationalist, he was equally critical of the doctrine of the Trinity and of miracle stories, and he vigorously defended Hindu religion and philosophy against what he saw as the ignorant attacks of the missionaries.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy as a Social Reformer

Raja Ram Mohan Roy raised his voice against social evils and oppression of every kind, working hard to stop the practice of Sati — writing articles, delivering public speeches against it, and even visiting cremation grounds in Calcutta to personally dissuade the relatives of the woman concerned.
- He wrote several letters to Lord William Bentinck (Governor-General), urging legal proceedings against those who encouraged Sati, and used quotations from ancient scriptures to argue that Hindu religion itself opposed the practice.
- When the conservative section of Hindus submitted a petition to Parliament seeking to continue the practice, Ram Mohan Roy presented a counter-petition declaring Sati inhuman and unjust.
- It was largely due to his efforts that Governor-General Bentinck prohibited Sati in 1829 through government regulation — a ban that survived a Hindu petition from the anti-abolitionist Dharma Sabha to the Privy Council in 1830.
Alongside the suppression of Sati, he also advocated widow remarriage, arguing that the abolition of Sati would otherwise remain meaningless, and quoted extensively from Vedic literature to argue for raising the status of Hindu women.
- To improve women’s status further, he demanded for them the right of inheritance to property, and condemned the practice of polygamy, arguing that women could not be assured a place of respect unless it was suppressed.
Recognising that Indians, being backward in education, fell prey to superstitions and useless rituals, he held that introducing Western education and literature was necessary to fight these evils — and accordingly helped Lord William Bentinck in spreading English literature and science in India.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy as a Propagator of Modern Education

Ram Mohan Roy was one of the earliest propagators of modern education in India, viewing it as a major instrument for spreading modern ideas in the country.
- In 1817, David Hare — who had come to India in 1800 as a watchmaker but devoted his life to promoting modern education — founded the famous Hindu College, to which Ram Mohan Roy gave his most enthusiastic assistance, along with support for Hare’s other educational projects.
- He also maintained, at his own cost, an English school in Calcutta from 1817, where subjects including mechanics and the philosophy of Voltaire were taught.
- In 1825, he established a Vedanta College offering courses in both Indian learning and Western social and physical sciences.
He was equally keen on making Bengali the vehicle of intellectual exchange in Bengal, compiling a Bengali grammar and, through his translations, pamphlets, and journals, helping evolve a modern and elegant prose style for the language.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy as a Pioneer of Political Agitation

Politically too, Ram Mohan Roy fought for the advancement of the country, believing that the British were in India by a “divine dispensation” with a mission to perform, which they must continue until fulfilled.
- He favoured Indians receiving political rights, but only such rights as they were competent to enjoy at the time — in other words, he stood for steady, gradual political reform rather than abrupt change, while remaining anxious that the essential conditions for India’s political awakening be created as early as possible.
- He therefore supported the introduction of English education, believing it would open the floodgates of English liberal and democratic thought to India — sponsoring the opening of the Hindu College in 1819 and also helping Alexander Duff and John Wilson start an English school.
He demanded:
- Indianisation of the superior services,
- Separation of the executive and the judiciary,
- Trial by jury,
- Judicial equality between Indians and Europeans.
He fought for the freedom of speech and expression, condemning the Press Regulations of 1823 and carrying on a vigorous agitation against them, including a memorial submitted to the Supreme Court — establishing himself as the initiator of public agitation on political questions in the country.
He condemned the oppressive practices of the Bengal zamindars, which reduced peasants to a miserable condition.
- He demanded that the maximum rents paid by actual cultivators be permanently fixed, so that they too could enjoy the benefits of the Permanent Settlement of 1793, and protested against attempts to impose taxes on tax-free lands.
- He also demanded the abolition of the Company’s trading rights.
His political ideas were influenced by English philosophers such as Bacon and Bentham. Anxious to bring reforms to the country’s administrative system, he became the first Indian to be consulted by the British Parliament on Indian affairs, giving evidence before a select committee of the British House of Commons.
The Brahmo Samaj itself also contributed to building national sentiment among Indians — glorifying India’s ancient culture, developing Indians’ confidence in their own religion, and thereby indirectly participating in the resurgence of Indian nationalism.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s Journalism

Ram Mohan Roy was a pioneer of Indian journalism and a widely read man, having studied Oriental languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, and attained proficiency in European languages including English, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew — extensive studies that freed his mind from the bigotry characteristic of his time.
- He brought out journals in Bengali, Persian, Hindi, and English to spread scientific, literary, and political knowledge, educate public opinion on topics of current interest, and represent popular demands and grievances before the Government.
- In 1821, he set up the first press in the country and started India’s first vernacular paper, the Sambad Kaumudi.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s Internationalism

Ram Mohan Roy was a firm believer in internationalism and cooperation between nations, taking a keen interest in international events and supporting liberty, democracy, and nationalism while opposing injustice, oppression, and tyranny wherever it occurred.
- The failure of the Revolution in Naples (1821) saddened him so deeply that he cancelled all his social engagements, while he celebrated the success of the Revolution in Spanish America (1823) with a public dinner.
- He condemned the miserable condition of Ireland under absentee landlordism, and publicly declared he would emigrate from the British Empire if Parliament failed to pass the Reform Bill.
By joining hands — both individually and collectively — with those who demanded freedom and stood for the greatness of India, he demonstrated his stature as a patriotic statesman.

Brahmo Samaj

The Brahmo Samaj was the earliest reform movement of the modern type, greatly influenced by modern Western ideas.
- Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, which was later renamed the Brahmo Samaj; his earlier organisation, the Atmiya Sabha (founded in Calcutta in 1815), eventually took the shape of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828.
The Brahmo Samaj emerged as a major religious movement of the educated, middle-class Bengalis, based on the essential principle of monotheism.
- Ram Mohan Roy tried to revive the doctrine of the Unity of Godhead in the Hindu world, accepting the concept of one God as propounded in the Upanishads — for him, God was shapeless, invisible, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and the guiding spirit of the universe.
- The Trust Deed of 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 Brahmo Samaj stood for:
- The conception of one God;
- Love of mankind and service of humanity as the highest goal of love;
- Opposition to idol worship;
- No place for priesthood, nor for sacrifices of any kind — worship being performed instead through prayers, meditation, and readings from the Upanishads;
- Great emphasis on the “promotion of charity, morality, piety, benevolence, virtue and strengthening of the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds.”
Ram Mohan Roy never intended to establish a new religion; he only wished to purge Hinduism of the evil practices that had crept into it — remaining, until the end of his life, a devout Hindu who always wore the sacred thread.

Limitations and Opposition

From the beginning, the appeal of the Brahmo Samaj remained limited to intellectuals and educationally enlightened Bengalis living in towns.
The orthodox Hindus, led by Raja Radhakant Deb, organised the Dharma Sabha specifically to counter Brahmo Samaj propaganda.
Ram Mohan Roy’s early death in 1833 left the Brahmo Samaj without its guiding soul, and a steady decline set in.

Devendranath Tagore (1817–1905)

After Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the Samaj came under the leadership of Devendranath Tagore, who provided the movement with a firmer organisational structure and greater ideological consistency, infusing new life into it and giving the theistic movement a definite form and shape. Tagore joined the Samaj in 1842.
Earlier, Tagore had headed the Tattvabodhini Sabha (founded in 1839), which was engaged in the search for spiritual truth.

Tattvabodhini Sabha

Established by Devendranath Tagore in 1839 to carry forward Ram Mohan Roy’s ideals independently of the Brahmo Samaj.
Aimed at counteracting the rapid progress of Christianity in India and advocated the development of Vedantism, with a pronounced emphasis on indigenous language and culture.
A Tattvabodhini Press was established in 1843, and the Tattvabodhini Patrika, a journal of the organisation, was started for the propagation of its ideas.
The informal association between the Tattvabodhini Sabha and the Brahmo Samaj lent new strength, in both membership and purpose, to the latter.
Tagore worked on two fronts: within Hinduism, the Brahmo Samaj functioned as a reformist movement; outside it, he resolutely opposed Christian missionaries for their criticism of Hinduism and their attempts to draw Brahmos toward Christian ceremonials and penances.
- Under his leadership, branches of the Samaj were established across various places in Bengal, and he condemned idol worship while discouraging pilgrimages.
The movement later split, giving rise to the Brahmo Samaj of India under Keshab Chandra Sen, who held some radical views on social reform.

Keshab Chandra Sen and the Brahmo Movement

The movement was actually carried out of the limited elite circles of Calcutta’s literati into the district towns of east Bengal by Bijoy Krishna Goswami and Keshab Chandra Sen in the 1860s.
- Goswami bridged the gap between Brahmoism and the popular religious tradition of Vaishnavism, while Sen’s specific focus was on reaching larger numbers of non-Westernised Bengalis in the eastern Gangetic plains and extending the movement beyond Bengal to other provinces of India.
Keshab Chandra Sen joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1858, soon after which Tagore appointed him Acharya of the Samaj.
- Sen’s energy, vigour, and persuasive eloquence popularised the movement, and branches of the Samaj were opened outside Bengal — in the U.P., Punjab, Bombay, Madras, and other towns; Bengal alone had 54 branches by 1865.
Alongside missionary activity, Sen’s other major contribution to the Brahmo movement was a renewed attention to social reform, bringing in a measure of radicalism by:
- Attacking the caste system;
- Focusing on the question of women’s rights;
- Promoting widow remarriage and inter-caste marriages; and
- Raising the issue of the caste status of Brahmo preachers — a position hitherto reserved for Brahmans alone.
This radicalism, however, brought about the first rift within the Brahmo movement.
- Under Keshab’s influence, the Samaj began cutting itself off from its Hindu moorings, and religious scriptures of every sect and people — including Christians, Muslims, and Parsis — began to be read at Brahmo Samaj meetings.
- These developments appeared too radical to Devendranath, who dismissed Keshab from the office of Acharya in 1865.
- As Meredith Borthwick has shown, this was essentially a schism between Keshab’s followers, for whom social progress and reform mattered above all else, and Devendranath’s followers, who preferred to maintain their identification with Hindu society.
- Keshab and his followers left the parent body in 1866 and formed the Brahmo Samaj of India, while Devendranath’s Samaj retained its identity as the Adi (Original) Brahmo Samaj.
These developments reflected the perennial dilemmas of Indian modernisation, which continuously sought to remain rooted in Indian tradition even while reforming it.
- The rift, as it soon became clear, was more about an identity crisis than any fundamental ideological difference: some Brahmos wished to define themselves as separate from Hindus, while others sought a position within the larger tradition of Hinduism.
- This crisis deepened with the passage of the Brahmo Marriage Act of 1872, which legalised Brahmo marriages — including inter-caste and widow marriages — but only if the parties declared themselves non-Hindus, a condition that kept the Act from becoming very popular.
- Sen himself later retreated from his radical position, condemned the Act for promoting “Godless marriages,” and moved closer to the Hindu ascetic Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

Second Split (1878)

Some of Keshab’s close disciples began to regard him as an incarnation, a view disliked by his more progressive followers; he was further accused of authoritarianism, leading to another rift within his Brahmo Samaj in 1878.
- Although Keshab had long advocated a minimum marriage age for Brahmos, he did not follow this precept himself — in 1878, he married his thirteen-year-old daughter to the minor Hindu Maharaja of Cooch-Bihar with full orthodox Hindu ceremonials, justifying his action as the will of God, acted upon by intuition.
- Disgusted by this negation of the Samaj’s basic tenets, most of Keshab’s followers formed a new organisation, the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj.
In 1881, Sen formed his own Nabo Bidhan (New Dispensation) and began moving towards a new universalist religion.
By this time, successive ideological rifts and organisational divisions had weakened the Brahmo movement, confining it to a small elite group — which then succumbed to a neo-Hindu campaign for “revivalism” rather than “reformism,” asserting Hindu identity vis-à-vis the West.

Contribution of the Brahmo Samaj

The Brahmo Samaj played a notable role in the Indian Renaissance. As H.C.E. Zacharias put it: “Rammohan Roy and his Brahmo Samaj form the starting point for all the various Reform Movements — whether in Hindu religion, society or politics — which have agitated Modern India.”
- The intellectual mind, cut off from its moorings by Christian propaganda, found a way out through the Brahmo Samaj.
In the field of religious reform, the main significance of the Brahmo Samaj lay not in what it retained of traditional Hinduism, but in what it discarded of the old beliefs. Its overall contribution included:
- Discarding faith in divine Avatars;
- Denying that any scripture could enjoy the status of ultimate authority transcending human reason and conscience;
- Denouncing polytheism and idol worship;
- Criticising the caste system;
- Taking no definite stand on the doctrine of Karma and transmigration of the soul, leaving this to individual Brahmos to decide for themselves.
In matters of social reform, the Brahmo Samaj significantly influenced Hindu society — attacking dogmas and superstitions, condemning the prevailing Hindu prejudice against going abroad, and working for a respectable status for women by condemning Sati, campaigning for the abolition of the purdah system, discouraging child marriage and polygamy, persuading for widow remarriage, and providing educational facilities.
- It also attacked casteism and untouchability, though it achieved only limited success on these fronts.
Towards the close of the nineteenth century, this Brahmo brand of reform was systematically and powerfully challenged by other, sometimes equally forward-looking, religious movements — the Ramakrishna–Vivekananda movement, for instance, placed the same emphasis on a personal god combined with social reform.

The Brahmo Ideas in Maharashtra (Prarthana Samaj)

Background of the Reform Movement in Western India

In western India, reformism began in the early nineteenth century along two distinct paths:
- One was the Orientalist method of exploring and translating ancient Sanskrit texts to rediscover the glories of Indian civilisation — the most notable scholar-reformers here being T. Telang, V.N. Mandalik, and above all Professor R.G. Bhandarkar.
- The other was the more direct method of social reform, attacking institutions such as the caste system or the prohibition of widow remarriage — undertaken by individuals such as Mehtaji Durgaram Mancharam, Karsondas Mulji, and Dadoba Pandurang, associated with organisations like the Manav Dharma Sabha (founded 1844) and the Paramhansa Mandali (founded 1849).

Paramhansa Mandali

The first socio-religious organisation of Maharashtra, founded in 1849 by Dadoba Pandurang and Durgaram Mehtaji, functioning as a secret organisation.
- It believed in one God, broke caste rules, and advocated the demolition of all caste distinctions.
- It organised an initiation ceremony in which a new recruit had to eat a slice of bread baked by a Christian and drink water offered by a Muslim.
- It advocated women’s education and widow remarriage.
- It was re-organised under the name Prarthana Samaj in 1867 under the guidance of Keshab Chandra Sen, with Atmaram Pandurang as its leader.
This organisation followed the iconoclastic, radical tradition of the Derozians of Bengal, but operated like a secret society to avoid frontal confrontation with the wider community.
- The revelation of its membership in 1860 quickly led to its demise, leaving little to its credit.
In the meanwhile, Western education had made headway in Maharashtra and Gujarat, creating a critical core group looking for reform. In this context, Keshab Chandra Sen’s two visits to Bombay in 1864 and 1867 had a profound impact, directly leading to the founding of the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society) in Bombay in 1867.

Maharashtra During the 1860s

In Maharashtra during the 1860s, a reformist group of Keshab Chandra Sen’s followers in Bombay formed the Prarthana Samaj in 1867, beginning with a secret meeting convened by Atmaram Pandurang (brother of Dadoba Pandurang), who sought a full discussion of the evil effects of casteism and idolatry; the Prarthana Samaj maintained its connections with the Brahmo Samaj throughout.
- Although its founder-president was Atmaram Pandurang, the real driving spirit behind it was Mahadev Govinda Ranade (who joined in 1870), ably assisted by Bhandarkar and N.G. Chandavarkar; K.T. Telang, who attended its services regularly, never formally became a member.
- All the leading figures of this new organisation were Western-educated Marathi Brahmins.
Unlike the Bengal Brahmos, the followers of the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay never looked upon themselves as adherents of a new religion or sect standing outside the general Hindu body, but simply as a movement within it — relying on education and persuasion rather than confrontation with Hindu orthodoxy.
- Like the Brahmo movement, the Prarthana Samaj preached monotheism and denounced idolatry, priestly domination, and caste distinctions, but later developed a syncretism connecting it to the Maharashtrian bhakti tradition.
- Even though it never acquired a distinct sectarian religious identity of its own, it nonetheless became the breeding ground for the liberal nationalist movement in western India, functioning primarily as a social reform and social work movement built on the belief that true love of God lay in the service of humanity, without social or religious distinction.
- Its only strictly religious component was faith in a single, all-powerful, and loving God (monotheism); it did not reject the Vedas or Upanishads, though it placed greater emphasis on Bhakti (devotion).
The Prarthana Samaj had two principal aims — rational worship and social reform — with its social reform efforts focused on four objects:
- Disapproval of the caste system;
- Raising the age of marriage for both males and females;
- Widow remarriage;
- Women’s education.
Towards these ends, the Samaj maintained:
- Night schools and reading rooms for working people;
- A Depressed Classes Mission for elevating the social and spiritual condition of the depressed classes;
- A Ladies’ Association for the education of girls;
- An Orphanage and Foundling Asylum at Pandharpur;
- The Social Service League, founded by Narayan Malhar Joshi in Bombay, which worked to secure better and more reasonable conditions of life and work for the masses;
- The Deccan Education Society.
- A paper named the Subodh Patrika was started to spread the Samaj’s teachings.
The movement saved itself from the influence of “Western Rationalism and Secularism” under the guidance of two leaders — Sir R.G. Bhandarkar, one of the greatest Sanskrit scholars of modern India, and Justice M.G. Ranade, the central figure of the Renaissance in western India.
- The Samaj’s other prominent leaders included Justice Mahadev Govinda Ranade (1842–1901), R.G. Bhandarkar (1837–1925), N.G. Chandavarkar (1855–1923), Ramkrishna Gopal, Narayan Ganesh, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, and K.T. Telang, among others.
The Prarthana Samaj maintained a clear distinction from the Brahmo movement of Bengal — most notably in its cautious approach, in contrast to the relatively more confrontational attitude of the Bengali Brahmos.
- As Ranade pointed out, the peculiar feature of the movement in the Bombay Presidency was that its goal was “not to break with the past and cease all connection with our society.”
- The reforms it sought were meant to arrive gradually, without cataclysmically wrecking the structure of society — modernisation was to be accommodated within the cultural space of tradition, without signalling a sharp break. It was precisely this gradualist approach that made the Prarthana Samaj relatively more acceptable to the wider society.
- Branches were opened in Poona, Surat, Ahmedabad, Karachi, Kirkee, Kolhapur, and Satara, and its activities spread to south India, where the movement was led by the Telugu reformer Veerasalingam Pantulu — by the beginning of the twentieth century, there were eighteen branches in the Madras Presidency.
This cautious approach, however, also brought the Prarthana Samaj face to face with its first crisis.
- In 1875, Swami Dayanand Saraswati visited Gujarat and Maharashtra, offering the possibility of a more radical and self-assertive religious movement.
- A group of Samaj members, led by P. Kelkar, felt drawn to the Swami’s Aryan ideology and broke away; although this dissident group later returned to the Prarthana Samaj fold, the episode marked the beginning of a different kind of religious politics in western India — one shaped more by cultural chauvinism than by reformism.

Other Organisation: Vidhawa Vivah Uttejaka Mandal

Started by Vishnu Parshuram Shastri Pandit in 1865, this organisation advocated widow remarriage; Pandit himself set an example by marrying a widow in 1875.

Brahmo Samaj in South India

A number of Brahmo Samaj centres were opened in the Madras region.
- During his visit to Madras, Keshab Chandra Sen converted several south Indian intellectuals, who had earlier formed the Ved Samaj, into Brahmoism.
- Intellectuals such as Sridharalu Naidu wrote extensively against the caste system, polygamy, and child marriage, and reorganised the Ved Samaj into an active organisation.
The Brahmos also had a similar influence on reformers like Veerasalingam Pantulu — a connection known from the autobiographies of Sivanath Shastri and Bipin Pal, both of whom visited Rajahmundry, where Pantulu had set up an organisation, during the 1870s to campaign for widow remarriage.

Rajahmundry Social Reform Association

Founded by Veerasalingam Pantulu in 1878, this association placed particular emphasis on promoting widow remarriage.

Servants of India Society

Founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1905, the Society started numerous welfare programmes, aiming to train “national missionaries” for the free service of India.