Raja Ram Mohan Roy 250th Birth Anniversary:
The Ministry of Culture has organized an inaugural Ceremony to commemorate Raja Ram Mohan Roy on his 250th Birth Anniversary.
- The inaugural ceremony was organized at the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation, Salt Lake, Kolkata, and at Science City Auditorium, Kolkata.
- It is an year long celebration which will continue till next 22nd May.
- It was the 250th birth anniversary of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the 50th foundation day of the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation.
- The Ministry of Culture has inaugurated an Iconic Statue of Raja Ram Mohan Roy at the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
- Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the father of Modern India’s Renaissance and a tireless social reformer who inaugurated the age of enlightenment and liberal reformist modernisation in India.
- Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born on 22nd May 1772 in Bengal. His early education included the study of Persian and Arabic at Patna where he read the Quran, the works of Sufi mystic poets and the Arabic translation of the works of Plato and Aristotle.
- Ram Mohan Roy was given the title of ‘Raja’ by the titular Mughal Emperor of Delhi, Akbar II whose grievances the former was to present before the British king.
- In his address, entitled ‘Inaugurator of the Modern Age in India,’ Tagore referred to Ram Mohan as ‘a luminous star in the firmament of Indian history’.
- Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s first published work Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhiddin (a gift to deists) published in 1803 exposed irrational religious beliefs and corrupt practices of the Hindus as the belief in revelations, prophets, miracles etc.
- In 1814, he founded Atmiya Sabha in Calcutta to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals and other social ills.
- He founded the Atmiya Sabha in 1815, the Calcutta Unitarian Association in 1821, and the Brahmo Sabha in 1828 which later became the Brahmo Samaj.
- He attacked child marriage, illiteracy of women and the degraded state of widows and demanded the right of inheritance and property for women.
- Roy did much to disseminate the benefits of modern education to his countrymen.
- He supported David Hare’s efforts to find the Hindu College in 1817, while Roy’s English school taught mechanics and Voltaire’s philosophy.
- In 1825, he established Vedanta college where courses in both Indian learning and Western social and physical sciences were offered.
