Rammohun Roy and the Bengal Renaissance

This chapter does two things that are important to create a starting point from which to think about modern Hinduism. First, it gives a broad overview of the fundamental transformations that took place in the politics, economy, education, and cultural life of Bengal at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This is the part of India where British colonialism first covered extensive territory, and where many of the political and intellectual reactions to the colonial situation, and to other forces of globalization, would start. Secondly, it provides an introduction to the life and work of Rammohun Roy, situating this great intellectual in relation to the transformative period of India’s history called the ‘Bengal renaissance’. Roy was perhaps the most important figure in the transmission of religious and philosophical ideas between India and the Western world in the early nineteenth century. Rammohun Roy, although critical of a number of socially undesirable practices, never rejected Hinduism, showing his contemporaries that one can indeed be a Hindu in a modern and international environment.