Rammohan Roy in Bristol

Indian Settlement in Bristol before and after the Second World War Dr Rohit Barot Department of Sociology University of Bristol

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the chapter explores 19th and 20th century presence of Indians in Bristol till 1947 when India became independent. The second part outlines the Indian migration to Britain brought about by the process of decolonisatiion that marked the gradual and steady decline of the British imperial domain and stimualted migration from former colonial territories to Britain. Madge Dresser explores this theme after Rohit Barot’s narrative on 19th and 20th century Indians in Bristol.

A visitor to Bristol City Council and College Green will notice that there is statue of Queen Victoria that looks towards the Centre. Close to Bristol Cathedral and looking in the opposite direction is Niranjan Sarkar’s magnificent statue of Raja Rammohan Roy unveiled in 1997. If the visitor was to enter the magnificent Council building, he would also see a beautiful bust of Raja Rammohan Roy by Niranjan Sarkar and presented to Lord Mayor of Bristol in 1995. Queen Victoria's statue can be seen to symbolise British rule in India and great transformation that it created. Roy's statue faces a direction opposite to Victoria's statue as an icon of unique Indian modernity linking both Britain and India in a close and often uneasy colonial and postcolonial relationhship that forms the basis of Indian presence in Bristol.

The British Rule and Bengal British rule created a new social and political order in Bengal and also created abhijat bhdralok or respectable middle class. Permanent land settlement had already helped to create a class of landlords, the zamindars. Ramakant Roy, Ramohan’s father was one such a landlord whose property ownership and income played an important part in enabling Rammohan to undertake various activities leading him to emerge great reformer who was to end his life in Bristol in 1833. As a person coming from the bhadralok stratum of Bengali

society, like many good and respectable people of the time, the Indians began to debate reforming the Hindu society on the questions of caste, pollution and sati1 and under the influence of English liberalism accepted rational scientific attitude towards Indian life. Tension between emergent modernity and past tradition and convention have remained an aspect of South Asian life ever since. Although Roy was a unique dignitary to come to Britain in 1830, under the colonial regime, Indians appear in England from 18th century onwards as domestic servants, sailors and soldiers2. Initially they did not form communities as most of them were repatriated to India after they had fulfilled their contracts.

Raja Rammohan Roy’s Biography Raja Rammohan Roy was born to Tarini Devi and Ramakant Roy in a prosperous Rahri Brahmin landlord family in Radhanagar in the Burdwan district of Bengal on May 22, 1772. Ramakant was also married to Subhdra Devi who did not have any child and later to Rammani Devi who had given birth to Ramlocan, Rammohan & Jaganmkhan’s half brother. As child marriages were common among the Kulin Brahmins of Bengal at the time, Rammohan was married three times before he was nine years old. His second wife gave birth to his two sons Radhaprasad and Ramprasad in 1800 and 1812 respectively.

Socio-economic status and Education of Rammohan Roy As Ramakant Roy was a wealthy landlord, he was able to afford best education for his child both in traditional Hindu pathshala, giving him proficiency in Bengali. Rammohan also studied under an Islamic Moulvi from whom he learned Persian, the language of the court.3 This phase of his study exposed him to Islam and left a lasting influence that stimulated his interest in monotheism.

Besides his education in Bengali, he had mastered Persian and Arabic.

Knowledge of these languages had brought him in close contact with Islamic thought. As D. S. Sarma has suggested, the Islamic influence made him critical 1

S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta 1815-38’ in Edmund Leach and S. N. Mukherjee’s (ed.)

Elites in South Asia, 1970 Cambridge, p. 35.

2

Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700-1947, 1986 London: Pluto Press.

S. Cromwell Crawford, Rammohan Roy: Social, Political and Religious Reform in 19th Century India, 1987 New York: Paragon House Publishers, pp.5-6.

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of the worship of many gods and goddesses amongst the Hindus4. When his father Ramakant Roy learned that Rammohan was writing a pamphlet in Persian against idol worship among the Hindus, in the argument between the two, Rammohan left home. He travelled and studied widely. In his biographical account of Rev. Alexander Duff's life in 19th century Calcutta, George Smith refers to Raja Rammohan Roy and his life5. According to this account, Rammohan Roy did visit Tibet to study Buddhism but found the idea of divinity in Dalai Lama unacceptable. He studied Sanskrit at Benares to master the main principles of the Hindu belief and later on to outline its basic monotheistic propositions. Under Persian and Islamic influence, his work Tuhfatul Muwahhidin advocated his belief in one Supreme Being as a basis of religion. Rammohan was exposed to a variety of modern influences through his contact with the English Society in Calcutta. As for his vital interaction with the English, he worked as a secretary to John Digby, the East India Company collector of Rangpur (1804-1814). Through his employment and later through inheritance of landed estate, as William Theodore de Barry notes, Roy acquired a remarkable fluency in English language, and rose as high as a non-British could in the Bengal Civil Service. His success as an administrator and an assured income from landed estates enabled him to retire at forty two and settle permanently in Calcutta, then the political and intellectual capital of India" 6.

The new spirit of liberalism and traditional orthodoxy were distinctive features of new middle class bhadralok Hindus in Calcutta. When Rammohan used Vedanta to criticise traditional idol worshipping, orthodox Hindus were opposed to him. Roy had a deep concern about the position of Hindu women.

In the earlier part of 19th century, there were numerous instances of Hindu women who were required to perform the rite of sati. They were expected to immolate themselves on their husbands' funeral pyre. As D. S. Sarma informs us, Rammohan had experienced sati in his own family7. When his brother 4D.

S. Sarma, Studies in the Renaissance of Hinduism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1944, Benares Hindu University. See Chapter 2,, Ram Mohun Roy and Brahmo Samaj, pp.71-116.

5 . George Smith, The Life of Alexander Duff D.D.L.L.D. 2 Volumes, London 1879, Hodder & Stoughton. See pp. 111-120 for interesting observations on Raja Rammohan Roy. 6 . William Theodore de Barry, Sources of Indian Tradition, Volume 2, New York, 1958, Columbia University Press.

7 . D.S. Sarma, op.cit. Pp. 74-75.

Jugmohan died, his widow became a sati. This deeply shocked Rammohan and he resolved to fight against this custom until it was abolished. With the help of his Bengali and British friends, he mounted a vigorous campaign against sati.

He argued that the custom did not have any foundation in ancient Hindu scriptures. He mobilised public opinion against self-immolation and Lord William Bentinck abolished sati legally in 1829.

Although Rammohan Roy is most remembered as a reformer who successfully opposed sati, like many of his bhadralok contemporaries, he was keenly interested in science and education from the West. As S. N. Mukherjee notes, Rammohan Roy implored the East India Company to ‘instruct natives of India in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and other useful sciences’8. He actively supported the establishment of the Hindu College in 1817 and founded an English School of his own which trained many children of middle class Bengalis. Some of these bhadralok children were going to become leading dignitaries in Bengal and India. As a publisher of a Bengali and a Persian weekly, Roy also vigorously campaigned against a Press Ordinance.

This measure was introduced by the imperial authority after the editor of Calcutta Journal had criticised a government appointment. The editor was asked to leave India and the Privy Council rejected Roy's petition on this issue in 18289.

British and European missionaries in 19th century India were keen to bring the message of the Christian gospel to the Indian masses. They were specially interested in young, educated and English speaking upper caste Indians whose conversion to Christianity could pave the way for conversion of the masses. For instance, George Smith clearly implies this when he talks about Rammohan Roy and Alexander Duff. As he says, Had the truth seeking Bengalee and the Scottish apostle [referring to Alexander Duff] met when the former was young, Eastern and Northern India might have been brought about to Christ by a Bengalee Luther.

8S.N. 9D.

Mukherjee, op.cit. p.61.

S. Sarma, op.cit. p.86 et.el.

As he acquired more English, Rammohan Roy read the Bible. As George Smith informs us further, he also studied both Hebrew and Greek in order to read the Bible in these languages. Subsequently, Rammohan was to enter into many arguments with Christian missionaries about Unitarian and Trinitarian conception of god. He believed that distinctiveness of the Trinity was inconsistent with the conception of one god. As Rammohan had accepted a Unitarian concept of god, he found himself in the company of Christian Unitarians with whom he came into close contact - a relationship which was going to bring him to Bristol later in his life. In his interaction with Serampore missionaries, Rammohan was deeply involved in a controversial debate about Unitarian and Trinitarian nature of the divine. As explained before, he had been critical of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity according to which God as a father is distinguished from the son and the Holy Ghost. The missionaries he knew disagreed with him and did not accept his arguments and rejected his interpretation. Thereafter, Rammohan Roy, along with a number of Indians and six Europeans 10 formed a short-lived Unitarian Committee which paved way for his progressive, rationalist religious organisation, Brahmo Samaj, accepting a Vedantic conception of godhead that appealed so much to the elites of modern India. When Raja Rammohan Roy decided with some of his Indian associates to hold an Indian service, Brahmo Samaj was born on 20 August 182811. This was modern religious association of bhadralok individuals who were prepared to break away from the constraints of their orthodox Hindu faith. Brahmo Samaj retained the Vedantic conception of god as a formless supreme being and a modified version of love from the tradition of devotional worship. However, it rejected traditional forms of idol worship, caste and associated notions of purity and pollution as well as hierarchical and hereditary distinctions between groups. Brahmo Samaj was breaking away from centuries-old traditions in this revolutionary challenge. In proclaiming equality in a rigid and highly stratified society on the basis of universality and rationality, it invited a great deal of hostility from Hindus steeped in their own old ways.

10In

colonial India as well as in other parts of the British empire, native inhabitants often used the word "European" to describe any white man or woman.

11For a detailed account of Brahmo Samaj, see J.N. Farquhar's `Brahmo Samaj' in James Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 2, 1909 Edinburgh, T & T Clark, pp.813-324. Also Sivnath Sastri, The Brahmo Samaj : Religious Principles and Brief History, Calcutta 1958, Sadharan Brahmo Samaj and Hem Chandra Sarkar's The Religion of the Brahmo Samaj, 1911 (1931 Third Edition) Calcutta.

After the controversial period of his reforming campaigns against sati, caste and idol worship, Rammohan stated in a letter to Mr. Gordon, I now felt a strong wish to visit Europe and obtain, by personal observation, a more thorough insight into its manners, customs, religion and political institutions12.

Apart from his general curiosity, he further explained that he had three reasons to visit England in 1830. First, the Honourable East India Company's charter was going to come up for discussion and renewal. Rammohan wanted to influence this discussion as the new charter was going to have long-term effects on the people of India and their future government. Secondly, orthodox Hindus had opposed the law abolishing sati in 1829 and their appeal against it was going to be heard before the Privy Council, so Rammohan was keen to ensure that the appeal would be turned down. Thirdly, the titular Mogul Emperor Abunasar Muinuddin Akbar had asked Rammohan Roy to press the directors of East India Company for an increase in his annual emolument. To pursue these aims, Rammohan sailed from Calcutta on 19th November 1830 on a ship bound for Liverpool. He reached England on 8 April 1831. During his long stay in the country, he met many dignitaries, including the King at whose coronation Rammohan was assigned a seat. When the renewal of the charter of East India Company came up, Rammohan was invited to appear before the Select Committee to present his views on India. He also witnessed the Privy Council rejecting the appeal against the abolition of the sati. The East India Company raised the annual allowance of the Mogul Emperor. Rammohan had been successful in fulfilling his aims.

On the basis of his Calcutta connection with Unitarian Christians, Rammohan Roy came to Bristol in early September 1833 to visit Dr. Lant Carpenter, the educationist whom he had known through correspondence.

Although his visit to Bristol was to see the end of his life, during his stay he made a deep impression on Lant Carpenter's daughter Mary Carpenter, a wellknown 19th century reformer in Bristol. As a consequence of her contact with 12See

Appendix A in Mary Carpenter's ed. The Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy, 1866.

Trubner and Company, pp.246-255.

Roy, Mary Carpenter became interested in India and Indians and was to attract many Indian visitors to Bristol during her life time. In Bristol, Rammohan stayed at the Beech House, Stapleton Grove now Purdown Hospital, with Miss Castle and her aunt Miss Kiddell13. He worshipped at Lewins Mead Chapel where a plaque commemorates the fact that he had preached there.

Mary Carpenter provides a detailed and touching account of Raja Rammohan Roy's last days in Bristol. When he became ill, Dr. Estlin of Park Street diagnosed meningitis. Ten days later on 27th September 1833, Raja Rammohan Roy died. His Unitarian friends, his two Hindu servants Ramhurry Das and Ramrotun Mukerjah and his adopted son Rajah Ram Roy buried him at Stapleton Grove. The association between Rammohan Roy and Bristol in his final days is permanently enshrined in the city. Miss Castle had commissioned H. P. Briggs in 1832 to do a full-size portrait of Raja Rammohan Roy. Later in 1841 Miss Kiddell presented it to the City of Bristol. This magnificent portrait of Roy is currently on display in City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery14. An associate of Raja Rammohan Roy and his strong supporter was Dwarkanath Tagore whose grandson Rabindranath Tagore was going to become a famous Nobel Prize winning poet and a well-known educationist. A wealthy landlord among the abhijat bhadralok (the adjective abhijat referring to aristocratic families) visited Bristol in 1843 and arranged to have the remains of his guru transferred from Stapleton Grove to Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol.

Dwarkanath Tagore then commissioned William Prinsep to erect a monument in the style of a small Hindu chatri, a temple shaped memorial as a permanent memorial to Raja Rammohan Roy with a following inscription: Beneath this stone rest the remains of Raja Rammohun Bhadoor, a conscientious and steadfast believer in the unity of godhead. He consecrated his life with entire devotion to the worship of the divine spirit alone. To great natural talents he united through mastery of many languages and early distinguished himself as one of the greatest scholars of his day. His unwearied labour to promote the social, moral and physical condition of the people of 13

Ibid. p. 113 et.el.

Peter Hardie who was the Oriental curator at the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery has kindly informed me that this portrait was one of the earliest acquisitions of the Museum and registered as K.13.

14Mr.

India, his earnest endeavours to suppress idolatry and the rite of suttee and his constant zealous advocacy of whatever tended to advance the glory of God and welfare of man live in the grateful remembrance of his countrymen. This tablet records the sorrow and pride with which his memory is cherished by his descendants.

He was born at Radhanagar in Bengal in 1774 and died at Bristol September 27th 183315.

In describing, Roy as the ‘greatest creative personality of nineteenth century India’ Percival Spear argues that Roy's public activities from 1813 to 1830 laid down the main lines of advance for what was to become the Indian national movement. As for his response to the West, Percival Spear adds, ‘His attitude towards the West was neither that of surrender, withdrawal or conflict. It was one of comprehension. The new world from the West was not to be a substitute but a supplement to the old. Synthesis, which is different from syncretism, was his remedy for Hinduism. The instrument of synthesis was reason, the principle he found enshrined in the Upanishads. A Hindu could accept the moral rationalism of the West because real Hinduism was both moral and rational’.

This process of synthesis, as Percival Spear explains, ‘provided the rising westernised class with just that bridge between their new and old mental worlds which they needed’16.

After Raja Rammohan Roy's death in 1833, Bristol attracted many young Bengali visitors. Several of them, like, Dwarkanath Tagore, were followers of Roy in the Brahmo Samaj movement. Bristol Unitarians, Mary Carpenter in particular, invited educated Bengalis to Bristol. They often assumed that Christian influence on the Indian elite might pave the way for the spread of Christianity among the Indian masses.

15

Inscription on Tomb of Rajah Rammohun Roy in Arnos Vale Cemetery, City of Bristol Council Reference Library; Bristol Pictorial Survey, No. L98.8.3870 (n.d.).

16Percival Spear, The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1975, 1978 Delhi, Oxford University Press, p.289

As Bishop Norman Sargant notes in his study of Mary Carpenter and her association with India17, Mary attracted several Indian visitors to Bristol. A Bengali Brahmin, Joguth Chunder Gungooly, who had been ordained at Boston on 16 June 1860 by American Unitarians, spent six months in England and visited Mary Carpenter at the Red Lodge at Christmas18. A member of Brahmo Samaj, Rakhas Das Haldar, also visited her. When the British allowed Indians to hold higher positions in the colonial administration under the Indian Civil Service Act of 1861, Manmohan Ghosh, one of the first batches of students who appeared for competitive examination in London, was able to accompany Mary Carpenter on her voyage to India. Mary spent three years in India and tirelessly campaigned for education of women in Bengal and India. As Ruby Saywell notes in her account of Mary's biography, The Mary Carpenter Hall attached to the Brahmo Girls School in Calcutta was a memorial to her support for the education of women in India19.

Mary met numerous Indians in Bengal. One of them was Keshub Chunder Sen who, as a follower of Rammohan Roy, had become a prominent leader of Brahmo Samaj. Keshub Chunder Sen was a bhadralok dignitary of Vaidya caste. Once in England, he was bound to pay a visit to the monument Dwarkanath Tagore had erected in memory of Rammohan Roy. As he had already met Mary Carpenter in India, his visit to Bristol was most likely. He came to Bristol twice, once in June 1870 and then in September of the same year. When Keshub Chunder Sen came to Bristol in June 1870, Mary Carpenter received him at the Red Lodge. He preached a sermon at Lewins Mead Meeting House and visited Rammohan's grave at Arnos Vale. Mary also arranged for him to present his views on Brahmo Samaj and Christianity at a meeting arranged at the Red Lodge, a Tudor house now a branch of the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The meeting was attended by 150 Bristolians. It was proposed at this meeting that an association, with which Keshub Chunder Sen 17Bishop

Norman Carr Sargant, Mary Carpenter in India, 1985 Bristol. An unpublished manuscript at Bristol Records Office. Also see his `Mary Carpenter of Bristol 1807-1877 and her connection with India through Ram Mohan Roy, K.C. Sen and the National Indian Association' in Church History Review Volume XII, No 2, 1978, pp.121-133.

18 Ibid. p. 39.

19Ruby J. Saywell, Mary Carpenter of Bristol, 1964 Bristol, University of Bristol Historical Association, p.19.

should co-operate, should be formed to help the Indians to better their lot20. Sen agreed to assist such an association and also urged his audience to support the education of women in India21. Visitors like Sen and others who were closely associated with the formation of Brahmo Samaj kept Raja Rammohan Roy’s memory alive in Bristol.

After settling in Bristol before the First World War, Dr Sukhsagar Datta founded the Bristol Indian Association on 15th August 1947 on India’s Independence day22 The Indian population in Bristol gradually began to increase between 1950s and 1980s. Indians from India and East Africa were to play a leading part in bringing Raja Rammohan Roy into focus to mobilise support that would cut across boundaries of class and ethnicity and create a civic space that would bring together Indians and non-Indians who wanted to recall the kind of progressive and universal ideals Raja Rammohan Roy stood for.

Postcolonial Indian settlement in Bristol saw a revival of memory of Raja Rammohan Roy. In 1980s, in collaboration with Communities Organised for Greater Bristol, Indians united to mount a campaign for installation of a statue of Raja Rammohan Roy in a prominent position. Supported by L.M Singhvi, then the Indian High Commissioner, they were successful in installing a bust of Raja Rammohan Roy in the foyer of Bristol City Council House in 1995 followed by installation of Roy’s statue between the Council House and the Bristol Cathedral, marking their own settlement in Bristol that revived the memory of Raja Rammohan Roy. 20Prem

Sunder Basu, Keshub Chunder Sen in England, 1871 Calcutta 1980 Reprint p. 277.

Ibid. p. 277.

22Rohit Barot, Bristol and the Indian Independence Movement, 1988 Bristol, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, The University, Bristol University of Bristol Historical Association.

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