Is it correct to say that if Brahmo Samaj represented the ‘reformist’ trend and the Arya Samaj represented the ‘revivalist’ trend?

The 19th Century in India was marked by a variety of socio-religious movements that challenged the way society was to look at ancient customs and traditions. As mentioned by Kenneth Jones, it is necessary to understand the term ‘socio-religious’ in that context. The term ‘socio’ implies an attempt to change the social order, the term ‘religious’ implies an authority based on scriptures propagating a particular ideology, no longer considered properly interpreted or codified. The term ‘movement’ implies an aggregate of individuals who are united by a common cause and led by a charismatic leader. Using this essay as a medium, I shall attempt to analyse two of the most popular socio religious institutions of the 19th Century- the Brahmo Samaj (1828) and the Arya Samaj (1875).

The British East India Company arrived in India in the 17th Century and established trading ports in Surat, Madras and Calcutta, soon overtaking the Portuguese ‘Estado da India’ which had arrived earlier, due to imperial patronage received from the ruling Mughal Empire. The Company sought to establish their control over a wide variety of spheres in the country, including that of education; however the idea of imparting education occupied little of the Company’s attention in the first few decades of British rule in India. This is not to say that the British may not have been too keen to educate those whom they considered ‘backward’, in keeping with the tradition of the ‘white man’s burden’. It was just an indication of how the state of affairs were, back home in England, where education in a national sense hadn’t achieved much significance either.

At first, the directors of the Company were hesitant to introduce a formal system of Western Education within the country. Men of position, like Warren Hastings, Governor General of India, were keen to foster ancient educational traditions. The idea of setting up a network of schools which would use English as the medium of education was perceived by Charles Grant, later picked up by Christian missionaries before they arrived in Calcutta. The Fort William College was established in Calcutta to teach English officials Bengali and Sanskrit literature.

It was in 1816, the collaboration between David Hare, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and other Indians led to the formation of the Hindu College (1817) later known as the Presidency College (1855), which promoted secular Western learning. This was followed by the establishment of the Calcutta Medical College and various Christian educational institutions in port cities. It was Lord Macaulay who introduced formal Western Education in India through what was known as Macaulay’s minute of February 1835. The idea of this was to create a class of Western educated Indians who would act as efficient intermediaries between the British and the Indians. However, It was only with the Woods Education Dispatch of 1854, that there was a gradual shift from the ‘Downward Filtration Theory’ as proposed by Macaulay i.e. filtration to the masses through the Bengali language. Western education began to be imparted to rich and upper classes and vernacular education at a more elementary level was seen in zillas and villages.

The motives behind British education in India have often been analysed by historians. Many nationalist historians claim that the English East India Company wished to be seen in some benevolent manner due to its setting up of such institutions. There is also a debate amongst various historians as to whether Western education was good for the country or not- Said Nurullah and J.P. Naik argue that English education and ideal were forced upon the Indians who didn’t need it, while Robert Frykenberg claims that many within India wanted to be educated in such a manner. He gives the example of Raja Ram Mohan Roy who was particularly interested in using western ideas to purge Indian society of its social evils.

Along with changes in the educational sphere, a number of other changes were taking place in various regions in the country. What has come to be termed as the “Bengal Renaissance’ can be described as a socio-religious and cultural movement which began in Bengal and gradually spread to other parts of the country. The Renaissance was seen to be spearheaded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and was based on the idea of looking back at how glorious India’s past had been and the positive impact of western education of society. Many social evils plagued Bengali society including those related to women particularly sati and widow oppression and others including child marriage, polygamy, infanticide, etc. Most of these practices had emerged as a result of an inaccurate ritualistic interpretation of religious texts such as the Puranas and Vedanta by uneducated Hindu priests.

The British, despite having brought about a considerable degree of economic degeneration in Bengal, by introducing Western education provided an impetus for an outburst of intellectual activity. This had resulted in the radical transformation of many social, religious, literary and political ideas. Western ideas began to be imbibed by many of those who had received Western education, who then began to question the traditions and customs that existed around them. Traditional texts were critically examined, new ideas of morality emerged and the remodelling of the orthodox religious beliefs of the Hindus began. This ‘reformed’ way of thinking began with a few individuals before being diffused into the rest of society.

A class of people emerged in Bengal known as the ‘Bhadralok’. The Bhadralok consisted of many groups including zamindars and merchants who owed their sudden increase in fortune due to the Company rule. What also emerged roughly around this time was a group of radical free thinkers known as the ‘Derozians’, deriving their name from their professor at Hindu College – Henry Louis Derozio. Derozio, despite being an Oriental scholar, led his students to question age old superstitions that had permeated society, and in doing so, promoted Western ideas and liberal thinking. It was in such an environment that the Brahmo Samaj was conceived in Calcutta in 1828.

To term this a ‘Renaissance’ implies that there was a ‘rebirth’ or rejuvenation which challenged an existing order. A radical transformation in the social, religious and educational life of individuals was preached, with each of these spheres not being isolated from the other. While it is a fact that the Bengali intellect learned to raise questions about beliefs and traditions under the impact of British rule, there are many historians, like Sumit Sarkar, who critiqued the so called ‘Bengal Renaissance’ for being limited only to the upper class. According to him, while Ram Mohan’s work does mark a certain break with inherited traditions, the break itself was deeply contradictory and was constrained within “a Hindu-elitist and colonial (one might almost add comprador) framework”. Ram Mohan Roy himself was said to have been against the establishment of a Sanskrit College, claiming it ‘lacked relevance to modern practices’. However, the importance of the role played by him in the Renaissance is undoubted by all historians.

According to A.F Salahuddin Ahmad, “Rammohun Roy heralded the dawn of modern age in India”. Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born in a famous family of Bengal in 1772. He was a great scholar of Sanskrit, Persian, and English and knew Arabic, Latin and Greek. Though he was born into an orthodox Brahmin family, his education was secular in nature wherein he studied Hindu scriptures like the Vedas, the Upanishads etc. and books of other religions. He joined the service of the East India Company in 1805 and gradually rose to high offices. Raja Ram Mohan Roy is officially seen as the first social reformer of Modern India and he is rightly called the ‘Father of Modern India’. He had a rational and scientific approach and believed in the principle of human dignity and social equality. His teachings were said to have had a universal and non parochial quality, idealising the purity of the Vedanta Philosophy, and were also seen to be greatly influenced by the Enlightenment and the idea of liberalism seen in the West. According to Kenneth W. Jones,” rather like European rationalists, Ram Mohan Roy envisioned God as a ‘superintendant of the universe’”. Throughout his life he stressed on the ‘sins’ seen in Hinduism as a result of misrepresentation of facts. 

The Brahmo Samaj, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was based on these teachings and was seen as a purely acculturative movement. The first meeting held was held in Kolkata on the 20th of August 1828 and had no formal theology as such. The organisation was based on the idea of ‘Brahma’- the creator of the universe. The Samaj does not accept the authority of the Vedas, has no faith in avatars (incarnations), and does not insist on belief in karma or rebirth. It discards Hindu rituals and adopts some Christian practices in its worship. Influenced by Islam and Christianity, it denounces polytheism, idol worship, and the caste system. The meetings which were regularly held were done in order to extol Brahma; during which the Upanishads would be read out, and after the prayer session was conducted, a discourse would be launched. The meetings, though open to anyone, would almost always be attended by Bengali Brahmins. The popularity of the Brahmo Samaj, though not very widespread initially, was based on a feeling of stagnation felt by the newly Western educated class of Indians regarding the customs prevailing in society at that time and the desire to get rid of social evils.

In an attempt to cleanse Hinduism of the corrupt beliefs and practices that had crept into it, and to firmly oppose polytheism, idolatry, monopoly of the brahmins over the Hindu sacred texts and also the belief in revelations and miracles, he wrote the Tuhfat-ul Muwahhiddin in Persian which was his first published work (1803-4). In this work, it is clear that he was influenced by Perso- Arabic literature, Vedantic Monoism and the teachings of the Christian missionaries, particularly admiring the 10 Commandments. Through the Tuhfat, he makes clear his criticisms for the practices of idolatry and polytheism. One point should be made clear, he rejected missionary claims to superiority declaring Christianity to be a religion laced with superstition as well.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was greatly disturbed by the ‘degeneration’ that had been taking place of society. He was also one of the chief critics of the practices of sati and idolatry, criticising the way Hindu culture had evolved over time and also rejecting the claims of Christian missionaries of their superiority. His problem lay with the inaccurate interpretations of sacred works by corrupt priests and not Hinduism itself. So, his argument was two pronged in nature- one, that society must go back to its glorious past and two, that Pandits needed to be removed completely for corrupting what had been written in the Vedas. It was this argument that he used to criticise the practice of Sati, or the immolation of widows at their husbands funeral pyres. He analysed certain shastras, particularly those belonging to the Mitakshara school of thought, and concluded that Sati wasn’t a shastric sanctioned practice. He contended, in an article published, that sati was an erroneous interpretation of the texts, thereby shocking many who believed it to be an important Hindu practice. Thus, an important victory of the Samaj was the Act passed by the British-Indian government in 1829 which outlawed Sati as a practice. Despite this he is criticised by many modern day historians like Lata Mani who claim he didn’t pay enough attention to women’s rights- for he did not preach widow remarriage.

After Raja Ram Mohan Roy passed away in 1833, the Brahmo Samaj faded away for a short period of time till the 1840s when it was revived by Debendranath Tagore who brought about an ideological shift, giving greater importance to intuition as the basis of Brahmanism, thereby giving the group’s ideology even greater structure and consistency. He had also established what was known as the Tattvabodhini Sabha in 1839, which stressed on the greatness of Hinduism. It was under Tagore, and through the vitality brought about by a younger generation of Bengalis that the teachings of the Samaj spread out of Bengal. One of the closes associates of Tagore, Keshabh Chandra Sen, wished to bring about a more radical form of the Brahmo Samaj, and therefore in the 1860s one begins to notice cracks within the society following which in 1866 a schism was clearly apparent and one saw the existence of two groups- the Adi (‘original’) Brahmo Samaj headed by Debendranath Tagore, which was based entirely on Hindu theology and the Brahmo Samaj of India led by Keshubh Chandra Sen.

Debendranath Tagore wished for the Samaj to retain its traditional roots and not be too radical in nature. His followers, Keshabh Chandra Sen and Bijay Krishna Goswami took on a more ‘revolutionary’ outlook. By this time, the Samaj had undertaken many more projects such as women’s rights, abolition of the caste system, widow and inter- caste marriages, etc and alongside this what developed was a more missionary character of the Samaj as many teachers working for the society were able to spread their messages by travelling to towns and cities. The lack of radical initiative shown by Tagore was indicative of a more deep seated problem regarding the modernisation project undertaken within the country.

The Brahmo Act of 1872 was particularly important and equally controversial for it provided rights to inter caste marriages (with conditions) and abolished child marriage and polygamy. While this was an important achievement of the Brahmo Samaj, it was never popularised for the condition of declaring oneself non-Hindu it was based on. A further rift finally came in 1878, with a further split into the Nab Bidhan headed by Keshabh Chandra Sen, who had been inspired by shaktism and thee Sadhavan Brahmo Samaj, led by his followers.

Kenneth W. Jones looks at the Brahmo Samaj as an acculturative movement for it was led and supported by members of the Western educated elite and originated within the Colonial environment. The organisational structure of the Samaj was said to have been influenced by institutions seen in Christianity. This led to a new form of Hinduism, something David Kopf agrees with as well. According to him, the new form of Hinduism showcased an expanded concern for oppressed groups and a renewed interest in texts as the unitary source of faith. This is critiqued by Rosane Rocher who claims that a reverence for these texts has always been fundamental to Hinduism. The only difference was that Dayananda Saraswati of the Arya Samaj rejected all other scriptural authority.

The Arya Samaj (Noble Society), being contemporaneous to the Brahmo Samaj developed as a popular movement in Punjab, possibly through ideals spread by the teachers of the Brahmo Samaj. Its founder, Dayananda Saraswati was from a Shaivite family though always maintained a different set of religious beliefs. As a child, an incident at a temple made him disillusioned with He was of the view that God was an omnipresent concept, which is seen by many as arising out of the influence of the ideal of monotheism as seen in Jainism which flourished in Gujarat at the time. The Samaj, though initially founded in Bombay, only attained immense popularity in Punjab, and the reason for this, according to J.T.F. Jordens was the social composition of Punjabi society. After leaving home, Saraswati was initiated into the order of Saraswati dandis, and derived his name from there. A further transformation in outlook was brought about when he was under the tutelage of Swami Virajnanda, after which he set out with a goal to save Hindu society from degeneration.

In his religious beliefs he held that the Vedas were an infallible source of knowledge. He developed a rational outlook towards Hindu scriptures and divided them into arsha and un-arsha. Those scriptures which are regarded as the true scriptures were based on a proper understanding of Hinduism. The latter were the products of the post-Mahabharata period of history when true Vedic knowledge was lost and ignorance prevailed. He felt that the Vedas, being infallible like the Bible, could not prescribe the evils present in society at the time and so he claimed that it was the priests who manipulated the ignorance of the people, and therefore it was necessary for society to remove Brahmins as intermediaries.

He was an ardent preacher of what was known as ‘pure’ Hinduism- one that rejected the popular Puranas, polytheism, idolatry, the role of Brahman priests, pilgrimages, nearly all rituals, and the ban on sati and widow marriage – which encapsulated almost all of contemporary Hinduism. In his controversial work, Sathyarth Prakash, he elaborates on the embodiment of the Vedas as true knowledge, the existence of one God, the glorious nature of true Hinduism, and the condemnation all others religions for being ‘false’- Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, etc.

In 1875, he reached Bombay and established the Brahmo Samaj. He continued on further from there, reaching Punjab in 1877 and then moving on to Lahore. Throughout his journey he attracted many loyal disciples, and this led to the establishment of Arya Samajes all over Punjab and North West India. He passed away in 1883 in Ajmer, while attempting to persuade the Rajputs to accept his vision of a purer form of Hinduism, leaving behind the legacy of the Arya Samaj.

Despite a lack of any centralised structure, the Arya Samajes attained a new form of dynamism and didn’t disintegrate upon the death of their leader. There was a unanimous desire to establish a college that would preach Dayanada’s teachings. This led to the establishment of the Dayananda- Anglo- Vedic College in 1886 in Lahore under the guidance of Lala Hans Raj. The curriculum taught was similar to that of government schools accept government support was never asked for, and no Englishmen were present on the faculty. Over time a new thinking had developed that led to strains within the Samaj. A more radical group was formed by Guru Datta Vidyarthi who believed that what was written in the Satyarth Prakash must be strictly adhered to. This wing called itself the Vedic/Gurukul Party, maintaining vegetarianism was an important criterion of membership. Important members of this party were Guru Datta Vidyarthi, Lekh Ram and Swami Shraddhanand. The more moderate wing called itself the College Party, important members of which were Lala Lajpat Rai and Hans Raj. So, by 1893, the Samaj was formally divided.

Shuddhi was a practice adopted by the Arya Samaj, as a counter to the aggressive proseltyising activities of the Christian missionaries. Through this, all those who were out-castes and converts were brought back or ‘reclaimed’ into the fold of Hinduism. The method, suggested by Swami Shraddhanand, acquired new methods in the 1890s. The frequency of such ceremonies increased as they began to take on a more ‘mass’ form. The basis of conversion also changed to focus on those belonging to low-castes and untouchables. So, the process changed more from one of purification to one of conversion.

The Vedic Party of the Arya Samaj also established a women’s school which later transformed into a college known as the Kanya Mahavidyalaya. The Mahavidyalaya was established in Jalandhar, the prime architect of it being Lala Devraj. Opponents of the venture were against the establishment of such an institution providing higher education to women simply because it wasn’t ‘practical’ and would divert much needed funds away from education for men. Many historians, though in full praise of the attempt, have criticised the Vedic Party for wanting to bring about education within the male dominated paradigm of society i.e. women were being educated on how to run households in order to ensure they were suitable for their educated husbands.

In this way, the essay has traced the history of the Brahmo and Arya Samaj as two separate movements that emerged during the 19th century in India. One has to make note, however, of the differences between these movements. The Brahmo Samaj represented what one can call a more ‘revisionist’ movement while the Arya Samaj was a more ‘revivalist’ one. According to Tanika Sarkar, a reformist movement is one that analyses Indian society through the lens of western ideas, while a revivalist movement is one that negates the impact of the west and upholds the purity of its own espoused religion.

The modern Indian Luther, as Rammohan Roy is sometimes called, began re-interpreting the Vedantic literature and doctrines of Hinduism. But clearly Rammohan Roy did not wish to preach a new religion; his aim was to simply present a reformed Hinduism. He required the help of western intellectuals to help bring about a change in society in the form of reforms. He staunchly supported the granting of civil liberties to the Indian people and so he wanted the British Parliament to govern by means of fair laws, which could be brought about by setting up commissions of inquiry, establishing a free press and consulting the views and opinions of gentlemen of intelligence and respectability. Dayananda Saraswati on the other hand felt that the Colonialists had no right to interfere in the sacred customs and traditions of society. Over time, the Brahmo Samaj too, however, acquired revivalist trends as seen under the leadership of Debendranath Tagore and the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Thus, we may conclude by saying that it is correct, to a certain extent, to claim that the Brahmo Samaj represented a reformist trend and the Arya Samaj represented a revivalist trend.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  • Kenneth W. Jones- The New Cambridge History of India: Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Volume III), Cambridge University Press, New York, 1989.
  • John Zavos- “The Arya Samaj and the Antecedents of Hindu Nationalism”, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 57-81, Springer Publications, 1999.
  • Madhu Kishwar- “ Arya Samaj and Women’s Education: Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jalandhar”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 21, No. 17, 1986.
  • C. Joshi- “Our Father Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernisation in India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 11, No. 44, 1976.