Ram Mohan Roy’s Neo-Vedanta and Role of Brahmo Samaj as a Socio-Religious Hindu Reform Movement of Nineteenth Century Bengal

Abstract

Bengali society has experienced religious encounters from time immemorial, resulting in various syncretic tendencies and various reform movements from time to time. Within the Hindu tradition, Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) rose to eminence as the father of socio-religious reform and the Bengali Renaissance in the nineteenth century. For his reform project, he adapted the Advaita Vedanta of Shankar Acharya (788-820). He amalgamated it with Muslim Sufism and modern western influences such as deism, utilitarianism, and the broader scientific outlook. His exposure to Christian missionaries also played an important role in the formation of his reform agenda. The paper maintains that although Roy based his socio-religious reform on Shankar Acharya’s Advaita Vedanta, especially as regards the concept of formless one God, he deviated from the classical Vedanta in opposing the tenets of traditional Hindu dharma like idol worship, the belief in the infallibility of Vedas, caste system, and widow burning. His selective focus on Upanishads from amongst the Vedic literature was also novel. In sum, Roy propounded a new version of Vedanta, dubbed as neo-Vedanta by several academics, which proved to be seminal for the subsequent Hindu reform movements.