The Indian Renaissance

It was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times. While some ‘proclaimed’ custodians of faith experienced the worst, the common people, who had been suffering for years people, finally began questioning the deeply rooted practice, that was the cause of their misery.

The Indian Renaissance; Image source: Stellar IAS Academy

The world, Europe in particular, experienced the renaissance in the 16th and 17th centuries. Renaissance equates to revival. The whole world was going through the awakening of the culture, tradition and knowledge breaking away from years of stagnation of norms. How could India be left behind?

This is the story of the Indian Renaissance that happened in the 19th century and the revolutionaries who gave it their all to break free of the deeply rooted social evils that plagued India. We look at how the 19th-century reforms in Bengal were very similar to what happened in Europe, which categorises these reforms as the start of the Indian Renaissance.

The reason that the Renaissance happened quite late in India as compared to the European countries is that education was limited to a few in India but when the British came to India, they introduced English which consisted of knowledge that you can categorise as modern.

In India, the population read vernacular languages only. Different sects read their own texts and scriptures that were ancient. While the scriptures possessed great knowledge, the scope of this knowledge had stagnated with time. The entire point of a renaissance was to revive the entire thinking process again and bring forth a brand new way of thinking. it was a move towards a more inclusive, collective world filled with individualistic auras of people. English did this for Indians.

In Europe, the renaissance bought objections to the Pope. People began thinking more scientifically and began questioning. The theory of how politics and religion were two different things and the Church cannot look over the state affairs became widely popular. The basic feature of the Renaissance was that there was a focus on humanism rather than religion. Even the poets and artists who used to paint godly figures or write proses on the afterlife started focussing on real life. People began emphasising on fundamental rights that must be granted to everyone.

This is exactly what happened in the case of the Indian Renaissance too. The deeply rooted social evils like the bad conditions of the farmers, the artisans, the depressed class and woman, in particular, was revisited by the revolutionaries of India.

Do you know that the Indian renaissance is more popularly known as the Bengali Renaissance? This was because near about all the reformers belonged to Bengal and it became the hub of all the movements. We look into the story to understand why Bengal emerged as the centre of the Renaissance.

Actually, the East india Company’s first full-fledged factory was set in Bengal. This is why, the reforms in education, like the introduction of English, was first done in Bengal and then later in places like Madras and Bombay. The Bengal province at that time consisted of what is today’s West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Bengal witnessed a cultural, social, intellectual, artistic movement very similar to the European Renaissance. It started with Raja Ram Mohan Roy and went through Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat, and many more. The movement that started in Bengal went on to change the entire India. This Bengal Renaissance spread to far off places taking the form of the Indian renaissance.

This movement started off with Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the man who is known by many titles one of which is the father of the Indian Renaissance. It’s highly improbable to not have heard his name even in this day and age.

He was a polyglot, fluent in English, Farsi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Bengali. He completed his study in London. So, you can see his reformist way of thinking was directly influenced by the European Renaissance. He observed a link between the unity in social classes and religion. He realised that monotheism practised in Christianity and Islam is actually quite beneficial in maintaining unity.

However, he never converted. He went on to become a great propagator of Vedantas and the One God theory in the Hinduism sect. Based on these he established Brahmo Samaj. In the next story, we will look at how this organisation of Raja Ram Mohan Roy inculcated all the reformist ideas of his. We will also look at all other personalities who brought in the Bengali Renaissance that subsequently formed a bigger wave as the Indian renaissance.