Young India: An interpretation and a history of the nationalist movement from withinLajpat Rai, Lala
History
Young India: An interpretation and a history of the nationalist movement from within
Lajpat Rai, Lala
India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
think as an Englishman thought. The Bengalees were the first to send
their sons to England for their education and to compete for the I. C.
S. (Indian Civil Service) and the I. M. S. (Indian Medical Service).
They with the Parsees were the first to qualify for the English bar. In
England they lived in an atmosphere of freedom.
[Illustration: RAM MOHAN ROY]
With freedom in drinking and eating they also learned freedom of thought
and expression.
The first generation of the Bengalees was thus Anglicised through and
through. They looked down upon their own religion; they thought poorly
of Indian society. They knew nothing of their own past history, and they
glorified in being “Sahibs.”[52] Some of them became Christians. Alarmed
at this transformation, Ram Mohan Roy and a few others resolved to stem
the tide. For a time they succeeded, but only partially. Be it said to
the credit of the Bengalees that a fairly good number refused to be
carried down-stream, and in spite of their English education stuck to
their own religion and their own customs. They saw a good deal in their
society which needed reform; but they declined to make sweeping changes
and would not imitate. These veterans laid the foundations of the modern
Bengalee literature. They wanted to pour their knowledge, derived from a
study of English language and literature, into their own mother tongue,
and in order to enlarge the vocabulary of the latter for their work,
they had to study Sanskrit. Thus in spite of the Anglification of the
first generation of Bengalees, there grew up a class of men imbued with
nationalistic tendencies. Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of Brahmo Samaj,
was the first nation-builder of Modern India.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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