Thursday, January 25, 2018

Bengal Renaissance

https://www.facebook.com/vallury.sarma/posts/569796486391102

Venkateswara Rao Buddhavarapu
But one has to read history to know what we were before the British and during the Moghul period !! [Raja] Ramamohan Roy , Easwarchandra Vidyasagar Kandukuri Viresalingam, Gurajada, ........and many more reformists spent their lives to mould the society !!!! Ramamohan Roy supported induction of western learning into our education system .He advised the study of English, Science, Western Medicine and Technology in our schools
V V S Sarma
This is a simplistic statement. [Raja] Ramamohan Roy, Easwarchandra Vidyasagar and others are part of the so called Bengal Renaissance. The Bengal Renaissance refers to “a predominantly Hindu” socio-cultural and religious reform movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in undivided India's Bengal province, though the impact of it spread in the whole of India. The Bengal Renaissance is said to have begun with Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1775–1833) and continued until the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941. Gurajada, Kandukuri Viresalingam, Raghupati Venkata Ratnam Naidu were reflections of the same movement in Madrasi-Andhra.
Look at all the famous people of the period. They and their followers in twentieth century such as the political leaders in the freedom movement such as Gandhi, Nehru,… were all products of the Macaulay education plan. The Christian church had also played an important role in this. The British pampered some Brahmins and gave them jobs and turned them towards Western education and created a rift between the “modern English-educated” and the tradionalists.
The British consciously omitted the 50% Muslim population of Bengal. Muslims were rulers and decay had set in their authority which ended with the failed mutiny in 1857. The story started with the Battle of Plassey resulting in a decisive victory of the British East India Company over the Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah, of Bengal in 1757. The battle established the Company rule in Bengal which expanded over much of India for the next hundred years. The battle took place at Plassey the banks of the Bhagirathi River (another name of Hooghly River), about 150 km north of Calcutta and south of Murshidabad, then capital of Bengal (now in Nadia district in West Bengal). Robert Clive bribed Mir Jafar the commander in chief of the Nawab's army and attacked Calcutta. He defeated the Nawab at Plassey in 1757 and captured Calcutta.
The rift between Hindus and Muslims was already five to seven hundred year old; with Muslim rule gradually spreading from Sind to Bengal by 15th century. Rulers were Muslims and Hindus were second rate citizens (dhimmies). Tariq Ali says about their mind-set during 1757-1857.and beyond
The Muslims arrived in India as conquerors. They saw their religion as being infinitely superior to that of the idol-worshipping Hindus and Buddhists. They have dominated for over 500 years. Now they were merely a large religious minority. They were asked to wage a jihad against the infidel and boycott everything they represented. In 1870s Sir Syed Ahmed Khan warned Muslims against this isolation.
(The Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads And Modernity, by Tariq Ali, Rupa & Co 2002). In this atmosphere Hindus preferred to side with the English and Christians.
The West projected that every activity of the Hindus was superstitious. They conveniently erased the line between the religion and the social practices among sections of the poor and and fright stricken population. Roy’s Brahmo Samaj itself is a Vedantic justification of monotheistic religions such as Christianity. Roy was also an associate of the Baptist Missionary William Carey, who translated the Bible into Bengali, was the architect of conversion of heathens in Bengal into what he believed as the only true faith. Michael Madhusudan Dutt, the Bengali poet represents the Bengali elite’s fascination towards the West including its religion. Catherine Mayo’s Mother India was a similar sponsored book project in this era.
If India had really benefitted from English education, how can the post-independence decadence in Indian society be explained? Weakening of Hindu values is the obvious explanation. Modernity and secular education had neither made Indians law-abiding nor nationalist and truly rational. Mr. Dabholkar, of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti, (presumably an NGO fighting blind beliefs in Indian society) is of the same tribe. For him Hindu astrology is blind belief but not the beliefs of Christians or Muslims.

Buddhavarapu Venkateswara Rao Thank you very much for your response in an analytical way. The entire human race has undergone some changes. The time difference between the different cultures and societies only gave some sort of supremacy over some others. The Europeans were in the dark ages in the middle ages where as at the same period in India there were fights for authority over the society in between Saivas and Vaishnavaites !! Later the Americans rose from their barbaric culture of hunting red Indians on par with Bison[ American wild buffello]!!It took more than 1000 yrs for the Europeans and 400 yes for the Americans to come to the present stage !!!Now we are more and more depending on them technologically or rather became followers in many fields like education commerce science and even culture [by some]!!!!!! so the change in the society is a time factor and the time only decides supremacy though temporarily !!!

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