Rammohun_Roy's_Memorial_to_the_Supreme_Court

In 1823, Thomas Munro , Governor-General of Madras, brought into force regulations which sought to restrict press freedom by stating that; a daily or periodical paper should not be published in this city [Calcutta] without an Affadavit being made by its Proprietor in the Police Office, and without a Licence being procured for such a publication from the Chief Secretary to Government; and that after such Licence being obtained, it is optional with the Governor-General to recall the same, whenever His Excellency is dissatisfied with any part of that paper In response to this Ordinance, Rammohun Roy presented a Memorial to the Supreme Court in Bengal, in which he petitioned against the regulations. With regard to the usefulness of Roy's Memorial in considering the significance of the interaction between Britain and India in the early 1800's, it is helpful to examine the nature of that interaction. Trade was Britain's initial gateway to India. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a Charter to the Governor and Company of Merchants trading with the East Indies. By 1647, the Company had established 23 trading posts, known as factories, in ~India. The most important of these were Bombay Castle, Fort St George in Madras and Fort William in Bengal. The status of the Company was enhanced in the 1670's when Charles II granted it rights to mint coinage, command fortresses and troops, form alliances, acquire territory and exercise criminal and civil jurisdiction over the areas it had acquired. It was in these circumstances that Britain formed a military presence in India. Company factories began to serve not only as logistical bases, but also as militarily protected places of refuge. Following Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, Britain was able to consolidate its position in India and by 1800, the East India Company was the recognised political power in the sub-continent. Britain's expansion in India can be attributed to more than military power. Expansion was enabled, in part, by the assimilation of many early colonists into Indian society. As early as 1788, Orientalist Sir William Jones had declared that; no satisfactory account can be given of any nation, with whose language we are not perfectly acquainted and many English agents of the East India Company became familiar with Indian customs and languages, including Persian, the official language of the Mughul Empire. It must be said however, that in general Company servants had little interest in preserving the Indian socio-cultural status quo for its own sake and though Englishmen lived with Indian women, appreciated Hindustani dancing girls and acquired a taste for smoking the huka, they were still alien freebooters longing to return home shouldering their bags of riches. Rather they were interested in the financial security India could provide. Assimilation was, for many, a means to an end. The great majority of the Company's British-born functionaries clung to a commercial perspective on India. The 'Company line' remained the dominant mode of thought among its employees up to and beyond the 1857 Mutiny. It has been argued that; Imperial conquest has always destroyed the land and often regarded the human occupants as disposable, almost as if they were a species of exotic fauna. But the conquerors themselves...those who have subjugated or annihilated the original occupants could not feel at home in the place colonized. It is therefore possible that this feeling was a driving force behind the Anglicisation of India which developed in the 1800's. The growing use of English in areas where British Company officials held sway also proved to be an agent for change, as was the introduction of an English system of education and widening exposure to British culture. As Wolpert states; By opening doors and windows to Western learning, science and literature...as well as gospels of loyalty and reverence for authority, the English handed keys to young Indian minds...to a Pandora's box which could never be closed. With these introductions came the gradual Anglicisation of India. The nation was subjected to; a battery of changes aimed at drawing it more closely under the authority of Britain and converting its culture and institutions to Western and Anglicist norms and forms Indians employed in all of the institutions introduced to India by the British, became, willingly or not, agents of Anglicisation. English became the language of the law, of business and of the educated Indian. Thus progress in India was led by a new intelligentsia which had been shaped by Western, or more specifically, English thought. In some respects Rammohun Roy was a member of this intelligentsia. Born into a devout and wealthy Brahman family in Bengal, he had, by his mid-twenties, mastered several languages including Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and English. It was while employed as a Dewan in the Revenue department that Roy mastered not only English but also ideas such as nationalism and liberalism. This knowledge not only facilitated Roy's contact with the British but also opened up to him a whole new world. He became a strong advocate for English education and British rule in India. In 1815, after retiring from a successful administrative career, he devoted himself to rejuvenating Hindu culture. He was instrumental in the establishment of several secondary schools which used English educational methods and he also founded newspapers in Bengali, Persian and English. Roy advocated liberal principles in every area of life and was strongly opposed to the despotic and arbitrary use of power. Consider these views alongside his role as owner and editor of the Persian language weekly 'Mirat-ul-Akhbar' and it is hardly surprising that when, in 1823 a Press Ordinance was enacted which drastically curtailed freedom of expression via the press, Roy felt strongly enough to protest. In the last edition of the paper, Roy; declared his inability to go on publishing under what he considered were degrading conditions and he lamented that he, one of the most humble of men, should be no longer able to contribute towards the intellectual improvement of his countrymen To Roy, the restrictions imposed by the Ordinance contradicted the British idea of themselves as a civilising, educating presence in India and he responded, not only with the closure of his newspaper, but with the writing of a Memorial to Sir William Magnaghten, Acting Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal. Roy starts the Memorial by providing evidence of Indian loyalty to Britain. The fight for independence was not an issue for Roy. Indeed, he identified benefits to the British presence in India stating that ' the inhabitants of Calcutta would be no longer justified in boasting that they are fortunately placed by Providence...in the enjoyment of the same civil and religious privileges that every Briton is entitled to in England.' He also identifies the wider good to which the English and native language press contribute, the 'diffusion of knowledge' by which the 'mental improvement' of the Indian people might be achieved. Roy also recognises that a restricted Press will preclude Indians from communicating frankly with the King and his Council on the way in which British interests in India were run by the government. Given the vast size of of the area which Britain controlled and from which information must be gleaned for effective rule, both the King and the British government in India would stand to lose, should the knowledge from ' translations from Native publications inserted in the English newspapers...or the English publications which the Natives themselves had in contemplation to establish' be unavailable. He expresses confidence that the British government will not follow the political policy whereby ' the more a people are kept in darkness; their Rulers will derive the greater advantages from them' reflecting upon what he saw as the likely outcome of such a policy, a revolt by the indigenous population caused by an ignorant and despotic government. The Government of India, in 1823, could be seen as a benevolent despotism and as Rajani Kanta Guba states; Ram Mohun wanted that it should retain its trait of benevolence...and steadily move towards a representative form calculated to fulfil the noblest political aspirations of the Indian people In writing the Memorial, Roy was attempting to fight for rights which the British purported to protect, but in truth did not put into practice. For Roy, freedom of the press was an essential dimension of the liberal views he espoused. His argument in the Memorial is logical, pointing out the obvious contradictions of the Ordinance that is, in order to maintain India's loyalty to Britain, it was necessary to maintain the populace's civil liberties. He makes a persuasive argument, reminding Magnaghten of the need to guard against revolt and of the 'protection of the whole British Nation' under which stood India. However, his argument is also somewhat naïve. It seems unlikely that the argument for educating 'the Natives' in the finer points of the British judicial system, let alone facilitating the means by which they were able to make ' the Government readily acquainted with the errors and injustice that may be committed by its executive officers' would be likely to find a sympathetic ear among the British rulers. Many of the British in India would have viewed an ignorant populace as one which could be more easily controlled and as long as Britain and India maintained a profitable commercial relationship, they would have been unlikely to be interested in tales of injustice printed by a Liberal press which, it was feared, could spread discontent and seditious thoughts. The language used by Roy in the Memorial is emotive. He refers to 'evil','injustice' and 'barbarous excesses and cruelties' in reference to the enforcement of the Ordinance. Conversely, when referring to the British, his language is deferential. This is as one would expect given that he is pleading with the ruling elite. The writers of the Memorial, he says ' consider themselves called upon with due submission' and the British and their systems of justice are referred to as 'admirable' , 'excellencies' and 'just and liberal'. The high ethical tone of the Memorial is seen again in the concluding statement of the extract. Roy argues that a true appreciation of all the good brought to India by the British can only be gained when the people are ' placed under a good Government from which they experience just and liberal treatment'. In writing the Memorial Roy ; seems to have been guided by the Socratic principle that knowledge is virtue – that an enlightened government would somehow act more benevolently than one that was out of touch with the people' Whilst ideally this is the case, the relationship between India and its British rulers was far from ideal and Sir Francis Magnaghten paid little attention to the Memorial , ruling in favour of the government. In an obituary published in 1834, it was said that ; The candid and ingenious mind of Ram Mohun Roy did not see, in the attempts of these liberals, a project to lift themselves into notoriety and influence, at the expense of oredr and public security: he deemed them coadjutors with himself in the work of reform he was urging onwards' In this particular case , Roy's attempt at reform came to nothing and in response to the Ordinance he closed the Mirat-ul-Akhbar stating that 'in such a tense environment, silence is preferable to speaking out'. The extract from the Memorial is not especially useful in considering the significance of the interaction between Britain and India during the early 1800's except in its shedding some light on the way said relationship was regarded by the liberal Roy, and presumably others like him. It is rather the interaction between Britain and India which sheds considerable light on the extract. Its tone of subservience, references to the experience and treatment of the Natives and indeed Roy's own involvement in reform bring sharply into focus the changes occurring in Indian society in the early 1800's. Bibliography Ashcroft B, Griffiths G and Tiffin H; The Empire Writes Back Crawford S Cromwell ; Ram Mohun Roy : Social, Political and Religious Reform in 19th Century India Paragon Press 1984 Guba Rajani Kanta : Ram Mohun and Politics in The Father of Modern India ed. Chakravarti S. Calcutta Press 1935 Jones, Sir William Fifth Anniversary Discourse 1788 in Asiatic Researches 2 published 1790 Kopf , D. British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance . University of California Press 1969. p http//: Sankapal.tripod.com The Annual Biography and Obituary Vol 18 Longman1834 Washbrook D.A. India, 1818-1860: The Two Faces of Colonialism in The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol3 ed. Louis W.R., Porter A and Low A.M. OUP 1998 Wolpert Stanley; India University of California Press 1991