Namaste! Rajiv, there is a cultural revolution going on, awakening going on and as part of that there is a debate on Twitter and social media platform. One particular debate is on the topic of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. I know you have done some work on it. So, I wanted to first ask you when and what made you interested in Raja Ram Mohan Roy. -Good point. You know, I, my book, Indraās net, refutes the western Indology thesis on what they call neo-Hinduism which they mean ā¦ by which they mean that Hinduism, modern Hinduism is a recent and a fake construct. Itās an artificial construct made up in the last 200 years not connected with Vedas and the allegation is that, you know, the nationalists starting in Bengal and other places wanted to kind of create a national religion for India. And they took a lot of ideas from Christianity. And they put them, put it in Sanskrit. And came up with a few, mixed it with a few old Vedic ideas and that became Hinduism. So, they call it neo-Hinduism. So, I wanted to refute that. And I believe that first you have to study the opposing side. So, I went and read a lot of their articles and papers and books and all that. They have written lots on neo-Hinduism. And it always starts with Ram Mohan Roy as the founding father of this neo-Hinduism. They felt that he is the one who created these ideas in the first place. So, this is how my interest in Ram Mohan Roy started. Now, once I started looking at him, I realized that he was an employee of the East India Company. Ram Mohan Roy was an employee of the East India Company. -In Calcutta. -In Calcutta. This is a very interesting thing. And he was aā¦ he worked on both sides. You know, he was patriotic, he loved his culture, and he was certainly a very proud Bengali. His ideas on Hinduism were mixed up. I donāt think he understood Hinduism very well because he was against murti puja. The Christian couldnāt stand idolatry, so, he went along with that. On certain things he was good, he did some good work also. But, you know, he was primarily negotiating within the framework of the East India Company rule, not fighting that they should we should get rid of them, but within the scope and umbrella of the East India Company rule over India, he was negotiating that Indians should get a better deal. So, he was sort of the Indian working within the colonial camp trying to get them a better deal. So, he was working on both sides and you have to give him credit that lot of good things he also did. He was a close collaborator of William Carey, a very notorious Baptist evangelist who started the Serampore seminary and known for his Hindu phobia. And in many occasions and in multiple times in his life, he collaborated with him. And Roy eventually moved to England. And thatās where he died and thatās where he was buried. In fact, at the coronation of the British ruler, he was invited to sit along with heads of state. -Okay. -and ambassadors of various countries. He was given that stature even though he was not, he was a private citizen working for the East India Company. But the British really liked him and he converted to the Unitarian church and they considered him a major catch. Because he was, here is this guy, you know, upper caste, very well-spoken, knows different languages, can speak as a, he can speak, you know, all kind ofā¦ he can wear the identity of speaking on behalf of Sufis or behalf of Vedantins or Christians. He could swing here and there. So, he was an interesting person to study and the allegation is that he started Hinduism with his own hodgepodge, what we call khichdi, a mixture. He started this thing what today we would call a muddled-up sameness idea. He started that and they say that this is the origin of modern Hinduism. So, I was very interested in understanding this. But what troubled me about him is that he is the source of this idea that Sanskrit should be replaced with an anglicized education system. And he had a lot of, he is the one who started this whole campaign in England to convince them that they should de-Sanskritize Indiaās education. -But why did he focus on Sanskrit per se? -Interestingly he writes a letter to the Governor General of India in 1823. -Okay. -And itās a very interesting letter in which he argues why, you know, keeping Sanskrit is a bad thing. It will, the natives will remain in darkness. It doesnāt have rationality and logic. It doesnāt have science and things likeā¦ he mentioned vyakarana, the problems of nit-picking grammar and all that is no use. He mentions nyaya that is of no use to people. He talks about Vedanta. So, he talks about various aspects some kind of name dropping buzz words. I am not sure how much he really understood those. Because if he understood those, he would not feel this way. So, he argues and I want to quote from his letter. This is a, this is a, this is kind of I am taking the conclusion of his letter. His conclusion is this. āThe Sanskrit system of education would be best to keep this country in darknessā¦ if such has been the policy of British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the British Government, it ought to promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be accomplished by employing a few gentlemen of talents and learning educated in Europeā¦ā -Okay. -Okay? āIn representing this subject to your lordship, I conceive myself discharging a solemn duty which I owe to my countrymen, (I am doing out there on behalf of our fellow Indians). And also, to that enlightened sovereign, (which is the king of England). And legislature, the parliament which have extended their benevolent cares to this distant land actuated by a desire to improve its inhabitants.ā So, you know, this is so typical, he is the prototype brown sahib. I mean, this is the typical sucking up to these guys, you know, I am so grateful, come and help us, we are not civilized, and you please help us out and all that. And, you know, the British have been talking all these things but now for the first time is a very powerful, eminent, highly regarded, you know, gentlemen from India, learned fellow, Brahmin, upper caste all those - an elite, selling out. So, he starts a whole new trend in the colonial enterprise. -So, we have been blaming McCauley, you know, a lot for our de-Sanskritizing of India. So, I guess he plays a big role too. -So, Lord McCauleyās notorious speech in parliament, which all of us quote, comes 12 years after Ram Mohan Roy writes this letter to the Prime Minister asking that Sanskrit be replaced by English education. -Interesting. -Okay... so, you know, itās a great gift to somebody like McCauley. He is having the ball. He is saying, okay, now one of those guys wants it so why, we should give it to them, we should help them, that kind of thing. And the sad thing is Sanjeev Sanyal, whom I think is a good guy, otherwise, but misinformed on certain matters. In his book, he actually supports this idea and argues that the reason this great Indian civilization at one time collapsed is because of Sanskrit. Because Sanskrit is very rigid, doesnāt promote freedom, you know, you cannotā¦ -The same nit-picking grammar. -The same nit-picking, this grammar is so rigorous, you know, you need freedom, you need to get out of this. So, the rise of the civilization, the renaissance depends on English and importing English ways, British ways. -Okay. Now, I want and follow up and ask you, so, how this de-Sanskritizing of India begin and you mentioned Sanjeev Sanyal briefly and what is the legacy of this. I am assuming, is there a Bengali legacy to it where Bengalis are rejecting it more. Whatās the legacy of this? -Well, you know, the British Empire was headquartered in Calcutta, Dhaka, the whole Bengal area, so, obviously, thatās where the influence was the greatest. And then it goes to your hometown of, you know, Madras. They get the Madras presidency. So, you know, Punjabis also sell out later, you know, also sell out. I mean, we all have this, you know. We should not be ethnically, you know, you know, I am this Bengali first or I am this Punjabi first and all that. Let me tell you, since you raised this issue of, you know, Bengal, let me tell you this, I have tremendous respect for Bengalis like Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Shree Prabhupad, Roopa Goswami and his nephew Jeeva Goswami ā brilliant, brilliant! And I have spent more time quoting these people, working on them, writing with them, I have excellent relations with these lineages. So, itās not about a Bengali or a non-Bengali. Itās just that you have to look at each person and their stand. I mean, I love, you know, Subhash Chandra Bose. I was invited to give the main address by General Bakshi in Delhi at the anniversary there. So, I have tremendous respect for those who respect the dharma and the Vedic tradition and I am able to criticize those who donāt. It has nothing to do with ethnicity. -Right. -So, this business that, you know, Bengalis close ranks is kind of a shame. I, as a Punjabi, okay? I like my, you know, aloo paratha and you know, chhola bhatura and once in a while I am in the mood to do bhangra, I am not very good at it. But, you know, all thatās okay, but I would never say Punjabi first. And I would never say somebody who is a Punjabi must be right. I just donāt. You wonāt see me doing that. And when I go to India I donāt go hanging around Punjab. I may have gone there 3 ā 4 times in the last 15 years. But every single time I go to India which is 4 times a year I go to the south. I have visited south 10 times more often than I visited Punjab. And so, you know, I think we should get out of this narrow-minded ethnic identity as our primary identity. -Right. -So, I will clarify what my identity is. I believe that primarily the most deepest foundation I should have and I want to have all the time is Vedic yagna. So, I am, my deepest quest is to be in the Vedic yagna. Thatās beyond borders. Itās a universal thing. -Universal thing. -To implement this yagna, we need Bharat rashtra, we need a vehicle and Bharat rashtra is the second part of my identity because itās a vehicle we need. And the rashtra needs a rajya. So, the rajya is a means to an end. The rajya, I donāt support this guy or that guy for the sake of it. I support them to the extent they are helping a rashtra and not otherwise. And in this business of first the Vedic Yagna and then the rashtra then the rajya, there is no Punjabiness there. I mean, this is true. And so, it troubles me when people say, o, you know, you are for Bengal, anti-Bengal. I never, I donāt even think that way. So, thatās my answer to whether the Bengalis should be blamed or not blamed. I think coincidentally because the British landed there, the majority of the people in the early couple of centuries were Bengalis who the British got to know and traded with and so on. So, that is where the proverbial brown sahib was born. -Okay. -And then spread across. -You talked about de-Sanskritizing ā¦ in India. But you also mentioned in one of your tweets about the Sankritizing of Europe. So, how did that happen? -So, this is very interesting. In the early 1800s while thanks to Ram Mohan Roy and McCauley, they are de-Sanskritizing Indiaās education, at the same time in parallel, major European universities are creating Sanskrit chairs. They are bringing Sanskrit into their system because they know itās a gold mine of knowledge in the shastras. So, this data mining of shastras starts in the 1800s and universities in Germany, France, Britain, they start introducing a lot of Sanskrit, Sanskrit studies. And, you know, this is how a whole lot of knowledge gets transferred and turned into western intellectual property. And I am writing several books on the origins of a lot of the western thoughts, lot of western thought. Actually it goes back even further but it got a big boost at that time. Because prior to then they were taking knowledge like botany, you know, and they were taking the actual empirical data on botany and trying to make it into their own. But the Sanskrit texts were not very accessible to them. But in this era from 1800 onwards, the rise of Sanskrit in Europe, corresponding to the decline of Sanskrit in India was a huge, itās a huge story that needs to be told and I am writing multiple volumes on that. -Now, do you think India could have become a scientific and modern with Sanskrit if they hadnāt de-Sanskritized India. Do you think we would have stillā¦ been, you know, a modern nation? -So, thatās an important question because lot of the people criticizing me are saying that okay, Ram Mohan Roy was right because you know, otherwise we could not have become scientific. But let me tell you, Ram Mohan Roy wrote this is 1823, you know, 150, almost 150 years later we got independence. So, itās not as if it produced some immediate results. And during that period the British didnāt help us become very scientific. Itās only after independence. So, this business of sacrificing Sanskrit in order to get English didnāt really do that job. But look at Japan which is very scientific. Look at China which is in Mandarin, very scientific. They did not give up their native tradition, native language in order to anglicized for the sake of becoming scientific. Now, these civilizations were also lagging behind Europe in science. Japan and China were not on par with Europe as far as science is concerned. Just like India wasnāt. Okay? But their rise to scientific prominence today was not based on becoming anglicized. So, theā¦ you cannot say that becoming anglicized is a necessary condition for becoming scientific. I think that thesis is false. Ram Mohan Roy was false. McCauley was false. Sanjeev Sanyal is false. Many other people who are saying this are false. Sanskrit in fact is a source of knowledge which the westerners took. A whole lot of knowledge in many different areas. And Sanskrit is still not properly mined for its Vedic scientific knowledge. -Okay. So, Rajiv you have also mentioned about Bengal and the Madras presidency. Is thereā¦ was there a Raja Ram Mohan Roy of the Madras presidency? The British, did they also play havoc in the Madras presidency to de-Sanskritize the Tamil mind? -You should answer that. I mean, I havenāt done as much work on the Tamil, you know, you see, itās very interesting. The identity crisis in Bengal of am I Indian first or am I a Bengali first and the one in Tamil Nadu, am I Tamilian first or am I Indian first, both need to be studied. Both need to be studied. There is a, as a Punjabi, I can just bring in some analogue. Punjab was partitioned into the western side which is about 60% of the land went to Pakistan in 1947. And a smaller piece of land came to India because of Muslim-Hindu divide that the British did. Bengal had been partitioned into west Bengal, Hindu and East Bengal, Muslims in the early 1900s by the British. So, the partition of Bengal and the partition of Punjab are both for Hindu-Muslim reasons. Both done by the British. But the one in Bengal was done much earlier. So, you would have thought that the Bengaliās separation from the Muslim side would have happened more completely than the Punjabis. But, you know, in Punjab, there is no movement that says, you know, those guys across the border are bhais because they are Punjabis. And we all eat, you know, makki roti and sag and we can do this bhangra together and we speak Punjabiā¦ So, so what if they are Muslims? And so what if they are Pakistanis? They are our brothers. We will let them smuggle illegally across the border. There is no movement like that. I mean, Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs are very clear that we are Indians first. I mean, there is absolutely no doubt that language and ethnicity will override, you know, patriotism. But this is somehow the case in Bengal and I think this is a topic of Bengalis should study this. To study their own history as to why is this so? And I think Tamilians should study this about Tamil Nadu. Why is it so? Is it a British influence because those were the two states that were colonized the longest? Maybe! But I am not sure what the reason is. -Okay. We will look forward to further research from scholars in this area. Thank you so much Rajiv. -Thank you! -It was very enlightening. -Thank you. -As always. -Namaste! -Namaste. Thank you for watching. You can subscribe here and also hit the bell icon to make sure you get notified. To donate, please click this button.
Fuck, They never mentioned he was an East India Co employee.
They did teach me in school that he reformed Hinduism by getting rid of "superstitions" like idol worship.
We gotta give it to the Marxists - they got us good.