Raja Ram Mohan Roy Quotes
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a Bengali religious and social reformer and one of the founders of the Indian Renaissance of the nineteenth century. Educated in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and English and possessed of a deep knowledge of the religious scriptures of India, he founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 to advance a reformed and rationalist Hindu monotheism in dialogue with Islam and Christianity. The quotes below are attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, organized by topic.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on God
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Attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
“True religion is one, though it has many forms.”
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Attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
“Reason is the supreme criterion of religious truth.”
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on Justice
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Attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
“The dignity of women is the measure of the dignity of a society.”
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on Knowledge
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Attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
“Education is the most powerful instrument for the reform of a nation.”
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“Roy’s resentment of Christians as ‘persons who travel to a distant country for the purpose of overturning the opinions of its inhabitants and introducing their own’.”
quoted in Tom Holland - Dominion_ The Making of the Western Mind-Little, Brown (2019) | Ghazi, Abidullah Al-Ansari: Raja Rammohun Roy: An Encounter with Islam and Christianity and the Articulation of Hindu Self-Consciousness (Iqra, 2010) page 51
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on Mind
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“Ghazi, Abidullah Al-Ansari: Raja Rammohun Roy: An Encounter with Islam and Christianity and the Articulation of Hindu Self-Consciousness (Iqra, 2010) page 51”
Roy’s resentment of Christians as ‘persons who travel to a distant country for the purpose of overturning the opinions of its inhabitants and introducing their own’.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on Politics
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“Truth and Virtue do not necessarily belong to wealth and Power and Distinctions of Big Mansions.”
Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354
Raja Ram Mohan Roy on Time
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Attributed to Raja Ram Mohan Roy:
“The customs of one age are not the duties of another.”
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“The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the ”
His reply after being called a heathen by John Marshman. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354 -
“Ram Mohun replied by writing a satire in Bengali, Padari Sisya Sambad, published in 1823, in order to ridicule the doctrine of Trinity. It was an imaginary dialogue between a European missionary and his three Chinese students. After having taught the dogma, the missionary asked his students whether God was one or many. “The first disciple replied that there were three Gods, the second that there w”
Padari Sisya Sambad Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354