Rajarshi Rammohan: the Crusher of Christian Missions

 

Rajarshi Rammohan: the Crusher of Christian Missions

“No human possibility exists of converting the Hindoo to any sect of Christianity!” – Rajarshi Rammohan Roy

When India today is struggling dealing with the zealot Christian Missionaries, Hindus can learn the greatest lesson from the great Rajarshi who completely obliterated the vile missions’ of missionaries SINGLE HANDEDLY without any physical power and he did that during the rule of “mighty” British! And since then, the Christian population in Bengal remained less than 1%

With British came the missionaries. Their mission was the same as was in the rest of the world. We have seen what they have done in America (South and North), Africa, and many parts of South East Asia (Philippines and East Timor in particular). As I am writing, hundreds of natives are being converted even today in India and China.

In late 18th century India, they started getting successful already. Many “educated” upper class elites started getting converted to Christianity. Missionaries in India thought that once they could convert the elite, the so called educated people, their chances of converting the rest would be much easier.

In that context, here comes a brave man – Rajarshi Rammohan Roy. Rammohan sketches the broad history of the British and missionaries in Bengal. He notes that the British had been in exclusive possession of Bengal for nearly 50 years, during first 30 of which they had refrained from interfering with the religious lives of their subjects, but this had changed. Using the printing press, street preaching, and material enticements, Christian missionaries were now seeking to convert Hindus by renouncing those religions and extolling the virtues of their own. The arrogance that comes from political dominations, Rajarshi charges, “seems inevitably to induce derision of the religion of the conquered, although the religion of the conquerors may itself be quite ridiculous. In the case of the English in India, such behavior on the part of men renowned for their humanity and justice is most unjust and unreasonable. Vedas explained in the shastras are far more rational than the doctrines professed by the missionaries, and on the other, the doctrines and mythologies of the Puranas and Tantras , even if unreasonable are no more irrational than those of Christian proselytizers. “

Yes, Rajarshi Ram Mohan was perhaps the first person in the world to challenge the Christian dogma and the missionaries in a non-Christian land.

At the first stage, Rajarshi got an offer to translate Bible into Bengali and Hindi. He accepted that. It was a golden opportunity for him to know Christianity, but soon, he brought the translation to a halt by rejecting the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Yes, he publicly denied the concept of Trinity in Christianity; Then he openly invited the Baptist for a public debate.

He then published a booklet called “Precepts of Jesus” for the Baptists.

In sum, the Jesus presented by Roy in the Precepts was an entirely human figure; exalted but neither a messiah, nor the son of God, to be remembered primarily for his nature, not his message, and that Roy “did not grant Jesus any authority except the power of his message.” (Sugirtharajah, 37)

Sugirtharaja goes on to comment that, “those who are engaged in advocacy hermeneutics will find this Jesus disappointing. He was not a rebellious figure who was likely to turn the world upside-down but a robot programmed to utter moral platitudes.” (Sugirtharajah, 37)

Unsurprisingly, the Precepts was met with an almost immediate backlash from the Baptists in Serampore, who “regarded the work as a misrepresentation of the Christian message.” (Killingly, 139), and the general Christian population in India, Europe, and America. After its publication, the  other than of the Baptists at Serampore, the most vocal of his critics was Joshua Marshman, the editor of The Friend of India, a Christian newspaper, who published a series of attacks against Roy and the Precepts, which launched a series of replies and rebuttals between the two. Lavan comments that, “Rammohun was roundly attacked by the Reverend Joshua Marshman, editor of the evangelical publication, The Friend of India. For Marshman, the Unitarian view of Christ presented in the Precepts also struck a particular nerve, because for him, denying the divinity of Jesus and denying the vicarious salvation through Christ meant denying the core doctrine of Christianity. As Marshman wrote, “That God views all sin as so abominable that the death of Jesus Christ alone can expiate its  guilt; and that the human heart is so corrupt that it must be renewed by the Divine Spirit before a man can enter heaven... Without these two dogmas, what is the Gospel?” (Killingly, 40)

Roy asks, “if we believe that the Spirit, in the form of a dove or in any other bodily shape, was really the third person of the Godhead, how can we justly charge with absurdity the Hindoo legends of the Divinity having the form of a fish or of any other animal ?” (Works, 620)

This line of argumentation is particularly important, as it marks one of the first uses of Hindu theology for biblical criticism. Zastoupil writes that, “The Second Appeal also advanced a novel claim that some Trinitarian arguments—e.g., God is one, but three persons in substance—were parallel to ones used by orthodox Hindus to defend polytheism.'” (Zastoupil 2009, 431)

Ram Doss Letters to this line of thinking also humorously carried out by Roy when writing the “Ram

Doss” letters. These were a series of letters written by Roy under the pseudonym “Ram Doss,” in 1823, in response to Dr. R. Tyler’s critique of Roy. (Killingly, 123-4) . Specifically, Tyler took aim at Ram Doss’s Unitarian viewpoints. Tyler, writing to the Bengal Hukaru, a conservative English language newspaper, “this Unitarian, as he now professes himself, thinks proper to leave the subject of discussion, namely, a proposal to hold a " Religious Conference," and tells me flatly that my belief in the Divinity of the HOLY SAVIOUR is on a par with a Hindu's belief in his Thakoor,” and refers to Ram Doss’s arguments as “vile imputations by arguments drawn from those Holy Scriptures to which this Unitarian himself appeals.” (Works, 891)

Because of this, “Ram Doss,” then goes on to call for a unified front against Unitarianism, writing, “it must be evident to you that this deluded sect of Unitarianism can lay no stress on the human form and feelings of Jesus Christ as disproving his divinity,” and therefore should, “cordially join and go hand in hand, in opposing, and, if possible, extirpating the abominable notion of a single God, which strikes equally at the root of Hindooism and Christianity.” (Works, 893)

In essence, Precepts is a Hindu view of bible. The core belief of Bible is Trinity - father, son and the Holy Ghost. Thus he completely discarded that as baseless and destroyed the key pillars of Christianity. What would Sun be like without heat and light?

Slowly all Christian Missionaries, except some Unitarians started leaving Calcutta.

As a strategy, a brilliant one indeed, he became friendly with the most liberal sect of Christianity – Unitarians.

His religious reform also influenced Christianity. Due to his effort more open-minded, with much of the Christians became Unitarian with less missionary zeal.

But wait a minuit... In his semi-final phase he unplugged his friendly support to the Unitarians since they were no longer a threat as Unitarians also helped to fight the Baptists and other missionaries earlier.:

The Calcutta Unitarian Committee began to fade away as soon as Raja Rammohan Roy and his associates stopped supporting them. (1828).

Also unsettling for the missionaries was the fact that Roy treated the Vedas and the Upanishads as religious texts capable of delivering revelation. Killingly comments that, “Missionaries were alarmed by Rammohun's claim that a true notion of God could be derived from the Vedas and Vedanta; but they believed that such a notion could not be complete without knowledge of Jesus as revealed in the Bible.” (Killingly, 117)

Roy had a different attitude altogether about missionary prospects in India.

While Adam responded overwhelmingly positively to queries about the possibilities of Unitarian missionary work in Calcutta, Roy was viewed these prospects negatively. As Lavan summarizes,

“Nowhere in Rammohun's response was there talk of undertaking missionary work. His concern was for the enlightenment of Western education and social reform.” (Lavan, 61)

However, this dramatic missionary expansion was, unsurprisingly, very unpopular with Roy. Only a few months after that, Rammohun, at the request of many of his close friends, abandoned the friendship with the Unitarians. (Lavan, 69) Sugirtharajah explains that, “Roy always opposed and suspected the motives of converts from the lower castes, who changed their religion purely for monetary benefits and because of other inducements dangled before them by missionaries. He complained about the gift of five hundred rupees and a country-born Christian woman as a wife, which these converts received as compensation for the loss of cast.” (Sugirtharajah, 25-26)

Roy writes that they, “must be enemies to both the systems of Christianity- Unitarianism and Trinitarianism- as they feel great reluctance in changing the deities worshiped by their fathers, for foreign gods, and in substituting the blood of God for the water of the Ganges.” (Correspondence, 1: 269)

In other letters, Roy speaks more directly about the possibility of Unitarian missionaries, responding firmly in the negative. When asked in a letter by Henry Ware in 1824, about the possibility of converting Hindus to Christianity, Roy writes that, “no human possibility exists of converting the Hindoo to any sect of Christianity.” (Correspondence, 1: 285)

Roy is even dismissive of the benefit of translating and publishing Christian scriptures into Bengali, or any other Indian languages.

In his letter to Ware he expresses sentiments similar to those he expressed in his letter to Reed, concerning the need for educational aid in India. In a response to Ware's question about what Unitarians can do to aid the development of Christianity in India, Roy replies with a request not for missionary aid, but for teachers skilled in western sciences. Roy is also very clear that he does not believe the teaching of Christian dogma will be of much aid. Roy responds, “should philanthropy induce to and your friends to send to Bengal as many serious and able teachers of European learning and science unmingled with religious doctrines.” (Correspondence, 1: 293)

He wanted to missionary zealots to lose their zeal and disappear. By creating a subtle rift among Christian groups, he created the benefit to the Hindu society as the Unitarian Society, did not maintain much popularity, and finally shut down in the early months of 1828.(Correspondence, 1: 172)

He not only revived the Sanatana Dharma as prescribed in Vedas and Upanishads, with its purest form, he also did the great Dharma yudha against the missionaries. Thus Gurudev Rabindranath rightly said, “Rammohan brought back the life into Hindu Dharma… A Christian revolution was inevitable if Rammohan did not crush it. For that Indians are indebted to him forever”.

Rajarshi’s final wish was to go to the West and perhaps completely uproot Christianity and promoting Vedanta. Unfortunately, he passed away at an early age without fulfilling his final mission. Though, his ideological disciples such as Swami Vivekananda, Gurudev Rabindranath and others made substantial efforts to fulfil his second final mission – promoting Vedanta.

On the age of aggressive conversions by the missionaries Hindus may find guidance from the great Rajarshi! May Rajarshi Ramohan show the way! Om Tat Sat!

From my article – Hindu Yuga Purush Rajarshi Rammohan Roy