On Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s 250th birth anniversary, remembering the legacy of the father of Modern Indian Renaissance Paromita Chakrabarti May 24, 2022 https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/a-look-at-the-legacy-of-raja-ram-mohan-roy-the-father-of-modern-indian-renaissance-7929218/ Confident about the strength of his heritage and open to imbibing from other cultures what he believed were ameliorative practices, Raja Ram Mohan Roy was among India's first liberals.
As India grapples increasingly with changing social and religious circumstances, Roy’s work in the sphere of women’s emancipation, modernising education and seeking changes to religious orthodoxy finds new relevance in this time. historian Ramachandra Guha, writes, “Roy was unquestionably the first person on the subcontinent to seriously engage with the challenges posed by modernity to traditional social structures and ways of being. He was also one of the first Indians whose thought and practice were not circumscribed by the constraints of kin, caste and religion.”
His Brahmo Sabha, that later became the Brahmo Samaj, evolved as a reaction against the upper-caste stranglehold on social customs and rituals. During the Bengal Renaissance, it ushered in sweeping social changes and birthed the Brahmo religion, a reformed spiritual Hinduism that believes in monotheism and the uniformity of all men, irrespective of caste, class or creed.