Editor,
To the ‘antinational’ or ‘fools’, Raja Rammohan Roy might be the father of modern Indian renaissance, but in the eyes of many ‘Hindu nationalists’ currently dominating the political sphere in India, he was nothing but ‘chamcha’ to the British who had defamed the ‘not regressive’ Sati tradition, which was not ‘compulsory’, but merely introduced to prevent the prostitution of the Hindu wives at the hands of Mughal invaders.
Indeed Sati was a great ‘progressive practice; it is the ‘glory’ of Hindus – the jewel in the crown in the lives of Hindu widows, which that chamcha of the British dared to defame and, by conspiring with the British, ensured that it was banned.
With just a single stroke, so many ‘truths’ have got asserted – that Sati was the women’s choice; that Mughal invaders or Muslims were rapists out to dishonour Hindu women; that the British were necessary destructive, out to edge out the great traditions of Bharat with Raja Rammohan Roy being a ‘co-conspirator’ robbing the divine rights of the Hindu widows to voluntarily sacrifice their lives upon the pyre of their deceased husbands.
Now this ideology, harbouring such a mediaeval, dark, rabid, regressive, horrible and misogynist mindset, is working all-out to destroy whatever moral progress the Indian society has achieved through the yeoman’s contribution of the enlightened great minds, and to meet their desired goal, they feel no qualms in character-assassinating the humanity-personified Raja Rammohun Roy, as well.
No wonder why Unnao, Hathras and Budaun continue to haunt many parts of the country with scenes of leaders of certain political vintage marching on Jammu’s streets with the tricolour in hand to defend the accused of spine-chilling Kathua gangrape-murder case, and anti-Romeo squads are being actively promoted in the laboratories of Hindutva to ‘save Hindu women’ from the obvious. A law against the fictitious love jihad also seems to be the most urgent necessity in the current times.
Till the clash between liberal values and illiberal ideologies continue unabated in the society with ills of superstition and oppression seeing no end, the life works and teachings of Raja Rammohan Roy will also continue to remain relevant.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata