Part VI — Patriots

Raja Rammohun Roy

It was Raja Rammohun Roy who inaugurated the Modern Age in this great subcontinent. His personality was at once many-sided and perfectly balanced. By virtue of his freedom of spirit, he dynamised our national being. He was the pioneer pathmaker who removed teeming obstacles that impeded our steady progress within and without at every step. It was he who, for the first time, understood the true significance of the Modern Age. He fully realised the truth that an isolated independence can never be the ideal of human civilisation. No sphere of our national existence did he leave untouched. The spirit of self-assertion in the light of the all-pervading Brahman was his slogan. Right from his adolescence he sacrificed his life, his all, to bring to the fore the true gems of India's civilisation which were scattered, unnoticed and uncared for.