Thread by @shrikanth_krish

While I understand the urge of the Right Wing in India to project alternative heroes, and create new narratives, and bring to light underrated figures, this can be done without dragging down prevailing heroes and idols (like say Roy or Gandhi)

Let's be constructive

Someone like Modi in fact is a fine example to emulate in this regard

He has done his bit to prop up Patel, Savarkar

But this is not done at the expense of Gandhi or anyone else

Even if it has the net-effect of closing the gap

With regard to Roy -

Sure, he was no Trad
His Hindu-ness too can be questioned

But that doesn't make him a bad guy

One has to bear in mind the social context and his period

(yesI sound historicist here, but can't help it)

The guy was born in 1772!

And died 25 yrs before 1857!

So his interactions with the British are among the v early intellectual exchanges between Orient and the Occident

It was an age of curiosity and wonder for people on either side

Be it Roy. Be it William Jones, Charles Wilkins or James Prinsep some decades later

Things settled down by the mid-late 19th century

By that time both sides were much more familiar with the other side's ugliness

British Indology of mid-late 19th century lacked the sense of wonder the early indologists had

Same with Indian intellectuals of late 19th cen like Bankim, Vivekananda

They were less enamored by Western thought than. their predecessors some 70 years before

We have to keep this in mind when we comment on men like Roy

Something to ponder over -

The gap in time between say Vivekanand and Ram Mohan Roy is about the same as the gap that separates Rahul Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru!

Pause over it

If you were a young educated Bengali interacting with East India Company officials circa 1790-1800, it must have been akin to someone in our own time conversing with people from Mars

Serious

We tend to take these civilizational encounters for granted

Because we live in an age of hyper-connectedness and we overlook the sheer enormity of what the likes of Roy or William Jones had to contend with

A bit like confronting people from a different planet