Ram Mohun Roy (1772-1833) was a Bengali social and religious reformer thoroughly identified with the cultural self-image of the people. He has been called the father of modern India.

Ram Mohun Roy was born to a Kulin Brahmin family at Radhanagar, Hooghly District, West Bengal. According to early biographers, as a result of wanderings over Asia in search for religious truth, he became a gifted linguist in Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Greek before he was 22. New evidence suggests that his father, a zamindar (landowner) of the traditional ruling class of Bengal, lost his property in 1800, went to jail, and died a ruined man in 1803.

It appears that between 1799 and 1802 Ram Mohun lent money to British civil servants in Calcutta as a livelihood. In 1804 he joined the East India Company as a subordinate official and was evidently employed in that fashion until 1814, when he retired from government service...