“The journey to England was taken in hope of a fair hearing for the cause of Indian reform.”
— Ram Mohan Roy[apocryphal] Popular attribution in biographical narratives; no verifiable source for this wording
Commentary
This line, widely repeated in popular accounts of Ram Mohan Roy's final years, attributes to him a hope for justice in Britain on behalf of Indian reform. His visit to England in 1830 was undertaken partly to press the case for the Mughal emperor's petitions and for the abolition of restrictive measures against the press. Sophia Dobson Collet's biography provides the most detailed contemporary narrative of the journey, and David Kopf, in The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (1979), places it within Roy's wider political engagements. The sentiment is consistent with the documented purposes of the voyage, but the wording is not traceable to a specific letter or document. It is therefore recorded as an apocryphal attribution, valued for its place in popular biography.
Commentary
This line, widely repeated in popular accounts of Ram Mohan Roy's final years, attributes to him a hope for justice in Britain on behalf of Indian reform. His visit to England in 1830 was undertaken partly to press the case for the Mughal emperor's petitions and for the abolition of restrictive measures against the press. Sophia Dobson Collet's biography provides the most detailed contemporary narrative of the journey, and David Kopf, in The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (1979), places it within Roy's wider political engagements. The sentiment is consistent with the documented purposes of the voyage, but the wording is not traceable to a specific letter or document. It is therefore recorded as an apocryphal attribution, valued for its place in popular biography.