The Renaissance Background

One of the most important results of colonialism in India was the political unification of the nation. After the Plazy war in 1757 the British imperialist power began to expand their empire in India by their conquest and imperialistic policy. As a result the entire Indian sub-continent become politically unified in the first time of history of India. When the nation was politically unified the feeling of nationalism also aroused among the people. Nationalism means, the feeling of oneness of people who lived in a particular geographical area and their love towards their nation. In other words it can be called as patriotism. There are many factors which help these kinds of national sentiments among the people. The Renaissance movement in the 19^th century had a pivotal role in the emergence of nationalism in India.

Renaissance means ‘re-birth’ or ‘re-discovery of past’. Indian Renaissance occurred soon after the British conquest of India. The term Renaissance is used by the historians to designate that epoch in Indian history in which great cultural, religious and philosophical revival took place as a reaction to British Imperialism. But widely speaking Renaissance is a term denoting the sociological and philosophical doctrines that developed in Europe (primarily in Italy) at the time of the decline of feudalism and the emergence of bourgeois society.^[1] Prominent characteristics of the Renaissance were the exploitation of world and of the individual and the re-discovery of classical antiquity. The central theme to the Renaissance is humanism. Being a system of views based on respect for the dignity and rights of man, his values as a personality concerned for his welfare, his all round development and the creation of a favourable conditions for social life it proclaims the slogans ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. The European Renaissance wanted to produce the complete human being enlarging and encouraging the bounds of learning and geographical knowledge and the growth of scepticism and free thought.

The educated Indian middle class wanted to assert their identity and looked in to the great cultural heritage of India to defend themselves from the onslaughts of colonialism. The real Renaissance occurred in India only by the 19^th century. The period also marked the birth of a number of social reformers all over the country, who protested against social evils. But the social reform movement under the leadership of Raja Ram Mohan Roy was an upper class social phenomenon.^[2] This movement in South India, especially in Kerala these efforts under the leadership of Sri Narayana Guru was a lower class social phenomenon. Side by side another social movement lead by Brahmananda Swami Sivayogi too flourished in middle Kerala. The efforts of these social reformers paved a way for a social revolution in Kerala. This created social awareness among both the upper and lower castes against oppression, untouchability and other social evils.

Renaissance created an ideal situation to promote progress in the field of social, economical and productive forces and this progress was brought out through social revolutions. In India the socio-economic structure of feudalism began to disintegrate, oppositions to orthodox and social evils also began to arise in several parts of the country. Brahmananda Swami Sivayogi movement, Sri Narayana Guru movement, Ayyankali movement etc in Kerala, E.V. Ramaswami Naykar movement in Tamilnadu, Satnam movement in Madhyapradesh, Satya Mahima Dharma Movement in Orissa, Swami Narayan movement in Gujarat, Nirankari and Namdhari movement in Punjab etc were expressions of such defensive movement. Most of these movements originated and developed within the frame of socio-religious and devotional schools in India. But none of these has the base of western education. A deep study of these movements shows that they are often inspired of Sanskrit literature and by the regional language culture influenced by Sanskrit.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

I. Forolv, Dictionary of Philosophy (2^nd Ed.), Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984, p.358.

[2]:

Krishna Mohan, Encyclopaedic History of Indian Freedom Movement, (Vol,I), Jaipur: Book Enclave, 1999, pp.1-2.