ABSTRACT
The foregoing sketch of the mentality of Western modernity, drawn in rough outline from the Calvinist Reformation to late eighteenth-century radical Deism, is necessarily impressionistic and incomplete. For the history of mentalities the colonial presence posits an interesting and very crucial problematic: a seemingly emancipatory Western modernity in Great Britain turns into its opposite in a faraway non-Western region such as India. There is no doubt that the life and work of Rammohun Roy marked an important turning point in Indian cultural, social and political history. Rammohun’s Vedantist reformation can only be properly assessed against the backdrop of the sociology of Hinduism. Renunciation is the source whence emerge Indian ideals of religious renewal, mysticism, asceticism, self-realisation and freedom from social conventions. The importance of world-renunciation and the philosophical systems for Indian modernity cannot be underestimated. Although the Brahmo Samaj had started holding congregational gatherings in a rented place from 1828 onwards, the real foundation day is 23 January 1830.
