#history
#memory
William Carey.
William Carey ( 1761-1834), a British man, is one of the unrecognised makers of modern India.
Born in Northamptonshire in England, he was a self educated man. He was deeply concerned with theological problems which resulted in his leaving the Anglican Church. He became a Calvinist and a militant protestant.
He had an uncommon aptitude for learning languages. Even while working as a shoemaker, he was learning the classical languages.
In 1792, he founded the Baptist Society of England. His dream was to go to India and to infuse Christian values without a complete break with the past . The East India Company which ruled India was however suspicious of the Baptists. The company feared the native resentment may adversely impact their business.
Carey came to India on a Danish ship. The British prevented him from preaching in their territories. So he had to relocate to Serampore which was then a Danish colony. It was as hard a life as it could be. He suffered from grim poverty, neglect, and bereavement.His wife suffered a breakdown but nothing could dampen his spirit. He set up a printing press and quickly mastered Bengali and Sanskrit .
By 1800, he had completed the translation of The Bible into Bengali. It was a challenging task, as Bengali, in spite of its rich tradition of poetry , did not have any prose to speak of.
Carey was to become one of the makers of Bengali prose. Before he died, he had translated the Bible into an incredible forty four languages, aided by Marshman and William Ward.
William Carey was a man of great intellectual curiosity . He combined in himself the qualities of the Renaissance and Reformation. He brought out
” Digdarshan” ( The Compass) a quality journal , covering a wide intellectual spectrum . He entered into a controversy with Raja Rammohun Roy who defended Hinduism against Carey’s strident criticism. Carey attacked the caste system which he found dehumanising , the custom of sati or burning of Hindu widows , sacrifice of infants in the confluence of the Ganges, and many other evils. He arranged the marriage of a converted Brahmin with a Sudra girl, sending shock waves to the entrenched Brahminism. He was also a botanist and founded the Agri- Horticulture Society of India in 1820, the first conscious endeavour to transform Indian agriculture . Carey also planned the first ever encyclopedia in Bengali which his son later executed. However, his dreamchild was Serampore College founded in 1818, which by a Charter from the King of Denmark ,became the first College in Asia to confer degrees in 1828. It is a theological university today. Carey was no ordinary missionary but one of the key figures of the Bengal Renaissance .
The college library has a huge archive which no researcher on the early 19th century can do without .
( adapted from an article by Bhaskar Sur ).
