Raja Rammohan Roy has come to be called the ‘Maker of Modern India’. Without giving up what was good and noble in the past, he laid the foundations for a great future. He put an end to the horrible custom of burning the living wife with the dead husband. He was a great scholar and an independent thinker. He advocated the study of English, Science, Western Medicine and Technology. He spent his money on a college to promote these studies.

During the 1965 Indo-Pak War, the tiny ‘Gnat’ manufactured by the ‘Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.’ chased away the powerful  bombers supplied by the United States of America to Pakistan.

Sri C.V. Raman won the Noble Prize for Physics. Indian scientists, technologists and teachers are working in different parts of the world.

We have the ‘Hindustan Machine Tools Ltd.’, which manufactures machines which make machines.

When we think of such facts, we feel overjoyed. We feel confident that we shall equal Western nations in the 20^th century.

But suppose we knew nothing of modern science, medicine and engineering?

How difficult it would be for us to compete with countries like America, Russia, Japan and Germany!

Suppose we had to depend upon foreigners to teach subjects like English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Engineering-all subjects, except Samskrita (Sanskrit) and Kannada in our colleges! How much more difficult it would have been for us!

About 150 years ago, only Sanskrit and Persian were taught in our schools. There were very few to tell us anything about Western Science. But even they were in English. And our people did not know English.

It was the great Raja Rammohan Roy, who realized that India would be a backward country, if her people did not learn English, Mathematics and Science. He spent his own money and started a college to teach English and Science.

That is why he is called the ‘Maker of Modern India’.