ULAB organized Seminar on Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s Engagement with Islam

Department of General Education (GED) and Center for Advanced Theory (CAT) of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) jointly organized a Seminar titled “Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s Engagement with Islam” on 1 September 2022 at the ULAB campus. Prof. Dr. Amit Dey from the Department of History, Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Calcutta, India gave a Special lecture on the mentioned topic. Professor Imran Rahman, Vice Chancellor, ULAB had the welcome address.

In his Lecture, Dr. Dey underlined that the rational faculty of Raja Ram Mohan, resonated in the pages of Tuhfat, was derived from oriental knowledge system to which Roy was thoroughly exposed from his childhood by virtue of his Arabic and Persian learning. Later on when he learnt English (1809 onwards) and became exposed to Western rationalism as well. Hence, to understand the nineteenth century Indian awakening, or to understand personalities such as Roy or Vidyasagar, we need to understand the creative fusion between the oriental and occidental traditions which even anticipated the humane and eclectic cosmopolitanism of Rabindranath, Kshitimohon Sen, Qazi Abdul Wadud, Satyajit Ray and many others.

Professor Salimullah Khan, Director, Center for Advanced Theory (CAT) of ULAB added with Dr. Dey that the sheer idea of borrowing rationalistic approach from western world is somewhat a hoax since Indian subcontinent was creating and practicing spiritual knowledge since several hundreds of years and marked Buddha as an example of spiritual rationalistic leadership.