Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

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Ram Mohun Roy

1809 Letter:

British government is milder, more enlightened and more liberal than the Mogul.

But (in later petition to Parliament):

The better classes of the natives of India are placed under the sway of the Honourable East India Company, in a state of political degradation which is absolutely without parallel in their former history. For even under the Mahomedan conquerors, such of your petitioners as are Hindoos, were not only capable of filling but actually did fill numerous employments of trust, dignity and emolument, from which under the existing system of the Honourable Company's government, they are absolutely shut out.

[Quoted in Rajat Kanta Ray, "Indian Society and British Supremacy," in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British

Empire: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 524-525]