Contrasts

In a history that only talks about Hindu orthodoxy versus a Rammohun Roy's line of thought, Rammohun Roy looks like someone who would endorse fully and wholeheartedly Macaulay's 1835 minute, be very much for the construction of "a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect".

But a picture is made of contrasts, and the historian, just like the photographer provides a selective view of the scene.  Except in photojournalism, this is simply part of the art of photography.   For history, well, it is typically constructed with some political end in mind - it does not rise even to the standards of photojournalism.

We are told by Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas, in Social Change in Modern India, that

"Calcutta had, by 1830, an influential group of rationalists who were notorious for their total rejection of the indigenous society and who accepted in its place everything Western, including Christianity.  It is only apt that they symbolized their acceptance of the West with a meal which included beef.   Raja Ram Mohan Roy was too deeply committed to his religion, culture and country to have any sympathy with the Occidentalists and he founded in 1828 the Brahmo Samaj....."

The cited authority for the existence of the group of rationalists mentioned above is the historian Percival Spear. 

With this in the picture, Rammohun Roy looks rather different, doesn't he?  This Calcutta group was seeming already the "class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" - all Rammohun Roy had to do was to join them.....