ULAB organises seminar on 'Raja Ram Mohan Roy's Engagement with Islam'

The Department of General Education (GED) and the Center for Advanced Theory (CAT) of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) jointly organised a seminar titled "Raja Ram Mohan Roy's Engagement with Islam" on 1 September 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 of ULAB, gave the welcome address, said a press release. 

In his lecture, Dr Dey underlined that the rational faculty of Raja Ram Mohan, whose words resonated in the pages of Tuhfat, was derived from the oriental knowledge system to which Roy was thoroughly exposed from 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 of Center for Advanced Theory (CAT) of ULAB, added with Dr Dey that the sheer idea of borrowing a rationalistic approach from the western world is somewhat of a hoax since the Indian subcontinent has been creating and practicing spiritual knowledge for several hundred years and marked Buddha as an example of spiritual rationalistic leadership.