Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/141

 fled. The neighbours in a body then interviewed Krishna Mohan’s grandfather, and threatened to excommunicate him if he did not then and there expel his grandson from the house. Poor Krishna, having been absent from home the whole day, was quite ignorant of all this; and was on his return quite thunderstruck to find the forces in array against him. He was forced to leave his maternal roof at once, and having no place to lay his head during the night he sought shelter with his friend Dakhinaranjan.

This incident made him and his friends more unsparing in their criticisms on Hinduism. Since the previous May he had been editing a paper called The Inquirer, and now, when an outcast, he assumed a very bitter tone against his persecutors. It was as if the trumpet of war had, been sounded; and the phalanx of Bengali reformers now advanced to throw down the castles of error and superstition.

Mr Duff had in the meantime been doing his work as a Christian missionary. He had been busy sowing the seeds of truth; and.these at length fell on good soil. Mahes Chandra Ghosh, an old pupil of Mr Derozio, accepted Christ as his Saviour on 28th August 1832; and on the 17th of October the same year Krishna Mohan was admitted into the Christian Church.

After this long digression, we at length come to our hero. Having completed his education in the Hindu College, he became a teacher in it in 1833. We will conclude this chapter by noticing how the door to high offices under Government was thrown open to Indian gentlemen. The efforts of Rammohan, backed by the advice of Lord William Bentinck, succeeded in moving the British Parliament to legislate, at the renewal of the East India Company’s charter in 1833, that no native of British India