SOCIAL REFORMERS

Sree Narayana Guru

Narayana Guru, also known as Sree Narayana Guru, was a social reformer of India. He was born into an Ezhava family in an era when people from such communities, which were regarded as Avarna, faced much social injustice in the caste-ridden society ofKerala. He led a reform movement in Kerala, rejected casteism, and promoted new values of spiritual freedom and social equality.He stressed the need for the spiritual and social upliftment of the downtrodden by their own efforts through the establishment of temples and educational institutions. In the process, he denounced the superstitions that clouded the fundamental Hindu cultural convention of caste.

There are many legends surrounding the life of Narayana Guru but few certain facts until his rise to prominence in 1887. He was born in 1856 august 20, the son of an Ezhava peasant, Madan Asan and his wife Kuttiyamma, in the village of Chempazhanthy near Thiruvananthapuram. Most likely, he was educated at least in part by a Nair teacher from a nearby village. He was deeply influenced by Vedanta and by ideas of social equality and social and religious reform. He taught religion andSanskrit to local children and studied yoga with notable ascetics such as Chattampi Swami. He was an itinerant yogi for some time and Cyriac Pullapilly says that he was probably married for a few years but "his worshipful biographers ignored this part of his life out of reverence for his later ascetism"

RajaRam Mohan Roy

Raja Ram Mohan Roy (22 May 1772 – 27 September 1833) was a founder (along with Dwarkanath Tagore and other Bengali Brahmins) of the Brahmo Sabha^[1] movement in 1828 which engendered the Brahmo Samaj, an influential Bengali socio-religious reform movement. His influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration and education as well as religion. He is best known for his efforts to establish the abolishment of the practice of sati, the Hindu funeral practice in which the widow was compelled to sacrifice herself in her husband’s funeral pyre in some parts of the Bengal. It was he who first introduced the word "Hinduism" into the English language in 1816. For his diverse contributions to society, Raja Ram Mohan Roy is regarded as one of the most important figures in the Bengali renaissance. His efforts to protect Hinduism and Indian rights by participating in British government earned him the title "The Father of the Indian Renaissance". British government has named a street in the memory of Ram Mohan Roy as "Raja Ram Mohan Roy"