408 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

and Asia as the fall of -the Bastille was for France and
Europe. The Rousseau of the Indian Revolution was Raja
Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1833), the founder of the Brahmo
Samaj. He was followed by an army of great reformers
like Devendra Nath Tagore (Rabindranath's father) and
Keshab Chandra Sen in Bengal, and Swami Dayananda
Saraswati (1824-83), the founder of the Arya Samaj in the
Punjab, and Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1900), the
founder of the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra. Much use-
ful work in the national uplift was also done by Swami
Vivekananda, the apostle of a reformed faith, who carried
the message of Awakened India to Europe and America
(1895-97). Similar'work was done by Sir Saiyyad Ahmad
Khan (1817-98) to put new life into the paralysed Muslim
community. He founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental
College (1875) which later developed into the AligaA
Muslim University.

Meanwhile the economic exploitation of the country by
our foreign rulers was bearing disastrous fruit. Under the
East India Company's rule the ancient textile industry of
India had been ruthlessly suppressed, so much so, that an
English Governor-General reported in 1834 that " the bones
of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India."
Towards the dose of the century, in 1878, Florence Night-
ingale wrote : " The saddest sight to be seen in the East—nay
probably in the world—is the peasant of our Eastern
Empire." The terrible famines of 1876-77 and 1896-99
were symptoms of the country's economic anaemia. The
Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was intended to suppress the
growing agitation and discontent. Though the benevolent
Lord Ripon tried to pacify the people by the repeal of
that odious Act (1881) and the grant of Local Self-govern-
ment. (1884), he raised the squall of the Ilbert Bill agitation