During the 1820s, there emerged a radical, intellectual trend among the youth in Bengal called Young Bengal Movement.
Henry Vivian Derozio taught at the Hindu College and was the leader of the movement. Derozio was perhaps the first nationalist poet of modern India.
Drawing inspiration from the great French Revolution, Derozio inspired his pupils to think freely and rationally, question all authority, love liberty, equality and freedom, and oppose decadent customs and traditions.
The Derozians also supported women’s rights and education.
Derozians had limited success because of their radicalism. Further they lacked any real link with the masses. For instance, they failed to take up the peasants’ cause.
But, despite their limitations, the Derozians carried forward Rammohan Roy’s tradition of public education on social, economic and political questions.
Surendranath Banerjea was to describe the Derozians as “the pioneers of the modern civilisation of Bengal, the conscript fathers of our race whose virtues will excite veneration and whose failings will be treated with gentlest consideration”.
