Friday, 27th – The Rajah became worse every few minutes, his breathing more rattling & impeded, his pulse imperceptible. He moved about his right arm constantly, & his left a little a few hours before his death. It was a beautiful moonlight night; on one side of the window as Miss Hare, Miss Kiddell & I, looked out of it, was the calm rural midnight scene; on the other, this extraordinary man dying. I shall never forget the moment. [Account from the private journal of Mr. Estlin]

The end came at twenty-five minutes past 2 a.m. Mr. Estlin, who had retired to his room at about 1.30 a.m., sitting ready with his clothes on, was informed by Mr. Hare when it was finally over. When he went over, Mr. Estlin saw Ram Rotun was holding the Rajah’s chin, kneeling by him & surrounding him were Miss Hare, the young Rajah, Miss Kiddell, Mr. Hare, Estlin’s mother, Miss Castle, Ram Hurry & one or two servants. The Rajah had been surrounded by faithful friends & people who cared for him to the very last, with the best available medical treatment of the age. A medical examination by Dr. Carpenter had assumed the cause of death to have been fever due to the inflammation of the brain, possibly meningitis.

The Rajah arrived at Stapleton Grove, near Bristol, at the beginning of September, accompanied by Miss Hare, the daughter of his dear deceased friend David Hare of Calcutta, who then resided with her uncles in Bedford Square. He was attended by his two servants Ram Hurry Doss & Ram Rotun Mukerjah. His son Rajah Ram was already there. The pleasant country mansion belonging to Mr. Michael Castle, a highly esteemed Bristol merchant provided much needed peace after the frenzy of London. Arriving in England, Rajah set up independently at Radley’s Hotel at Liverpool on 8th April, 1831 (despite being invited by William Rathbone, Esq., to take up residence at Greenbank). He met the scholar William Roscoe who remarked, “I bless God, that I have been permitted to live to see this day.” Surely, the fame of the Rajah had preceded him to England. His stop-over at Liverpool was brief as he had to be in London to be present at the Third Reading of the Reform Bill & at the debates on the subject of India. In 1831-1832, a Committee of the House of Commons was sitting on the affairs of India, & in 1833 a Bill on that subject was to be introduced in Parliament. While in London, he was introduced to the King & was accorded a place of honour as a foreign ambassador at his coronation. He met Jeremy Bentham & was feted by the Unitarian Christians. The editor of ‘The Westminster Review’ Sir John Bowring, present in one such Unitarian meet, declared that an unexpected meeting with Plato, Socrates, Milton or Newton would have incurred similar feelings in him. Robert Owen, the Welsh philanthropist & one of the founders of Eutopian Socialism, remarked that Roy was one of ‘the most generally learned, intelligent & acute men I have met with’. But, it would be good to remember that Rammohun was a man on a mission. He was there to ensure that the Bengal Sati Regulation (1829), passed by Governor General Lord William Bentinck, was not overturned. His suggestion to the Parliamentary Committee was to consider higher posts for Indian officials & employing Indian judges alongside the British ones. He was in England as the official representative of the Akbar II, the Mughal Badshah, who had earlier granted him the title of ‘Rajah’. He ensured that the Badshah was granted an increased stipend. It was a somewhat different picture of Rammohun that we find in the last phase, a much more universal figure than being merely the rebel from Bengal.

Rammohun left India on 15 November, 1830, along with his adopted son Rajah Ram, his two trusted servants & two cows, on the ship named ‘Albion’. He was already a celebrated & controversial figure - rather unusual for a pampered son of a zamindar & one who had been born in the heart of rural Bengal in the remote Radhanagore village in Khanakul (presently in Hooghly). His ancestral house & the house he built right in the middle of the cremation ground to spite the ‘samaj patis’ or arbiters of society, still stands today. He fought for the introduction of western education, the emancipation of women, practiced monotheism & established the Brahmo Sabha, the precursor to the Brahmo Samaj. He was a scholarly person, well-versed in multiple languages, having extensive knowledge of the Vedas, Upanishads & other religious texts & hence easily outwitted any opposition. Emerging as a truly cosmopolitan figure, he laid the foundation of the Bengal Renaissance, the sweeping socio-cultural reform movement of the nineteenth century. So, as he was about to embark on his journey to England, all his friends & acquaintances came to meet him. Rammohun though, refused to depart without meeting his ‘best friend’. He was the infant son of his closest friend & co-warrior, Dwarkanath Tagore. It was with this boy Debendranath, that Rammohun had developed a deep friendship. The boy studied in the school set up by him, played in the garden of his house at Manicktala in Calcutta with him & even went on carriage rides with him. Rammohun’s eyes grew moist as he met his friend for the last time & he just held out his hand in a handshake. It was as if he was handing over his legacy to his true spiritual descendant. In his memoir, Debendranath Tagore mentioned that Rammohun’s face was forever imprinted in his memory. He could never forget his long departed friend & in 1843 founded the Brahmo Samaj, a new monotheistic religious sect, in accordance with the principles of Rammohun. The Brahmo Samaj, arriving at a critical juncture in history, became the harbinger of modernity in Bengal.

The Rajah was initially buried in the garden of Stapleton Grove & his funeral sermon was conducted by a Unitarian minister. In 1843, his remains were re-interred in Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol. Dwarkanath bore the expenses of building the mausoleum. Dwarkanath too is buried in England, at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Perhaps his wish was to be near his friend in death as in life.

Mary Carpenter, daughter of Dr. Carpenter, in ‘Last Days in England of the Rajah Rammohun Roy’ (1875), paid glowing tributes to the legacy of the great man & fittingly dedicated the book to ‘the countrymen of the Rajah Rammohun Roy’:
The seed which he sowed was long in germinating, but it never lost its vitality. He who had scattered it with no sparing hand, whether in the highways, in stray places, among thorns & brambles, or in good ground, was not permitted even to see it spring up, but having faithfully done his work, left it in charge of the Great Husbandman.
[The spelling of names are as per contemporary accounts]