Ramkrishna Bhattacharya traces rationalism in Bengal from ancient Cārvāka roots and Sanskrit-Arabic intellectual traditions to the nineteenth-century Renaissance. Highlighting Rammohun Roy, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, Akshaykumar Datta, Derozio’s Young Bengal, and the Positivists, he demonstrates how indigenous logical lineages and European Enlightenment thought combined to drive social reform, secular pedagogy, and scientific temper.