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Unit 3: Socio-Religious Reforms Movement

Keshab began to regard Keshab as an incarnation. This was not liked by his progressive Notes
followers. Further, Keshab began to be accused of authoritarianism. All along Keshab Chandra
had advocated a minimum age for marriage of Brahmos, but did not follow his own precepts.
In 1878 Keshab married his thirteen-year old daughter with minor Hindu Maharaja of Cooch-
Bihar with all the orthodox Hindu ceremonials. He justified his action on the plea that such
was the will of God and that he had acted on intuition. Most of Keshab’s followers felt
disgusted and set up a new organisation called the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj.
• In 1867, under the guidance of Keshab the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Congregation) was
established in Bombay. In Bombay the followers of Prarthana Samaj never “looked upon
themselves as adherents of a new religion or of a new sect, outside and alongside of the
general Hindu body, but simply as a movement within it”. Apart from the worship of one
God, in Western India the main emphasis has been on social reform, upon ‘works’ rather
than ‘faith’. They believed that the true love of God lay in the service of God’s children.
• Mulshanker (1824-83) popularly known as Dayanand was born in a Brahmin family living in
the old Morvi state in Gujarat. His father, a great Vedic scholar, also assumed the role of the
teacher and helped young Mulshankar acquire good insight into Vedic literature, logic,
philosophy, ethics etc. Dayanand’s quest for the truth goaded him to yogabhyas (contemplation
or communion) and to learn yoga it was necessary to leave home. For fifteen years (1845-60)
Dayanand wandered as an ascetic in the whole of India studying Yoga. In 1875 he formally
organised the first Arya Samaj unit at Bombay. A few years later the headquarters of the
Arya Samaj were established at Lahore. For the rest of his life, Dayanand extensively toured
India for the propagation of his ideas.
• Dayanand launched a frontal attack on the numerous abuses (like idolatry, polytheism,
belief in magic, charms, animal sacrifies, feeding the dead through sraddhas etc.) that had
crept into Hindu religion in the 19th century. He rejected the popular Hindu philosophy
which held that the physical world is an illusion (maya), that man’s soul is merely a part of
God, temporarily separated from God by its embodiment in the illusory mask of the body
and that man’s object, therefore, was to escape the world where evil existed and to seek
union with God.
• Four years before the setting up of the Arya Samaj, the Sikh gentry of Amritsar had convened
meetings to protest against the speeches of a Hindu orator who had made scurrilous re-marks
against the Sikh gurus.
• “In 1879 another Singh Sabha was formed at Lahore. Leaders of this Sabha were a group of
educated and energetic men of the middle class.” The governor of the Punjab, Sir Robert
Egerton, agreed to become its patron and induced the viceroy.
• In 1883 the Lahore and Amritsar Sabhas were merged, but the association proved a failure.
The Amritsar Sabha had been constituted by an easy-going group of conservatives dominated
by men like Khem Singh Bedi, who, by virtue of his descent from Nanak, was wont to accept
homage due to a guru. The Lahore group was radical and strongly opposed to the institution
of ‘gurudom’.
• The two Singh Sabhas again rejoined hands and doubled their efforts to start a college of
their own.
• The most important aspects of the Singh Sabha movement were educational and literary.
From 1908 onwards, an education conference was convened every year to take stock of the
progress of literacy in the community and collect money to build more schools. The teaching
of Gurmukhi and the Sikh scriptures was compulsory in these Khalsa schools.
• The Singh Sabha movement not only checked the relapse of the Sikhs into Hinduism but
retaliated by carrying proselytizing activities into the Hindu camp. Large numbers of Hindus
of northern and western Punjab and Sindh became sahajdhari Sikhs and the sahajdharis
were baptized to become the Khalsa.

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