The Arya Samaj and its impact on Contemporary India
in the 19th century
Before studying the impact of the Samaj on contemporary India it would be useful to have a
chronological outline of its founder, his ministry and development of the Samaj after his
death.
Swami Dayanand was born in 1824, left home when he was 22, became a Sanyasi in 1848, sat
at the feet of Swami Virjanand from 1860 to 1863, wandered round the country for twelve
years, 1869 is when he took the orthodox Brahmans of Banaras, thereafter to found the Arya
Samaj on 10/4/1875. The principles of the Samaj were redefined at Lahore in 1877, D died
in 1883 when he was under sixty. His commentary on the Rig and Yajur Vedas are monumental
so was his Introduction to the Commentary on the Vedas.
He spoke in Sanskrit till 1874 i.e. when he gave his first sermon in Hindi at Kashi. Well
read in Sanskrit he claimed that he accepted as truth nothing that was not backed by the
Vedas as he understood them. When he said Back to the Vedas, he meant the Vedic text, not
the medieval commentaries thereon. Like orthodox Hindus he accepted ultimate salvation as
the objective to be attained. He declared service, physical, moral and spiritual uplift of
others as the motivating rule of life.
He accepted the doctrine of rebirth but said it was the responsibility of the better off
to do justice to their less fortunate brothers. He denounced all claims based on custom
and status alone. He accepted the four castes but to him caste represented an occupational
group. He would not concede that women had a lower status in society.
This led to his emphasis on the place of knowledge in human affairs. Propagation of
knowledge he exalted into a cardinal principle. To him the Vedas embodied all knowledge
that there was to grasp. He invited all men to seek truth on their own and not to take
ready-made beliefs from the priestly class. He set up pathsalas and schools during his
life- time.
His cry Back to the Vedas was accompanied by a restatement of India’s past. He
unearthed the duties of rulers as enunciated in Manu and supplemented them with the Sabhas
and Assemblies that he claimed to discover functioning in the good old days. Against the
current belief about India'’ sordid past, he delved deep into literature and painted
a golden age when woodcutters has corrected the mistakes in diction of the rulers. For
the first time after the Western assault on India, he gave educated Hindus some cause to
be proud of their past.
He insisted on the superiority of practice over belief and devotion. He acknowledged the
validity of mystic experience and had much to say about Yoga and Samadhi. Like the
Bhagwadgita he seemed to assert that the place of a Bhakti or a Yogi in society depended
on what he did for it. To him becoming a good man was more important than being a devotee.
His good man seemed to drive inspiration because of his faith in God, belief in wisdom. By
expounding the Vedic religion in Hindi he reduced the needs for Pandits who maintained
their importance by knowing Sanskrit.
His followers were lay-men held together by the Ten Principles of the Samaj, fired by his
spirit of service and self-sacrifice, sworn to a crusade against superstition and apathy
towards the ills which contemporary society suffered. His followers rejected image
worship, did not believe in astrology. He proclaimed his belief in the eternal nature of
three verities of God, the individual, soul and matter. Every man was left, with
God’s grace, to find out the truth for himself with such help as he could enlist. He
also dealt a blow to predeterminism. Men had become content to see themselves as
playthings of fate.
D did not discard rituals altogether although he cut it down to size. The Samaj did build
temples but they could be used as schoolrooms or as assembly halls. The sixteen Samskaras
that cover a man’s life were not very elaborate affairs. The ceremonies were devoid
of any mysteries, no vicious beings were propitiated. All ceremonies except that at death,
include prayers through Vedic hyms and performance of Havan.
His mission took strong roots in Punjab, U.P., Rajasthan and parts of Bihar and Hyderabad
state. The Arya Samajis does not have the power to authorize sanctions against individual
or ex-communicate him.
The impact of the Samaj may be now be summarized as follows.
- Community worship every week brought men together more frequently. In the governing
councils, men elected met on equal terms and resolved problems. These bodies were to sworn
to positive action and self-motivated. Here that peculiarly English virtue of working
through committees was cultivated as now here else.
- These bodies were action minded. They did not meet to gossip but to evolve plans that
met the challenge of their times. Educational institutions were managed, famine relief
organized rehabilitate victims of natural calamities. Lala Hansraj was probably the first
Indian to devote himself to a cause in 1886. The work of community development without
much help from the state was undertaken from the Samaj long before the word had become a
current coin.
- All its activities needed funds. The Samaj started canalizing funds for common organized
efforts. Hindus and non-Hindus donated for its causes.
- It set up educational facilities in Punjab, U.P. and Hyderabad. The establishment of the
D.A.V. College at Lahore became a college in 1889, triggered off an educational movement
in the North. It also proved that knowledge of English and Western sciences could be
safely imparted to Indians without wither making them Christians or making them
hypocrites.
- Another result was that the Samaj acquired some control over the syllabus of school
education to be imparted and a very big place in its direction. NonSamajis who passed out
of its institutions were deeply impacted by what the Arya Samaj stood for.
- Dayanand’s presentation of India’s past made the Samaj a revivalist body. He
inspired millions to believe that the Golden age could be recaptured. During Muslim rule
Hindus did maintain an air of superiority but with the advent of Western onslaught the
Hindus were defenseless against the smashing blows to their religion, culture and beliefs.
We took the current Western claim to its monopoly of civilized inheritance at face value.
D’s interpretation of the Vedas was a mighty challenge to Western scholarship. Indian
scholars began unfolding the mysteries of Indian culture. They were inspired to begin with
a self-confidence that had been lacking in the past.
- D had declared that a good government was no substitute for self-governance. D raised
the voice of Swaraj long before the Indian National Congress adopted it. The first
generation of Arya Samaji leaders were civil servants and a prince or two. To them D gave
inspirations that Indians could rule over their country again. All Arya Samajis were 100 %
patriots and adopted Swadeshi long before the boycott movement.
- Research work done by D and inspired by him was successfully used in a vital political
controversy that erupted in the 20th century. When the Brits set about its newly declared
goal of setting up responsible govt in India, an eminent historian Vincent Smith, rushed
to prove that the attempt to set up self-governing institutions in India was bound to fail
as being alien to it. Sir Shankaran Nair, a member of the Governor-General-in-Council
disagreed on the basis of Kashi Prashad Jayaswal’s Hindu Polity written to expand
D’s hints on the places of the Sabhas in ancient India.
- The impact of the Arya Samaj is to be seen in the adoption of Hindi as a language of
administration in Rajputana and U.P. D wrote all his works in Hindi or Sanskrit. Under the
East India Company Urdu had come to be adopted as the language of administration for
reasons I do not know. Under the persuasion of Sir Pratap Singh, several states of
Rajputana were convinced to adopt Hindi script for official work. It came to be adopted as
an alternative medium of administration in U.P. early in the 20th century. The Arya Samaji
schools tried to make it popular.
- The present preoccupation of the govt with the welfare of the harijans has its roots in
the work that the Samaj started for the betterment of the untouchables long ago. The
Samajis made it a part of their religious duty to look after their welfare. In fact when
the educational, social services were thrust on the Arya Samajis in Baroda that Dr
Ambedkar was sent on a scholarship to England by the Gaikwad of Baroda.
- Unlike most Hindu organizations, the Samaj welcomed back into the Hindu fold Christian
and Muslim converts. This was greatly resented by the Muslims and Christians alike for
which the Samaj had to pay with lives of two of its leaders.
- The Arya Samajis were accused of being intolerant. When the Arya Samajis asserted that
Hinduism could not mean anything to any man, but only what the Vedas said, they were
accused of a claiming a monopoly truth. It was forgotten that this was exactly what every
reformist movement and religious leader had done within or outside India. The Arya Samajis
backed by the knowledge of the Vedas as enunciated by D hurled arguments not blows at
their opponents.
- When Sir Fazal Hussain embarked upon his campaigning of debasing administration by
extending communal representation from legislature to services, educational institutions,
it was an Arya Samaji who presented their case before the sub-committee of the Congress
committee.
- Ignoring their advice of those who had made Satyagraha their own weapon, the Arya Samaj
launched a successful Satyagraha against the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1939 in protest against
the State of Hyderabad which had put a ban on their preachers and congregations. No less
than 12,000 Satyagrahis, including many orthodox Hindus took part, court arrested, and
more than twenty died in jail. The Nizam accepted their demands and the Satyagraha
movement was withdrawn. The movement delivered such a shattering blow to his prestige from
which he was never able to recover, in the eyes of his subjects.
- So also the Samaj braved great danger in Malabar to bring back over 2,000 Hindus who had
been forcibly converted to Islam by the rebellious Moplahs. Still more important was the
reconversion of more than 30,000 Malkhana Rajputs in the villages of Rajputana and U.P.
- In 1944 the Muslim ministry of Sind proscribed under the Defence of India Act, the
Sindhi translation of Satyarth Prakash. The Arya Samajis started a Satyagraha on 14 June
1947 and publicly carried the book for seven days. As the govt took no action, the order
became a dead letter.
- Points 13 to 16 and references above indicate that the Arya Samaj brought about
militancy in Hinduism, something that was missing for centuries. Is it not ironical that a
number of Bollywood’s Punjabis who as Arya Samajis seem to so meekly give into the
dictates of the Karachi based Underworld. Where has that spirit of Militancy, pride in our
religion gone?
- Unlike the Brahmo - Prarthana Samajas, the Arya Samajis never cut themselves aloof from
the main stream of Hindu thought. D never claimed to be a Guru, founder of a new religion.
His was a humble role of a lifter of a veil who uncovers what was always there but had
laid hidden.
Have tried my best to do justice to what was one of the most important religious
movements in North India in the 19th century. Please forgive me for any errors, am willing
to stand corrected.