Founding of the Arya Samaj

01Back to the Vedas

Dayananda, born Mool Shankar in Tankara in Kathiawar in 1824, had studied under the blind grammarian Swami Virajananda at Mathura. In the same year as the founding he published Satyarth Prakash, which became the Samaj’s chief book. He held the four Vedas to be the word of Ishvara, and argued against idol worship, the closing of Vedic study to anyone by birth, child marriage and the ban on widow remarriage.

02Bombay to Lahore

The Samaj was founded at a meeting in Girgaon, Bombay. Its strongest growth came in the Punjab, where Dayananda set down its ten principles at Lahore in 1877. After his death at Ajmer in 1883, his followers opened the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic school at Lahore in 1886, and Swami Shraddhanand founded the Gurukul at Kangri near Haridwar in 1902. The Samaj ran shuddhi to bring back those who had left the Hindu fold.

03In the freedom movement

Many who fought British rule came out of Arya Samaj homes and schools. Lala Lajpat Rai was a lifelong member and wrote its history in 1915. Bhagat Singh grew up in an Arya Samaji family and studied at the DAV school in Lahore. Swami Shraddhanand, who led a march in Delhi in 1919 against the Rowlatt Act, was assassinated in 1926. The Samaj runs hundreds of DAV schools and colleges today.