NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 119 of 150

Correct — D, the Satyashodhak Samaj. Jyotirao Phule founded it at Pune on 24 September 1873. The name means the Truth-Seekers' Society, and its programme was an attack on caste hierarchy itself rather than a reform within it — it worked for the rights of Shudras, Dalits and women, opposed idolatry, and rejected the necessity of a Brahmin priest at marriages and other ceremonies, holding them instead without one. The same year Phule published Gulamgiri, or Slavery, which he dedicated to the American abolitionists. He had already opened a school for girls at Pune in 1848 with Savitribai Phule, and the title Mahatma was conferred on him in 1888.

• (a)Prarthana Samaj — A real Maharashtra organisation, but a different one with a different date and founder. It was set up at Bombay in 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang, and its best-known figures were M. G. Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar. It worked as a theistic reform body in the Brahmo mould, from within the upper-caste social world that Phule was attacking from outside.
• (b)Bahujan Samaj — The word bahujan is associated with Phule's political vocabulary, which is what makes the option tempting, but the organisation of that name belongs to the twentieth century — the Bahujan Samaj Party was founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984, almost a century after Phule's death in 1890.
• (c)Justice Party — Wrong region and wrong century. The Justice Party, formally the South Indian Liberal Federation, was founded at Madras in 1916 by T. M. Nair and P. Theagaraya Chetty as a non-Brahmin political party in the Madras Presidency. It shares the anti-Brahmin thrust with Phule's work but is separated from it by four decades and by the whole width of the peninsula.

Nineteenth-century social reform in India ran on two distinct tracks. One was reform from within the upper castes — the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj — which attacked idolatry, sati, child marriage and the ban on widow remarriage while leaving the caste structure largely in place. The other was the anti-caste movement that challenged the hierarchy itself, and Jyotirao Phule is its first great figure, followed by Periyar in the Tamil country and B. R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar named Phule one of his three gurus, along with the Buddha and Kabir.

Organisation-founder-year items are pure recall, so build the recall around a small table and a distinguishing feature for each entry rather than around dates alone. Here the useful separator is region and register: Prarthana Samaj is Bombay and theistic, Satyashodhak Samaj is Pune and anti-caste, Justice Party is Madras and electoral, and Bahujan Samaj Party is Uttar Pradesh and modern. Two of the four also fail on chronology once you fix Phule's dates — he lived from 1827 to 1890, so nothing founded in 1916 or 1984 can be his.

• Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj at Pune on 24 September 1873.
• His book Gulamgiri, published in 1873, was dedicated to the American abolitionists.
• Phule and Savitribai Phule opened a school for girls at Pune in 1848 and later a home for widows.
• The Prarthana Samaj was founded at Bombay in 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang; the Justice Party at Madras in 1916; the Bahujan Samaj Party by Kanshi Ram in 1984.

• Mixing Prarthana Samaj with Satyashodhak Samaj because both belong to western India.
• Reading twentieth-century organisations back into the nineteenth century when the vocabulary overlaps.
• Treating all reform bodies as anti-caste; most of the theistic samajes were not.

The GAT sets at least one reform-movement item every year, usually as a founder-organisation-year match, so a single memorised table earns marks across many papers.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Prarthana Samaj was founded at Bombay in 1867 by

  • (a)Jyotirao Phule
  • (b)Atmaram Pandurang
  • (c)Dayanand Saraswati
  • (d)Keshab Chandra Sen

  Answer(b) Atmaram Pandurang — M. G. Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar were its best-known later figures.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Gulamgiri, a work attacking caste oppression and dedicated to the American abolitionists, was written by

  • (a)B. R. Ambedkar
  • (b)Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
  • (c)Jyotirao Phule
  • (d)Narayana Guru

  Answer(c) Jyotirao Phule — published in 1873, the same year he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj.