SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 12 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Who among the following founded the Atmiya Sabha in 1814?

(a)Keshab Chandra Sen
(b)Debendranath Tagore
(c)Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
(d)Raja Rammohun Roy

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Raja Rammohun Roy founded the Atmiya Sabha at Calcutta in 1814, a small circle that met to discuss monotheism and to argue against idol worship and caste ritual.

That circle is the seed of the Brahmo Sabha, which he founded in 1828 and which grew into the Brahmo Samaj.

There is a blunt check on the other three names: none of them was born by 1814. The founder the paper wants is option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Keshab Chandra Sen — Keshab Chandra Sen was born in 1838 and led a later phase of the Brahmo movement. He was not alive in 1814 to found anything.
(b)
Debendranath Tagore — Debendranath Tagore, born in 1817, founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in 1839 and later took charge of Roy's Brahmo Sabha. He inherited the movement rather than starting it.
(c)
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar — Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, born in 1820, is remembered for the widow remarriage campaign and for women's education, not for founding the Atmiya Sabha.

Concept

The nineteenth-century reform societies are best held as a chain rather than as a list.

Atmiya Sabha (1814) was Rammohun Roy's discussion circle in Calcutta. Brahmo Sabha (1828), also his, became the Brahmo Samaj under Debendranath Tagore and later split under Keshab Chandra Sen.

Roy's campaign against sati ended in its prohibition in 1829, under Governor-General Lord William Bentinck.

He also pressed for English and scientific education and for the property rights of Hindu women.

SSC pairs one reformer with one organisation and one date. Any option naming a man born after the year in the question can be dropped without knowing anything about the organisation at all.

Key facts

Raja Rammohun Roy founded the Atmiya Sabha at Calcutta in 1814.
He founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, the body that became the Brahmo Samaj.
Sati was prohibited in 1829, during Lord William Bentinck's term as Governor-General.
Debendranath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in 1839.

Study next

Rammohun Roy: Atmiya Sabha, Brahmo Sabha and the campaign against satiPrarthana Samaj, Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission, and who founded eachThe split in the Brahmo Samaj and the founding of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1878

Common traps

Picking Debendranath Tagore because his name is filed under Brahmo Samaj. He took the body over rather than founded it.
Confusing the Atmiya Sabha of 1814 with the Brahmo Sabha of 1828, both founded by the same man.
Reading Vidyasagar into any Bengal reform question. His work was widow remarriage and education.

The same founder is asked from the other end at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.3, on who founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828.

Other reform bodies are set the same way: 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.22 asks who founded the Prarthana Samaj in Mumbai in 1867, and 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.10 asks who pressed for the 1856 widow remarriage law.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.