Who founded the Arya Samaj in Mumbai in 1875?

Correct — B. Swami Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj in Bombay in 1875 — the founder, the city and the year the question names all belong to him.

His programme was a return to the Vedas as the sole authority, and a rejection of everything he read as later accretion: idol worship, hereditary caste, child marriage.

He set that case out in Satyarth Prakash, and his followers carried it further through the shuddhi movement, which brought converts back into the Hindu fold. Option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Swami Vivekanand — Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, in Bengal, as a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramhansa. He is remembered for the 1893 Chicago address, not for the Arya Samaj.
• (c)
  Raja Ram Mohan Roy — Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha in Calcutta in 1828 and died in 1833, well before 1875. His campaign against sati led to its abolition in 1829.
• (d)
  Debendranath Tagore — Debendranath Tagore led the Brahmo Samaj after Ram Mohan Roy and founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in Calcutta. His work was Bengal-based and Brahmo, not the Bombay Arya Samaj.

Nineteenth-century India threw up a cluster of reform bodies, each best held as a founder, a city and a year. The Arya Samaj is the Bombay-1875 entry in that list.

Dayanand's reform was scriptural rather than syncretic. He did not blend Hinduism with Western rationalism the way the Brahmos did; he argued that the Vedas already contained the reform and that priestly practice had buried it.

That is why the Arya Samaj could be socially radical — against caste by birth, for widow remarriage and for women's education — while remaining religiously conservative.

Key facts

• The Arya Samaj was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati at Bombay in 1875.
• Satyarth Prakash is Dayanand's principal work, setting out his case for Vedic authority.
• 'Back to the Vedas' is the slogan associated with the Arya Samaj.
• The shuddhi movement, associated with the Arya Samaj, sought to bring converts back to Hinduism.

Common traps

• Vivekananda and Dayanand are both called Swami, so it is the full name, Dayanand Saraswati, that fixes the Arya Samaj.
• Bombay in 1875 is the Arya Samaj, Calcutta in 1828 is the Brahmo Sabha. The city dates the answer.
• Dayanand died in 1883, so anything the Arya Samaj did later is his followers' work, not his.

No directly related past PYQ was found.