SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 14 of 99

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 10 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 founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875?

(a)Ramabai Ranade and GK Devadhar
(b)Baba Dayal Das and Madan Lal
(c)Madame HP Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott
(d)Naoroji Furdunji and Satyendra Nath Bose

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The Theosophical Society was founded at New York in 1875 by Madame HP Blavatsky, a Russian-born occultist, and Colonel HS Olcott, an American lawyer and army veteran — option (c).

The Society moved its headquarters to India in 1879 and settled at Adyar, near Madras, in 1882.

Annie Besant joined later, led it from Adyar, and used it as a base for Sanskrit revivalism and for the Central Hindu College at Banaras.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Ramabai Ranade and GK Devadhar — Ramabai Ranade worked on women's education and social service in Poona, and GK Devadhar belonged to the Servants of India Society. Neither has any part in a society founded in New York.
(b)
Baba Dayal Das and Madan Lal — Baba Dayal Das led the Nirankari movement, a nineteenth-century Sikh reform current in Punjab that rejected idol worship. It is a different tradition on a different continent.
(d)
Naoroji Furdunji and Satyendra Nath Bose — Naoroji Furdunji was a Parsi reformer of Bombay associated with the Rahnumai Mazdayasnan Sabha, and the name Satyendra Nath Bose belongs to twentieth-century science, decades after 1875.

Concept

Theosophy mixed Western occultism with readings of Hindu and Buddhist texts and argued that every religion carries one underlying wisdom.

That claim had political weight in India. A body led by Europeans was telling educated Indians that their own scriptures held something the West lacked, at a moment when missionary schooling said the opposite.

So the Society is studied under socio-religious reform beside the Brahmo and Prarthana Samajes, even though it was not Indian in origin and did not begin as a reform body.

Neither founder was Indian and the founding was not in India. Store the item as New York, 1875, with Adyar as the later headquarters — those two places are what SSC swaps.

Key facts

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by HP Blavatsky and HS Olcott.
Its international headquarters moved to Adyar, near Madras, in 1882.
Annie Besant later led the Society from Adyar and founded the Central Hindu College at Banaras.
Blavatsky wrote Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine.

Study next

Socio-religious reform bodies stored as founder, city and yearAnnie Besant, the Central Hindu College and the Home Rule LeagueThe Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj as the Indian-origin counterparts

Common traps

Placing the founding at Adyar, which became the headquarters only in 1882.
Crediting Annie Besant with founding the Society, when she joined years after 1875.

SSC gives two of the three facts — founder, city, year — and asks for the third. The same shape runs at 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.22 (who founded the Prarthana Samaj at Bombay in 1867) and at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.3 (who founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828), where Ramabai Ranade is again an option.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.