SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 22 of 100

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.

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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 Prarthana Samaj in Mumbai in 1867?

(a)Gopal Krishna Gokhale
(b)Shri Ram Bajpai
(c)Atmaram Pandurang
(d)Ram Mohan Roy

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The Prarthana Samaj was founded at Bombay in 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang, a physician.

It grew out of the earlier Paramahansa Sabha, and Keshab Chandra Sen's visit to Bombay was the immediate push behind it.

Its programme was social more than doctrinal - opposition to caste restrictions, support for widow remarriage, education for women and a higher age of marriage.

MG Ranade and RG Bhandarkar joined soon after and became its best-known figures.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Gopal Krishna Gokhale — Gopal Krishna Gokhale belongs to the next generation. He founded the Servants of India Society in 1905 and led the moderates in the Congress, not a reform body of the 1860s.
(b)
Shri Ram Bajpai — No reformer of this name stands among the founders or leaders of the Prarthana Samaj, whose recorded names are Atmaram Pandurang, MG Ranade and RG Bhandarkar. It is filler.
(d)
Ram Mohan Roy — Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828 and died in 1833, more than thirty years before the Prarthana Samaj was set up.

Concept

The Prarthana Samaj is the Bombay counterpart of the Brahmo Samaj, and the two are best learnt as a pair.

Both set aside idol worship and priestly authority, but the Prarthana Samaj stayed closer to existing Hindu practice and put its weight on social reform rather than on theology.

Its declared concerns were four - the caste system, widow remarriage, women's education and the age of marriage.

Under MG Ranade it worked alongside the Widow Marriage Association and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, which together gave western India its reform network.

The name means prayer society. Its practical work ran to night schools, orphanages and homes for widows, which is how the reform reached past the debating hall.

Key facts

Prarthana Samaj was founded at Bombay in 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang.
MG Ranade and RG Bhandarkar were its leading later figures.
Its four stated concerns were caste, widow remarriage, women's education and the age of marriage.
Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828.

Study next

Nineteenth-century reform bodies stored as founder, city and yearMG Ranade, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Widow Marriage AssociationThe Brahmo Samaj after Ram Mohan Roy - Debendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen

Common traps

Crediting the Prarthana Samaj to MG Ranade, its most famous member but not its founder.
Reading Bombay 1867 as the Brahmo Samaj, since both bodies drew on the same ideas.

Reform-body questions supply two of the three facts and ask for the third - also asked 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.3 (who founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828) and 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.20 (who founded Belur Math).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.