To propagate the ideas of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who founded the ‘Tatvabodhini Sabha’ in 1839?
- (a)Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
- (b)Dayanand Saraswati
- (c)Debendranath Tagore
- (d)Bal Shastri Jambekar
Correct — C, Debendranath Tagore.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy died at Bristol in 1833, and the Brahmo Sabha he had founded in 1828 lost momentum after him. In 1839 Debendranath Tagore set up the Tattvabodhini Sabha at Calcutta to study Vedantic texts and carry Roy's rational reading of them forward.
From 1843 the Sabha had a journal, the Tattvabodhini Patrika, edited by Akshay Kumar Datta, which gave the movement a printed voice. Debendranath went on to lead the Brahmo Samaj, and the Sabha was merged into it in 1859.
The idea to carry away: the Tattvabodhini Sabha is the bridge between Rammohan Roy's Brahmo Sabha and the revived Brahmo Samaj, and Debendranath Tagore is the man who built it.
- (a)Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar — Vidyasagar shares the city and the generation, which is what makes his name sit plausibly under this stem. His reform work ran through education and the law rather than through founding a Vedantic study society in 1839.
He is the right answer to the campaign that produced the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856, argued from Sanskrit scripture, and to questions on his work at Sanskrit College and on Bengali primers such as Barnaparichay.
- (b)Dayanand Saraswati — Dayanand's programme was a call to return to the Vedas, framed in western and northern India a generation after 1839, and not built on Rammohan Roy's Calcutta writings.
He is the right answer to the founding of the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875, and to questions on his book Satyarth Prakash and on the shuddhi movement his followers carried on.
- (d)Bal Shastri Jambhekar — Jambhekar worked in Bombay and in Marathi, and his reform energy went into print and schooling rather than into a Calcutta sabha organised around Rammohan Roy's writings.
He is the right answer to the launch of Darpan in 1832, the pioneering Marathi–English weekly, and to questions on early Marathi journalism, including the periodical Digdarshan he began in 1840.
The Tattvabodhini Sabha was a Calcutta society founded in 1839 for the study of Vedanta and the spread of a rational, monotheistic reading of Hindu scripture — the position Rammohan Roy had argued for before his death in 1833.
It gave that argument an organised body, and from 1843 a journal, at a point when the Brahmo Sabha itself had gone quiet.
Nineteenth-century Bengal produced a chain of organisations rather than a single one, and the value in an exam lies in keeping them apart by founder, city and decade.
Roy's Brahmo Sabha of 1828 came first. Radhakanta Deb's Dharma Sabha of 1830 was the orthodox reply to the ban on sati. The Tattvabodhini Sabha of 1839 revived the reform side and later fed back into the Brahmo Samaj.
- Debendranath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha at Calcutta in 1839 to carry forward Raja Ram Mohan Roy's reading of Vedanta.
- The Sabha's journal, the Tattvabodhini Patrika, began in 1843 with Akshay Kumar Datta as its editor.
- The Tattvabodhini Sabha was merged into the Brahmo Samaj in 1859, by which time Debendranath Tagore was leading that body.
- Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha in 1828 and died at Bristol in 1833, six years before the Sabha named in this question was founded.
- Debendranath Tagore was the son of Dwarkanath Tagore and the father of Rabindranath Tagore, and is remembered by the title Maharshi.
- Radhakanta Deb's Dharma Sabha, founded at Calcutta in 1830, opposed the regulation of 1829 that had banned sati.
The four names offered in the stem, each set against the work it is known for, with Rammohan Roy's own sabha and its orthodox rival added for the Calcutta backdrop.
- The stem's phrase about propagating Rammohan Roy's ideas does not mean Roy was alive to direct the work — he had died in 1833, six years before 1839.
- Vidyasagar and Debendranath Tagore share a city and a generation, so reasoning from 'the famous Bengali reformer' cannot separate them; the specific institution and its year can.
- Arya Samaj belongs to Bombay and to 1875, so treating every reform body as one undated bucket loses the decade and the province the question turns on.
- The surname Tagore does not fix the person: Dwarkanath, Debendranath and Rabindranath are three generations, and the Sabha of 1839 belongs to Debendranath.
- Founding a body is a narrower claim than being connected with it — a founder question is not answered by whoever later wrote for the journal or joined the movement.
The plainest shape is a direct founder-to-organisation pairing, with the year supplied inside the stem so the decade itself becomes usable evidence.
It also appears folded into a match-the-list item, where Tattvabodhini Sabha has to be tied to Debendranath Tagore while three other reformer-and-work pairs are settled in the same move.
A third shape leaves the organisation aside and works on the man: statements about Rammohan Roy's outlook to be judged correct or incorrect, or a descriptive Mains question asking for his contributions.
NDA_GAT_2025_II_Q812025The same pairing, run the other way: its key ties Debendranath Tagore to the Tattvabodhini Sabha, but the fact is buried in a match-the-list where three further reformer entries — Vishnu Shastri Pundit, Karsondas Mulji and Rammohan Roy — have to be settled as well. UKPSC asks the single pairing on its own and hands you the year 1839, which the NDA item does not supply.
UPSC_2025_GS1_Q112025Same person at the centre, different target. UPSC asks what Rammohan Roy stood for — regard for Eastern philosophy together with a rational, egalitarian outlook — while UKPSC asks who organised to spread that outlook after his death. Read together they explain why the vehicle chosen in 1839 was a society for the study of Vedanta rather than a purely political body.
CDS_GK_2023_I_Q1152023The same device — 'who founded this sabha', with four reformers offered — but on the opposing side of the argument: the Dharma Sabha of 1830 defended sati, and its answer is Radhakanta Deb. Its option list carries Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, so it drills the same name-sorting the UKPSC item needs, for a body founded nine years earlier.
UKPSC_2024_MAINS_GSIV_Q62024The same commission's Mains paper of the same year asks, in descriptive form, for Rammohan Roy's contributions to Indian society. The Prelims item tests one institutional consequence of that work — who carried it on after 1833 — while the Mains item wants the programme itself: sati, the position of women, modern education and the press.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Tattvabodhini Patrika, the journal of the Tattvabodhini Sabha, was edited by:
- (a)Dwarkanath Tagore
- (b)Akshay Kumar Datta
- (c)Keshab Chandra Sen
- (d)Radhakanta Deb
Answerb — The Tattvabodhini Patrika began in 1843 as the Sabha's organ, with Akshay Kumar Datta as its editor.Dwarkanath Tagore was Debendranath's father, a Calcutta merchant and financier, not the paper's editor. Keshab Chandra Sen came into the Brahmo Samaj in the 1850s, after the Patrika had been running for years. Radhakanta Deb led the orthodox Dharma Sabha, on the opposite side of this argument.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following was founded at Calcutta in 1830 to oppose the regulation that had banned sati?
- (a)Brahmo Sabha
- (b)Dharma Sabha
- (c)Tattvabodhini Sabha
- (d)Arya Samaj
Answerb — The Dharma Sabha was founded at Calcutta in 1830 by Radhakanta Deb to resist the 1829 regulation banning sati and to press for its repeal.The Brahmo Sabha of 1828 was Rammohan Roy's own body and argued the reform side. The Tattvabodhini Sabha of 1839 came after the ban and continued Roy's line. The Arya Samaj was founded at Bombay in 1875, in another province and another generation.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Darpan, the bilingual weekly begun at Bombay in 1832, was started by:
- (a)Bal Shastri Jambhekar
- (b)Gopal Hari Deshmukh
- (c)Jyotirao Phule
- (d)M. G. Ranade
Answera — Darpan, launched at Bombay in 1832, was Bal Shastri Jambhekar's Marathi–English weekly, and it is the basis of his standing as a pioneer of Marathi journalism.Gopal Hari Deshmukh wrote as 'Lokahitawadi' and is known for his Shatapatre. Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873. M. G. Ranade is associated with the Prarthana Samaj and the Indian National Social Conference.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Arrange the following in the chronological order of their founding: 1. Arya Samaj 2. Brahmo Sabha 3. Tattvabodhini Sabha 4. Dharma Sabha
- (a)2 – 4 – 3 – 1
- (b)2 – 3 – 4 – 1
- (c)4 – 2 – 3 – 1
- (d)2 – 4 – 1 – 3
Answera — Brahmo Sabha 1828, Dharma Sabha 1830, Tattvabodhini Sabha 1839, Arya Samaj 1875.Option (b) puts the Tattvabodhini Sabha ahead of the Dharma Sabha, though the orthodox body was formed within about a year of the sati regulation of 1829. Option (c) places the Dharma Sabha before the Brahmo Sabha it was formed against.
Option (d) brings the Arya Samaj forward of 1839, but Dayanand Saraswati founded it at Bombay in 1875.