UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 150 of 150

Correct — D, Sanatan Dharma Rakshini Sabha – Calcutta. This card has to be straight with you about how that answer is reached. It is reached by elimination, because the other three pairs can be shown to be wrong, and it is confirmed by the commission's official key — but the keyed pair itself could not be confirmed against any reference source when this card was prepared. So take (d) as the answer the key marks and as the option that survives elimination, and do not carry away a founder, a date or a history for the Sanatan Dharma Rakshini Sabha from this card: none is offered here, because none could be sourced. The elimination, by contrast, rests on solid ground. The Deva (Dev) Samaj was founded at Lahore on 16 February 1887 by Shiv Narayan Agnihotri, who had settled in that city in 1873 — so it is a Lahore body, not a Banaras one, and (b) fails. The Radhaswami Satsang was founded at Agra on Basant Panchami in January 1861 by Shiv Dayal Singh, and its two seats, Soami Bagh and Dayalbagh, are both at Agra — so it is an Agra body, not a Lahore one, and (c) fails. The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, the orthodox-Hindu organisation of the late nineteenth century consolidated in 1902 and associated with Din Dayalu Sharma and Madan Mohan Malaviya, is in the standard textbook account a Varanasi (Banaras) body rather than a Delhi one, which removes (a); that last association is the textbook one and no encyclopaedic entry for the Mahamandal could be traced, so it is stated as such. Notice what the examiner has done: the three wrong options are built by rotating genuine place names onto the wrong organisations — Banaras, which belongs to the Mahamandal, is given to the Deva Samaj; Lahore, which belongs to the Deva Samaj, is given to the Radhaswami Satsang; and the Mahamandal is sent to Delhi, which belongs to none of them.

• (a)Bharat Dharma Mahamandal – Delhi — The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal was the umbrella body of orthodox Hindu opinion that took shape in the 1880s and 1890s and was consolidated in 1902, with Din Dayalu Sharma and Madan Mohan Malaviya among the figures associated with it. The standard account places it at Varanasi (Banaras), not Delhi. That association is textbook rather than primary-source confirmed — no encyclopaedic entry on the Mahamandal could be traced for this card — but Delhi is not the city it is identified with in any account.
• (b)Deva Samaj – Banaras — Wrong, and demonstrably so. The Dev Samaj was founded at Lahore on 16 February 1887 by Shiv Narayan Agnihotri, a former Brahmo who had settled in Lahore in 1873. Its whole institutional life — its schools and colleges included — grew from that Punjab base, and it has no Banaras origin.
• (c)Radhaswami Satsang – Lahore — Wrong, and again demonstrably so. The Radhaswami (Radha Soami) faith was founded at Agra on Basant Panchami in January 1861 by Shiv Dayal Singh, and its principal seats, Soami Bagh and Dayalbagh, are both in Agra to this day. Lahore belongs to the Deva Samaj, one option above — the paper has simply moved it down the list.

Nineteenth-century India produced a dense crop of socio-religious organisations, and each is identified in exam terms by three things: its founder, its year and the city it was founded in. The city matters because these bodies were regional in the first instance — Calcutta produced the Brahmo Sabha of 1828 under Rammohan Roy, Bombay the Prarthana Samaj and the Arya Samaj of 1875, Punjab the Dev Samaj of 1887, Agra the Radhaswami Satsang of 1861, and Banaras the orthodox Sanatanist bodies that answered the reforming samajes. The reformist and revivalist strands are worth separating: some organisations wanted to reform Hindu practice by appeal to reason or to the Vedas, others existed precisely to defend established orthodoxy against that reform, and the 'Sanatan Dharma' and 'Bharat Dharma' names belong to the second group.

A 'which one is correctly matched' item is solved by disproving, not by proving. You do not have to know the right pair; you have to knock out three wrong ones, and here two of the three can be knocked out with facts that any standard account carries — Deva Samaj at Lahore, Radhaswami at Agra. That alone takes you to a choice between (a) and (d), and the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal's Banaras association finishes the job. It is worth being explicit that this is where the confidence in this card ends. The keyed pair could not be traced to a source, and the honest thing is to say so rather than to invent a founding story for it; the answer is unaffected, because it was never resting on that pair in the first place. When you meet an option in an exam that you simply cannot verify, this is the technique — attack the others.

• The Dev (Deva) Samaj was founded at Lahore on 16 February 1887 by Shiv Narayan Agnihotri, who had settled in Lahore in 1873 — so the paper's 'Deva Samaj – Banaras' is wrong.
• The Radhaswami (Radha Soami) Satsang was founded at Agra on Basant Panchami in January 1861 by Shiv Dayal Singh; its seats at Soami Bagh and Dayalbagh are both in Agra — so 'Radhaswami Satsang – Lahore' is wrong.
• The Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, an orthodox-Hindu body consolidated in 1902 and associated with Din Dayalu Sharma and Madan Mohan Malaviya, is placed at Varanasi (Banaras) in the standard account, not Delhi; no encyclopaedic entry on it could be traced for this card.
• The keyed pair, Sanatan Dharma Rakshini Sabha – Calcutta, could not be confirmed against any reference source in preparing this card; it is given as the official key's answer and as the option that survives elimination.
• The wrong options are built by rotating real place names onto the wrong bodies — Banaras onto the Deva Samaj, Lahore onto the Radhaswami Satsang, and Delhi onto the Mahamandal.

• Assuming that a body with a Sanskritic 'Dharma' name must be based at Banaras. The paper relies on that instinct — it moves Banaras onto the Deva Samaj and sends the Mahamandal to Delhi.
• Confusing Lahore and Agra in this set. Lahore is the Deva Samaj's city; Agra is the Radhaswami Satsang's.
• Trying to prove the keyed pair before answering. In a 'correctly matched' item, disprove the others — that is the only route that works when one option cannot be checked at all.

UPPSC asks this area as single-pair matching, four-item match lists, and 'which is NOT correctly matched'. The linking dimension changes between papers — organisation to city, organisation to founder, founder to year — so revise the reform bodies as a table with all three columns rather than as a list of names.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Dev Samaj, founded in 1887 by Shiv Narayan Agnihotri, was established at

  • (a)Banaras
  • (b)Lahore
  • (c)Agra
  • (d)Calcutta

  Answer(b) Lahore — Agnihotri had settled there in 1873 and founded the Samaj on 16 February 1887.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Soami Bagh and Dayalbagh, the two principal seats of the Radhaswami Satsang, are located in which city?

  • (a)Mathura
  • (b)Allahabad
  • (c)Agra
  • (d)Lucknow

  Answer(c) Agra — the Satsang was founded there in January 1861 by Shiv Dayal Singh, and both seats remain in the city.