Organisation

Arya Samaj

Organisation

Hindu reform movement founded in 1875. In Punjab it clashed with the Singh Sabha over the Gurus and Sikh identity, and later led the Hindi drive in the 1951 census and against the Punjabi Suba.

The Arya Samaj is a Hindu reform movement founded in 1875 in Bombay by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, under the motto "Back to the Vedas." It rejects idol worship, animal sacrifice and much ritual. Its principles were settled in Lahore in 1877, and it grew strongly in Punjab, where Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (DAV) schools began in Lahore in 1886 under Mahatma Hansraj. In 1893 its Punjab members split over vegetarianism into a "Mahatma" party and a "Cultured" party.

Its part in this history: the Sikh question, 1870s to 1900s

Young Sikh reformers, among them Giani Ditt Singh, first worked with the Samaj against Christian missionaries. Historians cited by Wikipedia say that Dayanand's Satyarth Prakash (1875) portrayed the Sikh Gurus as unlearned and questioned the Guru Granth Sahib's standing, and that Arya papers kept up attacks through the 1880s. Giani Ditt Singh left the Samaj in 1888 and gave himself to the Singh Sabha, and other Sikh members resigned. The Samaj's shuddhi (reconversion) work also caused anger: Sikhs condemned the conversion of Rahtia Sikhs in Lahore in 1900.

Kenneth Jones's study of this period describes a contest over identity, with Arya polemics against the Gurus, Singh Sabha replies, and a 1900 newspaper controversy on whether Sikhs are Hindus. It names the Sikh tract Ham Hindu Nahin ("We Are Not Hindus"), by Kahn Singh Nabha, as part of that argument. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the tract appeared in 1898 and was registered in the Punjab Gazette on 30 June 1899. Jones's reference gives the Khalsa Press, Amritsar, 1899.

After 1947: language and the Punjabi Suba

1951: Arya Samaj-led newspaper campaigns urged Hindus, even in Punjabi-speaking areas, to disown Punjabi and register Hindi as their mother tongue. Disputes over falsified returns led to clashes, and the Prime Minister stopped the recording of language data.
1957: it led the agitation to annul the Regional Formula.
1960 to 1961: the repudiation of Punjabi was repeated in the 1961 census. In 1960 M. S. Golwalkar of the RSS said that Punjabi was the mother tongue of every Punjabi.

Not every Punjabi Hindu took the Samaj's line. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that Sethi Ram Nath, a Punjabi Hindu, openly backed a Punjabi-speaking state, which came into being on 1 November 1966.

Where it stands today

The Arya Samaj marked its 150th year in 2025 with an international gathering in New Delhi, and the DAV institutions it inspired continue.

Counsel: Bhai Ajmer Singh

Bhai Ajmer Singh treats the Arya Samaj as a grave threat to a small Sikh minority, because its shuddhi programme targeted exactly the people the Sikh tradition had gained: Dalits who had become Sikhs were to be purified back into Hinduism. He recounts an incident he says is now almost unknown. In Teja Singh Samundri's active years the Arya Samajis held a large public function at Jalandhar, where 42 Dalit men were taken through shuddhi, their hair was cut, ropes were twisted from it and the ropes were priced at two annas each, on the reasoning that going among the Sikhs had made them impure. There was a hawan. Another such function was held in a lane of Lahore. These are elementary facts, he says, that people no longer know. The Jalandhar function shook Samundri badly, and he then did enormous work approaching those Dalits, who in many places were not being allowed into Sri Harmandir Sahib.

ਸਿੱਖਾਂ ਦੀ ਮਾਨਸਿਕ ਗੁਲਾਮੀ ਕਿਵੇਂ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਹੋਈ? (How did the Sikhs' mental slavery begin?), Unstoppable Punjab

In chapter 2 Bhai Ajmer Singh places the Arya Samaj in the Hindu stream of Punjab politics, beside the Hindu Mahasabha, in the contest over what the Sikhs were. In chapter 5 he sets its Lahore base in the Hindu revival that would not accept Sikh distinctness. In chapter 15, naming Lala Jagat Narain and other Arya Samajis, he describes an open campaign in the late 1970s and 1980s to rouse Hindu feeling, which cast the Akalis as anti-India and was one strand of the Hindu revivalism he holds responsible for the communal frenzy in Punjab.

Vihveen Sadi Di Sikh Rajneeti, chs. 2, 5 and 15

See its connections

Sources

150 years of Arya Samaj, Drishti IAS. drishtiias.com
Ham Hindu Nahin: Arya-Sikh Relations, 1877-1905, The Journal of Asian Studies (Kenneth W. Jones, 1973). cambridge.org
Punjabi Suba movement, The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Punjabi University, Patiala. eos.learnpunjabi.org
Arya Samaj (Punjab expansion, 1893 split, relations with Sikhs), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
Singh Sabha Movement (Arya Samaj and Sikhs, 1870s to 1900s), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
Giani Ditt Singh, Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
Punjabi Suba movement (Arya Samaj and the 1951, 1957 and 1961 campaigns), Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org
Ham Hindu Nahin, The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Punjabi University, Patiala. eos.learnpunjabi.org

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