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15/02/23 08:09 AM IST

PM inaugurated 200th Jayanti celebrations of Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati

In News
  • The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated the year-long celebrations commemorating the 200th birth anniversary of Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati, at Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Delhi.
About Dayanand Saraswati
  • Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati, born on 12th February, 1824, was a social reformer who founded Arya Samaj in 1875 to counter then prevalent social inequities.
  • Arya Samaj has played a key role in cultural and social awakening of the country by its emphasis on social reforms and education.
  • His father, Karasanji, a devout worshipper of Shiva, would often take his young son Mulshankar (that was the earlier name of Dayanand) to places where kathas from the Shiva Purana were recited.
  • The first 21 years of Mulshakar’s life were spent at home receiving the traditional education of a Brahmin boy.
  • Arya Samaj is a reform movement of Vedic dharma and he was the first to give the call for Swaraj as "India for Indian" in 1876.
  • He was a self-taught man and a great leader of India leaving a significant impact on Indian society. During his life, he made a prominent name for himself and was known among a wide array of Prices and the public.
  • The first Arya Samaj unit was formally set up by him at Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1875 and later the headquarters of the Samaj were established at Lahore.
  • His vision of India included a classless and casteless society, a united India (religiously, socially and nationally), and an India free from foreign rule, with Aryan religion being the common religion of all.
Arya Samaj
  • It aims to reestablish the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, as revealed truth. He rejected all later accretions to the Vedas as degenerate but, in his own interpretation, included much post-Vedic thought.
  • During the 1920s and early 1930s tension grew around a number of issues. Muslims were angered by “music-before-mosque”, by the cow protection movement, and by the efforts of the Arya Samaj to bring back to the Hindu fold (shuddhi) those who had recently converted to Islam.
  • The Samaj opposes worship of murtis (images), animal sacrifice, shraddha (rituals on behalf of ancestors), basing caste upon birth rather than upon merit, untouchability, child marriage, pilgrimages, priestly craft, and temple offerings.
  • It upholds the infallibility of the Vedas, the doctrines of karma (the accumulated effect of past deeds) and samsara (the process of death and rebirth), the sanctity of the cow, the importance of the samskaras (individual sacraments), the efficacy of Vedic oblations to the fire, and programs of social reform.
Source- PIB

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