Why Arya Samaj And Dayanand Saraswati Are Important For Government And RSS

A month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the two-year-long 200th birth anniversary celebrations of social reformer and Arya Samaj founder Dayananda Saraswati in a big way, calling him "a beacon of knowledge who approached education with Indianness," Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday participated in the foundation day event of the Arya Samaj. He credited Saraswati for being the only person after Sage Ved Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, to revive the glory of the Vedas, and claimed that PM Modi's vision for a new India borrowed extensively from the life and works of the Arya Samaj founder.

A month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the two-year-long 200th birth anniversary celebrations of social reformer and Arya Samaj founder Dayananda Saraswati in a big way, calling him "a beacon of knowledge who approached education with Indianness," Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday participated in the foundation day event of the Arya Samaj. He credited Saraswati for being the only person after Sage Ved Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, to revive the glory of the Vedas, and claimed that PM Modi's vision for a new India borrowed extensively from the life and works of the Arya Samaj founder.

This endorsement of Swami's vision by the prime minister and home minister was not isolated. The RSS, in its recent resolution at the organisation's highest decision-making meeting held in Panipat recently, and the Bharatiya Janata Party in its national executive meeting held last year asked their members to participate wholeheartedly in the anniversary celebrations of the Swami in a big way and promote his teachings in society.

While the two-year campaign is set to begin in April, the enthusiasm of the government and the Sangh Parivar to support the activities of the Arya Samaj has strong social and political undertones.

Born in 1824, Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj in 1875 to counter social inequities, but later on, through the Arya Samaj, it played a crucial role in social awakening through its emphasis on social reforms and education.

The support of the organisation is specifically critical for the government and the RSS in states such as Punjab that have been witnessing unrest due to some supporters of Khalistan. On its part, the Arya Samaj on Tuesday already declared its support for "the center's action against separatist forces operating in the country and beyond".

With 20,000 units functional across the world, 10,000 temples, 3,000 schools, and hundreds of gurukuls, the Arya Samaj is key not just for the government to address social fault lines with the rise of some separatist elements but also for the implementation of the centre's national education policy and to scale up its fight against the menace of drugs, a concerning issue in Punjab.

It is also critical for the implementation of another resolution announced by the RSS this year: working towards removing caste biases in society to keep the Hindus united and keeping a check on religious conversions to Islam and Christianity.

Known to have a large influence through its institutions, the Arya Samaj has also declared its immediate goals: it will approach the Supreme Court to oppose same-sex marriages; condemn the no-child policy gaining traction in society; conduct mass awareness campaigns to fight drug addiction; and ensure 50% of its kitchens serve millets.

The PM last month made special mention of Dayanand Saraswati’s role in women's empowerment and added that the NEP had also been designed to modernise education in line with Saraswati's teachings. Shah praised the organisation's work on natural farming and the protection of cows, efforts to spread the knowledge of the Vedas in the northeast, and for inspiring revolutionaries during the British Raj.

Vinay Arya, general secretary of the Delhi Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, said Saraswati was instrumental in promoting swadeshi and making the first attempts to remove social evils such as sati by institutionalising widow remarriages. "He started gurukuls to promote vedic learning because at that time there were schools only for the upper castes. We intend to back the centre’s decision to judicially oppose legalising same-sex marriages."

The vision of Saraswati in initiating internal reform in Hinduism by calling for the removal of caste-based hierarchies was a radical one, said Prafulla Ketkar, editor of the Organiser. It was Arya Samaj that first institutionalised ghar wapsi and answered once and for all the question of what caste the re-convert get into, he said. "They talked about sanatana parampara which remains the unifying factor in our society. They set the procedures and protocol necessary for re-conversion in the form of Shuddhi (purification), which was a crucial move and an opening for social reforms," he said.

Dayanand Saraswati and Arya Samaj managed to "create an alternate  history of Hindu India, based on a puritanical understanding of who the Hindus are, and envisaged a modern view of a common identity of Hindus rooted in traditional ethos", said Ashish Kumar, who teaches history at Panjab University. This collective idea of all Hindus being one is a commonality between the RSS and the Arya Samaj, but the former, while considering Sikhs very much part of the larger Hindu fold, is cautious of not making Sikhism look like "an offshoot of Hinduism," which has in the past antagonised the community.

Many RSS veterans talk about how many members of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, the RSS affiliate that works to reach out to Sikhs, were Arya Samajis themselves. They also point out how two of the akharas of Hinduism have Sikhs, and even the Ram temple movement has its origins in protests by a Nihang Sikh.

"At some level, Arya Samaj with its idea of equality appealed to many people, particularly in Punjab, which is why many joined, be it the families of Bhagat Singh or Lala Lajpat Rai. The call was that all Hindus are equal, and the degeneration began with Islamic invasions. But some of Satyarth Prakash's writings were also derogatory to Sikhs, and later in the sixties, the insistence on Hindi as the official language also created fissures between the Arya Samaj and the Sikhs. The projection of Sikhs has been primarily as the saviors of Hindus by Muslim tyrants. Many Sikhs have hence advocated a more assertive recognition of Sikhism as a separate religion demanding respect for their symbols and granth," he said.