Made by Harekam Singh
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was a great Indian philosopher, social reformer, and
writer. He was born in 1820 in Calcutta and died in 1891. He was a very
important figure in the Bengal Renaissance. he is a key figure in the history of
modern Indian education.
Vidyasagar was one of the earliest advocates for widow remarriage in India. He
was also a strong opponent of child marriage. He wrote several books on
philosophy, sociology, and literature. One of his most famous books is a
translation of the Bhagavad Gita into the Bengali language.
He went to college at Krishnagar Government College. After graduating from
college he took a job as a translator for the English government. In 1848
Vidyasagar entered politics and joined the Brahmo Samaj, a religious movement
in Bengal founded by Ram Mohan Roy. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was a key
figure in the Bengal renaissance
Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883) was one of the most influential figures of 19thcentury India. A believer in the supreme authority of the vedas, he established
the Arya Samaj in 1875, leading a reform movement within orthodox Hinduism.
Among his various beliefs included a rejection of idolatry and the overly
ritualistic traditions of Hinduism, support for women’s education, denunciation
of child marriage and an opposition to untouchability.
His magnum opus, Satyarth Prakash (1875), emphasized the “return to Vedic
principles” that Dayanand Saraswati believed “had been lost” over time. The
book uses the language of religious revivalism – hearkening back to a ‘better’
ancient past – in order to fashion a modern religious philosophy and
organisation, capable of competing against the increasingly proselytising
Christian missionaries.
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) is best known in the United States for his
groundbreaking speech to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in which he
introduced Hinduism to America and called for religious tolerance and an end to
fanaticism. Born Narendranath Dutta, he was the chief disciple of the 19thcentury mystic Ramakrishna and the founder of Ramakrishna Mission. Swami
Vivekananda is also considered a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and
Yoga to the West and is credited with raising the profile of Hinduism to that of a
world religion.
In India during the nineteenth century, Jyotirao “Jyotiba” Govindrao Phule was a
well-known social reformer and thinker. He served as the movement’s leader
against India’s widespread caste system. He fought for the rights of peasants
and other people from lower castes and revolted against the Brahmins’ rule.
According to Phule’s biographer Dhananjay Keer, Vithalrao Krishnaji Vandekar,
a fellow reformer from Bombay, gave Phule the title of Mahatma. Throughout his
life, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule battled for the education of girls and was a pioneer
for women’s rights in India. He is credited with founding the first Hindu
orphanage for unfortunate children.
She is considered to be the pioneer of India's feminist movement. Savitribai and
Jyotiba together founded one of the early modern Indian girls' school in Pune, at
Bhidewada in 1848. She strived to abolish discrimination and unfair treatment of
people on the basis of caste and gender.
However, In the 19th century, Christian missionaries founded some school for
girls in India such as Robert May of the London Missionary Society, who was the
first person to open a school exclusively for girls[5] in the region of Chin surah,
Bengal, in 1818. American Christian missionaries established some schools in
Bombay, Ahmednagar. The latter girl's schools inspired Jyotiba Phule to
establish a girl's school in Poona.
Annie Besant (1847–1933), second President of The Theosophical Society from
1907 to 1933, was described as a ‘Diamond Soul’, for she had many brilliant
facets to her character. She was an outstanding orator of her time, a champion
of human freedom, educationist, philanthropist, and author with more than three
hundred books and pamphlets to her credit.
Narayana Guru was a saint, social reformer, philosopher, and educationist. Born
to Madan Asan and Kuttiyamma in an Ezhava family in 1856, in Kerala’s
Chempazhanthy village near Thiruvananthapuram, Guru grew up to work for the
upliftment of the Ezhava people and those from ‘untouchable’ castes. He coined
the phrase: “One Caste, One Religion, One God” and preached the noble ideal of
the ‘oneness of mankind’. On his death anniversary, it is imperative to know
about his fight against the caste system for social equality in the caste-ridden
Kerala society of the 19th and 20th centuries.
On 17 October 1817, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was born in Delhi, Mughal Empire.
He was the most eminent Muslim reformist and philosopher of the 19th century.
Social and religious reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries are important from
the IAS exam point of view.
• Syed Ahmed Khan was born in Delhi, the capital of the Mughal Empire to an
affluent and aristocratic family that had close ties with the Mughal court. He
was educated in the Quran and the sciences.
• He also received an honorary law degree from the University of Edinburgh
later in life. He was a widely read person and studied books on mathematics,
medicine, Persian, Arabic, Urdu, etc.
Ram Mohan Roy, Ram Mohan also spelled Rammohun, Rammohan, or Ram
Mohun, (born May 22, 1772, Radhanagar, Bengal, India—died September 27,
1833, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England), Indian religious, social, and
educational reformer who challenged traditional Hindu culture and indicated
lines of progress for Indian society under British rule. He is sometimes called
the father of modern India.