A major reform movement born in a Bombay meeting in 1875

The ascetic Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883) convened the first meeting of the Arya Samaj in Bombay on 10 April 1875, at the age of 51. The movement, which called for a return to the Vedas and campaigned against child marriage and for widow remarriage, became one of the most influential social-reform organizations of nineteenth-century India, and it endures today.

One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.