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The Brahmo
Samaj was not a new faith. Dr. Duff mentions: -"As Luther's design was to destroy
Popery, the corruption of Christianity, by simply resuscitating genuine old Christianity
as revealed in the new Testament; so his (Ram Mohan Roy's) mission was to destroy popular
Puranic idolatry, the corruption of
Hinduism, resuscitating genuine old Hinduism as propounded in the ancient Vedas.'"
A parallel socio-religious movement was sponsored in Bombay in the founding of the
Prarthana Samaj and a few similar movements sometime later. Swami Dayananda sponsored the
Arya Samaj of India and made a definite contribution to the Indian renaissance. It is said
that Swami Dayananda had a vision of his mission in 1845 but there was a long self-
imposed grilling of Sadhana before he actually started the Arya Samaj in 1875.
Theosophical society which came to India through Madame Blavatsky and Colonel 01cott aimed
at establishing a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, promote the study of
comparative religion and philosophy and make an investigation into occultism.
From 1879 to 1884 about a hundred of theosophical societies
began to function in India. The Veda Samaj of Madras founded in 1865 through an impact of
the visit of Keshav Chandra Sen, the great Brahmo missionary visiting Madras and the
Radhasoami cult founded in 1860 by Shiva Dayal Singh of Agra were also the other
contributions to break the somno- lence of the religiosity of the Indians. All these
movements had one and only one goal and that was to stop the rot of spiritual decadence
that had started in India and to resuscitate India's spiritual heritage in some shape or
other.
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