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Brahmo and Arya Samaj
and the soldiers. Most soldiers refused to fire on the
crowd. Charles X, having no desire to go to the guillotine, quickly abdicated and sought refuge, for the
second time in his life, in England.
The marquis de Lafayette, who had played important roles in both the American Revolution and the
French Revolution, found a solution to the political crisis. Using his still immense popularity, he offered the
French people to replace Charles X with Louis-Philippe,
the duc d’Orléans, who had fought with the armies
of the French Revolution. With the promise that the
duc d’Orléans would respect the charter of 1814, the
Chamber of Deputies offered him the crown on August
7, 1830. Louis-Philippe would now rule France as the
“citizen king.”
See also Latin America, Bourbon reforms in.
Further reading: Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1965; Cobban, Alfred. A History of Modern France: Vol. 1, Old Regime and Revolution
1715–1799. New York: Penguin, 1991; Cronin, Vincent.
Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography. New York:
William Morrow, 1972; Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962; ———
, and Henry F. Stockhold. Napoleon. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990; Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970; ———, and
Joel L. Colton. A History of the Modern World. New York:
Knopf, 1971.
John F. Murphy, Jr.

Brahmo and Arya Samaj
The Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj were two important institutions that developed in 19th-century India
against existing social practices. The impact of the West
resulted in a social and cultural renaissance in India. To
regenerate society, it was felt that modern sciences and
ideas of reason were essential.

Ram Mohan Roy, occupying a pivotal position in
the awakening, was the founder of Brahmo Sabha in
1828, which was known as Brahmo Samaj afterward.
Roy was an enlightened thinker and well versed in
Sanskrit, English, and Arabic. An accomplished Vedic
scholar, he was also a great admirer of Jesus Christ.
Roy wanted to bring reform to Hindu society, which
had become stagnant. Evils like the sati (suttee) system
of self-emolation of widows, child marriage, polygamy, and other social ills had crept in. The goal of the

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Brahmo Samaj was to rid Hindu society of evils and
to practice monotheism. Incorporating the best teachings of other religions, it aimed at a society based on
reason and the Vedas. A golden age in Vedic society
had begun. Rajnarain Bose, Debendranath Tagore,
and Keshab Chandra Sen enriched the Samaj through
inculcation of novel ideas that aimed at reforming
Hindu religion and society. Bose used the Hindu scriptures like the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhagavad
Gita as the holy books of the Hindus.
Debendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath
Tagore, revived the Brahmo Samaj, which had become
dormant after Roy’s death in 1843. He established the
branches of the Samaj and spoke out against idol worship, pilgrimages, and rituals of Hindu society. Membership of the Samaj continued to rise; from six in
1829 to 2,000 after 1835. Starting in Bengal, it spread
to different parts of India. But a schism developed, as
Debendranath and the older generation did not like the
radical ideas of Sen, who formed the Brahmo Samaj of
India in 1866. The older organization was called the
Adi (original) Brahmo Samaj.

EMANCIPATION OF HINDU WOMEN
The crusade of the Brahmo Samaj resulted in the emancipation of Hindu women within the fold of the Samaj.
The British government passed the Civil Marriage Act
in 1872, prohibiting child marriage and polygamy, as
well as the abolition of caste distinctions. When Sen
violated this act at the time of his daughter’s marriage,
there was another split in the Brahmo Samaj of India
in 1878 with the formation of Sadharana (Common)
Brahmo Samaj by Ananda Mohan Bose and others.
The Brahmo Samaj had done laudable work in the
field of education. The urban elite of West and South
India came under its spell. It remained a sort of guiding spirit for reformed Hindu society. At the time of
World War I, it had 232 branches in major cities of
South and Southeast Asia. Apart from the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the Congress presidents
and nationalist leaders like Surendranath Banerji
and Bipin Chandra Pal were members in the 19th century.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati founded the Arya
Samaj in the colonial city of Bombay in 1875, but its
growth came in the Punjab after the establishment of
Lahore Arya Samaj three years later. It grew rapidly
in different parts of India, with provincial braches
in Uttar Pradesh (1886), Rajasthan (1888), Bengal
(1889), and Madhya Pradesh (1889). It also spread to
the British Empire outside of India, especially in South