Purifying the nation

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the Arya Samaj in Gujarat from 1895 to 1930. Although the founder of this body, Dayanand Saraswati, was from Gujarat, it initially proved less popular there than in the Punjab. The first important Arya Samajists in Gujarat were Punjabis, brought there by Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda to carry out educational work amongst untouchables. The Arya Samaj only became a mass organisation in Gujarat after a wave of conversions to Christianity in central Gujarat by untouchables, with Arya Samajists starting orphanages to ‘save’ orphans from the clutches of the Christian missionaries. The movement then made considerable headway in Gujarat. The main followers were from the urban middle classes, higher farming castes, and the gentry of the Koli caste. Each had their own reasons for embracing the organisation, ranging from a desire for higher social status, to religious reform, to building caste unity, and as a means, in the case of the Koli gentry, to ‘reconvert’ Kolis who had adopted Islam in medieval times. The movement lost its momentum after Gandhi arrived on the political scene, and many erstwhile Arya Samajists embraced the Gandhian movement. When the Gandhian movement itself flagged after 1922, there was an upsurge in communal antagonism in Gujarat in which Arya Samajists played a provocative role. A riot in Godhra in 1928 is examined.