Question

The Shuddhi Movement, involving the conversation of non-hindus to Hindus, was started by
(A) Swami Vivekanad
(B) Raja Ram Mohan Roy
(C) Swami Dayanand Saraswati
(D) Aurobindo Ghosh

Answer 1

Hint : This was a socio-political movement for the purification started by the Arya Samaj and followers of its founder who worked on the consolidation aspect of Hinduism. The agenda behind this movement was to abolish the practise of untouchability by converting the outcasts of all religions to Hindus.

Complete Step by Step Answer : The Shuddhi movement started by the founder of Arya Samaj, Swami Dayanand Saraswati in the early 20th century. This was a socio-political movement with basically two agendas. One was to bring back those people who converted into Muslim or Christian from Hinduism due to whatever reasons and second to save people from the ill-practices of untouchability, saving them frombeing an outcasts of their own religion. The movement challenged Christian Missionaries who converted uneducated or less-educated, poor and depressed Hindus to Christian for fulfilling their agenda. Because of Swami’s character and courage, more than 18000 Muslims converted back to Hindu from UP alone.
In 1923, Swami Shraddhanand founded Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Mahasabha and pushed the idea of reconversion which eventually created violence between the two communities. The first recorded conversion of a Muslim is in 1877. This movement was seen as a grave challenge by Muslim advocates and obviously they did not take it well. They reached out to Islamic community for felp seeking to draw them back to towards Muslim community. On December 1926, a Muslim fanatic assasinated Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

Note : On December 23rd 2011, a mega Shuddhi event was organised by Agniveer on the Shardhana Balidan Divas. Here thousands of people returned to their Hindu households.