Who were the ‘Founding Fathers’ that Ramanujan joined in Chicago?

Concept: a literal comprehension question is settled inside the passage itself. Locate the single clause that carries the stem's own key words, then read the grammatical relation inside that clause — which noun phrase is the subject, and which is the object of the verb the stem uses. A term that appears prominently elsewhere in the passage is not evidence about that clause.

Applying that method here:

1. The stem supplies three search keys: the quoted phrase ‘Founding Fathers’, the place Chicago, and the verb joined.

2. Exactly one sentence in the passage carries all three: “At a time when Indian literature meant Sanskrit, and Sanskrit meant Greek and Latin, Raman arrived in Chicago to join Edward C. Dimock and the other ‘founding fathers’ in proclaiming to the world the relevance of Tamil and Bengali and the other mother tongues.”

3. Read the grammar of that sentence: Raman is the subject of arrived and of the infinitive to join, and the object of to join is the noun phrase “Edward C. Dimock and the other ‘founding fathers’”.

4. The people the passage says he joined in Chicago are therefore Edward C. Dimock together with the others it calls founding fathers.

Cross-checking the remaining candidates against the same test:

• British mills occur only inside a simile — native Indian scholars were treated “like the raw fibres that were taken from India to be processed in British mills”. Their owners are never named, and that clause carries neither Chicago nor the verb join.

• The American Indo-logical establishment is introduced as the body whose attitude the passage sets itself against: it is what Raman had to teach how to weave a theory, in a clause with no Chicago and no join.

• Greek and Latin sit in the “At a time when…” clause that opens the Chicago sentence; they state what Sanskrit was then equated with, so they are that sentence's backdrop rather than the object of to join.

Result: the ‘Founding Fathers’ Ramanujan joined in Chicago were Edward C. Dimock and others.