Who was the founder of Arya Samaj ?

Concept: Colonial-era India saw a wave of socio-religious reform movements, each founded by a specific reformer to address a particular concern - idol worship, caste discrimination, women's status, or the authority of scripture. Identifying a movement's founder means matching its founding year, place, and core philosophy to the reformer's own record.

Application: Arya Samaj was founded in 1875 in Bombay by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. He called for a "return to the Vedas", rejected idol worship and caste-based discrimination, and set out his ideas in the treatise Satyarth Prakash.

Cross-check - the other reformers:

• Raja Rammohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha (later Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta in 1828 - an earlier, separate movement, not Arya Samaj.

• Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar drove the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, and the spread of women's education; he is not credited with founding a religious reform organisation.

• Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, more than two decades after Arya Samaj and on a distinct philosophical basis.

Hence, Swami Dayanand Saraswati is the founder of Arya Samaj.