Arya Samaj in Delhi

The most outstanding leader of Arya Samaj was Swami Shraddhanand. Other leaders were Baba Milkha Singh, Lala Narain Dutt, Seth Raghumal and Lala Banwari Lal. In those days New Delhi Complex-Viceregal Lodge (now Rashtrapati Bhavan), Central Assembly (now Parliament House) and Central Secretariat were under construction and many big and small contractors were Arya Samajists. They were actually participating in the activities of Arya Samaj with sincerity and dedication. In the Arya Samaj Mandir in Chawri Bazar, lectures and weekly meetings were held. While Hindus and Muslims were coming together under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Shuddhi movement (conversion to Hindu religion) was being pursued under the leadership of Swami Shraddhanand at the Arya Samaj Mandir. Hence the Shuddhi movement had to be stopped by the Congress.

With Dr. Yudhvir Singh as our leader, we wanted to build up a powerful and well-knit Arya Kumar Sabha on the lines of YMCA. It was established in Delhi and it grew up as a broad-based organisation within a short span of time. Dr. Keshav Deva Shastri, who had just returned from America, was elected President of All-India Arya Kumar Sabha. Many branches were started in U.P., Rajasthan, Punjab. Annual sessions were also held at different places. We admitted youths up to the age of twenty-five only and they would become sympathisers after crossing twenty-five years. In course of time, I was elected Secretary of Arya Kumar Sabha, Delhi and was working to the best of my ability. We held weekly meetings regularly and took up social work on voluntary basis. Whenever there were any difficulties for the public we used to help them in their dire need like true friends, and also organise melas, festivals, religious functions and assemblies. We were the active and organised volunteer-force of the Arya Samaj and assisted in holding meetings, processions, erecting pandals, etc. We also brought out a magazine, ‘Arya Kumar’, which was printed free of cost by Pandit Narayan Prasad ‘Betab’ in his own printing press, the Vanguard Press. Most of the poems in ‘Arya Kumar’ were written by ‘Betab’ himself. He was a very good Urdu poet. His language was a mixed Hindi and Urdu, Hindustani as standardised by Gandhiji. Our members used to contribute articles for the magazine. We also organised a big seminar of All-India Arya Kumar Sabha at Agra during the shatabdi (centenary) year of Swami Dayanand.

There was a Bengali engineer working in Martin & Co., which was constructing Travancore House, and he was my neighbour. I was then residing near Ajmeri Gate, Old Delhi. His only son, who was nine or ten years old, died of a severe attack of small pox. There were very few Bengalis in Delhi in those days. He could not get anyone to carry the body to the Yamuna for cremation. He came to me and sought my help. I went to his house and saw his son’s dead body, which was in a putrefied condition. I went and invited fifteen or twenty members of Arya Kumar Sabha who spontaneously volunteered to come to help. Without any fear or repulsion, we wrapped the body and carried it to the Yamuna ghat and cremated it with due honour. If there was flood or fire or any trouble, the members of Arya Kumar Sabha would immediately rush to help and assist the people in distress.

The Arya Samaj was a revolutionary movement dedicated to free the traditional orthodox Hindu Society from its rituals and superstitions and to reach the pristine glory of the Vedic ideals. It had captured the imagination of large sections of Hindu intelligentsia in Punjab and had become a dynamic social and religious phenomenon. Being a protestant movement against the established orthodoxy, it offered opportunity for the vigorous and dynamic youth to question the traditional orthodoxy of Hindu Society. Lala Lajpat Rai, Swami Shraddhananda and Mahatma Hansraj were the outstanding exponents and orators of the Arya Samaj movement. All the three became the leaders of Congress under the leadership of Gandhiji and made great sacrifices for the liberation of the country.

Most of the leaders and active members of the Congress were drawn from the Arya Samaj movement as far as this part of the country is concerned. Lala Deshbandhu Gupta was a staunch Arya Samajist, who was of my age and came to Delhi nearly one year after me. He was only a matriculate. He used to wear a long shirt and a tehmad (lungi) holding an eight feet long lathi (staff) in the hand. He was selected by Swami Shraddhanand as his first lieutenant when Swamiji started ‘Taj’, an Urdu daily newspaper. Guptaji was brilliant in Urdu as well as Hindi and English. We worked together in the Congress movement. He was a brilliant writer and forceful speaker and was one of the best speakers in Delhi in Urdu, Hindi and English. In those days leaders like Shri C. Rajagopalachari, Shri Satyamurthy and others from South India used to address public meetings in English and there Lala Deshbandhu Gupta was an indispensable person. He used to translate their speeches verbatim, sometimes more forcefully than even the original speeches. In the course of time, he became a towering journalist and was elected President of the All-India and Eastern Newspaper Society and Secretary of All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference. He also participated in various conferences in London.

Surendra Nath Jauhar

One day it struck me that my original name ‘Sikandar Lal’ (with which I passed my matriculation) was more or less a foreign name and it would not go well with the Arya Samaj. So I decided to change my name. A meeting of Arya Kumar Sabha was called, and more than two hundred members were present. We had a regular ceremony and havan and the prasad was distributed. I changed my name to Surendra Nath. We are khatris; but that does not matter much. Actually they used to write ‘Johar’; to make it really powerful, I changed it to ‘Jauhar’ — adding valour to my name.