Hindu reform movements
several contemporary Hindu groups
Contemporary groups, collectively termed Hindu reform movements, reform Hinduism, neo-Hinduism, or Hindu revivalism, strive to introduce regeneration and reform to Hinduism, both in a religious or spiritual and in a societal sense. The movements started appearing during the Bengali Renaissance.
History
From the 18th century onward, India was colonised by the British. This process of colonisation had a huge impact on Indian society: social and religious leaders then integrated Western ideas with Hindu culture.
Social reform movements
In social work, Swami Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati, Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Baba Amte and Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar have been most important. Sunderlal Bahuguna created the chipko movement for the preservation of forestlands according to the Hindu ecological ideas. The less accessible Vedas were rejected and parallel Vachanas were compiled.
Religious movements
Brahmo Samaj
The Brahmo Samaj is a social and religious movement founded in Kolkata in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The Brahmo Samaj movement thereafter resulted in the Brahmo religion in 1850 founded by Debendranath Tagore, better known as the father of Rabindranath Tagore.
Brahmo Samaj of South India
The faith and Principles of Brahmo Samaj had spread to South Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala with many followers.
The public source identifies “Hindu reform movements” as several contemporary Hindu groups. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hindu, reform and movements.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13405132. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1828 and 1850.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hindu reform movements” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.