Manav Dharma Sabha was one of the earliest socio-religious reform organization in

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the nin ...

and

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. It was founded on 22 June 1844 in

Surat Surat is a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The word Surat literally means ''face'' in Gujarati and Hindi. Located on the banks of the river Tapti near its confluence with the Arabian Sea, it used to be a large seaport. It is no ...

Durgaram Manchharam Mehta Durgaram Manchharam Dave (1809–1876), popularly known as Durgaram Mehta or Durgaram Mehtaji, was a Gujarati social reformer, essayist, diarist and teacher from British India. Along with his companions he founded the Manav Dharma Sabha, the first ...

Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar Dadoba Pandurang (Tarkhadkar) (9 May 1814– 17 October 1882) (Pune, Maharashtra, British India) was a social reformer and linguistic from Bombay. He was born with the surname Tarkhadkar in a Maharashtrian Vaishya Vaishya (Sanskrit: वैश� ...

and a few others. The goals of the Sabha were to expose the hypocritical arts present in Christian, Muslim and Hindu religions. It had a very short life span and ceased to exist as Dadoba left for

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the '' de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the sec ...

in 1846 and Durgaram left for

Rajkot Rajkot () is the fourth-largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat, and is in the centre of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Rajkot is the 35th-largest metropolitan area in India, with a population of ...

in 1852.''From Plassey to Partition'', Sekhara Bandyopadhya, p 153, The main objective of Manav Dharma Sabha was to highlight the positive side of true religion based on truth and morality. The organization accepted the concept of

monotheism Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxf ...

, a concept which belies in existence of one God only. The organization used to organize public meetings every Sunday in which the speakers used to exhort to give up

casteism Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural ...

, to encourage widow remarriages and to stop the practice of idol worship. The main activity of the organization was to abolish superstitious beliefs from the society and to ensure that people do not practice black magic, witchcraft and such other malpractices.

References

Defunct Hindu organizations History of Gujarat Hindu movements 1844 establishments in British India Social movements in India {{India-hist-stub