Static GK Quiz: Founders of Important Organisations and Institutions

Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta in 1828, growing out of his earlier Atmiya Sabha and Brahmo Sabha; it preached worship of one formless God, rejected idol worship and caste rigidity, and campaigned against sati, which was banned in 1829.

Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875 with the call to go back to the Vedas; it opposed idol worship and caste by birth, supported widow remarriage and women education, and ran the shuddhi movement, and his book Satyarth Prakash states its doctrine.

Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897, after his return from the Parliament of Religions at Chicago, and its headquarters came up at Belur near Calcutta; it combines spiritual teaching with service in education, health and relief.

Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society at Pune in 1905 to train men who would give their lives to public service in a disciplined, constitutional way, and Gandhi called him his political teacher.

Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the society of truth seekers, at Pune in 1873 to work against caste oppression and priestly domination; he and Savitribai Phule had already opened schools for girls and for the depressed classes.

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis founded the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931, devised the Mahalanobis distance and the method of large scale sample surveys, and shaped the Second Five Year Plan; National Statistics Day is observed on his birthday, 29 June.

Sircar, a physician of Calcutta, founded the association in 1876 so that Indians could do original research in science rather than only learn it, and it was in its laboratory that C. V. Raman did the work that won the Nobel Prize.

The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research at Bombay was set up by the Reserve Bank of India as an advanced research and teaching centre in development economics and was inaugurated in 1987; it is a deemed university that works on energy, environment and macroeconomic policy.

The Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, moved by what he saw after the battle of Solferino, led the founding of the Red Cross at Geneva in 1863 and the drafting of the first Geneva Convention; he was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, and World Red Cross Day is…

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity at Calcutta in 1950 for the care of the destitute, the sick and the dying; she received the Bharat Ratna and the Nobel Peace Prize, and the order spread to many countries.

Baden-Powell, a British army officer, held the first experimental camp in 1907 and published Scouting for Boys, from which the movement grew; in India the Bharat Scouts and Guides was formed in 1950 by the merger of the earlier bodies.

Bhabha persuaded the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust to fund an institute for fundamental research in physics and mathematics, which began in 1945 at Bombay, and he went on to head the atomic energy programme, which is why he is called the father of the Indian nuclear programme.