Two Streams

The reform movements could broadly be classified into two categories—the reformist movements like the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Aligarh Movement, and the revivalist movements like Arya Samaj and the Deoband movement. The

reformist as well as the revivalist movement depended, to varying degrees, on an appeal to the lost purity of the religion they sought to reform. The only difference between one reform movement and the other lay in the degree to which it relied on tradition or on reason and conscience.