Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Aiya Samaj, shouldered the great responsibility of reforming society and religion. He devoted his whole life to the cause of removing evils of the Hindu society and religion. He had a great reverence for the ancient Indian religion, civilization and culture. He established a beautiful coordination of reformative and ancient trends in his ideas.
A famous thinker, Romain Rolland had said that Swamiji worked in India like the hero of Gita, Shri Krishna. He established Aiya Samaj in Bombay (Mumbai) on April 10, 1879 and made it a platform to give a practical shape to his reforms in the Hindu society. Swami Dayanand had criticised the caste system based on birth and was deadly opposed to idol worship, pilgrimage, untouchability, religious superstitions ancient orthodox beliefs. He condemned child marriage, purdah system and stressed on widow marriage and women education.
He was also for Swaraj. He was the first person to use the word Swaraj. His main aim was political freedom. He was a true nationalist. He was the first person to accept Hindi as a national language. He told that there may be any number of evils in Swaraj (self-rule), foreign rule may have any number of virtues, but Swaraj is better than foreign rule.
Thus, Swami Dayanand Saraswati introduced many social, religious, and political reforms in the society.