The DAV Movement, launched in 1886, is in keeping with the Vedic tradition of the payment of the RISHI RIN or GURU RIN, which is a humble offering of Maharshi Dayanand’s followers such as Mahatma Hansraj, Lala Lajpat Rai, Gurudatta Vidyarthi, Swami Shraddhananda, Lala Lal Chand, Bhai Paramanda, Lala Dwarka Dass and P.T. Lekharam, to name but a few. To him. Swami Dayananda paid the RIN by establishing the Arya Samaj and his followers, inspired by him, felt themselves duty-bound to open schools and colleges in the sacred memory of their peerless master.
1st June 1886 was a red-letter day in the history of Indian Education, as the pioneer educational institution DAYANANDA ANGLO-VEDIC HIGH SCHOOL, was set up at Lahore by Mahatma Hansraj that very day and it was destined to become the precursor of the widespread DAV Movement in the field of education, which brought into existence a chain of quality DAV schools and colleges through the length and breadth of the country, especially in the northern province. The impact of the Movement has been so tremendous that Dr P. Choudhury, a historian, eulogises it in the following sonorous words attempting to attain the status of poetry :
Inspired by the movie of the study of English and Western sciences under the protective wings of the Indian cultural traditions, the DAV movement (SIC) has been a significant experiment in the field of modern Indian education. It [has] created a healthy tradition of independent thought and action and [has] continued to inspire private efforts wedded to nationalist ideology in the field of education.
The DAV Public Schools under the DAV College Managing Committee, New Delhi (which is the largest non-governmental educational organisation in India) are experimental and innovative schools, which meet the needs of an individual as well as of his/her society. In the stark blindness of the so-called modernization, most of the public schools in India have bidden farewell to character building, the undenying significance of which was recognized even by the greatest scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein:
The most important human endeavour is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can given beauty and dignity of life.