Centuries of domination had degenerated the once great Indian society and culture into an abyss of ignorance, sloth and inertia by the time Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883) arrived to regenerate and reconstruct. The whole of India was suffering from a cultural crisis. People had drifted from their cultural moorings and were lost in a no man's land neither here nor there. The rich Indian culture and heritage had lost its luster and aping the West blindly had become a fashion statement; it carried prestige and position in society. Swami Dayanand Saraswati realised that the once lively and pulsating Indian society had gone into deep slumber and that the pressing need of the hour was to wake it up, to reactivate and rejuvenate it. Possessed of sharp intellect and a vision far ahead of his times, he realised that the salvation lay in educating our people by propagating the real message of the Vedas. He knew that not just knowledge but wisdom and reason can distinguish man from an animal. He ceaselessly worked to induct a new life in his people through religious reformation, social reconstruction, cultural regeneration and political emancipation. He urged people to shun dogmas and adopt scientific outlook. He led them towards a new kind of awakening  based on wisdom, reason, and science. He was the first Indian who realized the importance of education for the wellbeing of a society.

The philosophy of Swami Dayanand Saraswati was translated into reality by Lala Hans Raj, later known as Mahatma Hansraj (1864-1938) and his selfless and dedicated associates, the founding fathers of the D.A.V. Movement. Frail of body but possessing heroic spirits, Mahatma Hans Raj voluntarily opted for a life of self denial and renunciation. He started a school in Lahore on 1 June 1886 and devoted his whole life to this school. He named the school as D.A.V. School, that is Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School . The movement spread gradually and with the passage of time a large number of D.A.V. Institutions came into existence. But the partition of the country in 1947 left more than half the D.A.V. Institutions in Pakistan. Rehabilitation of the institutions and displaced employees and students was a herculean task but the challenge was met effectively by the stalwarts of the D.A.V. Movement like Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhai Parmanand, Lala Dwarka Das, Principal Sen Das, Bakshi Ram Ratan and Bakshi Tek Chand. They were the ones who put life back into it and rehabilitated the organisation.