The ideas and activities of the intellectuals were directly or indirectly related to the task of national reconstruction.
At the culture level, they attempted to distinguish the essential from reaction ally, in order to locate and define. Intellectuals like Bankim Chandra Chattergy, bhaskar and Lokhiwadi here provided that political far sightedness which showed the path to the Indian National Movement to progress.
The targets of the intellectual’s attack were the existing socio-cultural evils and malpractices such as obscurantism, superstitions and irrationality embedded in the society and not the social system as a whole. In other words, they were advocates of reform and not exponents of revolution. The curse for the transformation of society was to be evolutionary through gradual process. Thus, change and continuity both constituted the basic element in their scheme of social transformation.
The movement was an urban phenomenon where the urban communication channels like press, lectures and sabhas were used for the propagation of ideas. Moreover the intellectuals took extra caution to free it from notions of provinciality and regional distinctions. Thus, despite this movement being localised affair it was not regional in its aspirations.