CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 42 of 120

Correct — D, G. H. Deshmukh. Gopal Hari Deshmukh, who signed himself Lokahitawadi, began writing for the Marathi weekly Prabhakar at the age of twenty-five and produced 108 pieces in the first two years, from about 1848. Marathi literature has known them ever since as Lokahitawadinchi Shatapatre, the hundred letters of Lokahitawadi, which is the series the question calls Satapatra. What made them famous was their bluntness: he attacked the priestly monopoly and caste hierarchy, argued for women's education and widow remarriage, and campaigned against child marriage, dowry and polygamy. He also helped found the Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir library, ran the periodicals Gyan Prakash and Indu Prakash, and set up a branch of the Prarthana Samaj in Ahmedabad.

• (a)M. G. Ranade — A fellow Maharashtrian reformer of the next generation, but a different body of work — he founded the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay and the Indian National Social Conference, and wrote Rise of the Maratha Power.
• (b)B. G. Tilak — Later, and on the other side of the reform argument. Tilak edited Kesari and Mahratta and wrote Gita Rahasya and The Arctic Home in the Vedas; he opposed the kind of state-backed social reform Deshmukh wanted.
• (c)Bankim Chandra Chatterjee — A Bengali novelist writing in Bengali — Anandamath, Durgeshnandini, and the song Vande Mataram — not a Marathi essayist.

The nineteenth-century reform movement in western India worked largely through the press. A reformer bought or borrowed space in a weekly, wrote in the vernacular so that ordinary literate readers could follow, and attacked one custom at a time. Deshmukh's Shatapatre are the earliest sustained example in Marathi, and they set the pattern that Phule, Ranade, Agarkar and Tilak all later used, whatever their disagreements.

Attribution questions of this kind are won by pairing each name with one signature work and one language. Deshmukh writes Marathi letters in Prabhakar; Tilak writes Marathi editorials in Kesari; Bankim writes Bengali novels; Ranade writes English history and founds institutions. Note the pen name too, because papers ask for it directly — CDS itself asked who was popularly known as Lokahitawadi in the very next year.

• Gopal Hari Deshmukh lived from 18 February 1823 to 9 October 1892 and wrote as Lokahitawadi.
• He wrote 108 pieces for the weekly Prabhakar in his first two years, known as Lokahitawadinchi Shatapatre.
• The letters attacked caste hierarchy and priestly authority and argued for women's education and widow remarriage.
• He founded a branch of the Prarthana Samaj at Ahmedabad and ran the periodicals Gyan Prakash and Indu Prakash.
• He co-founded the Pune Nagar Vachan Mandir library.

• Attributing the Shatapatre to Ranade, who belongs to the same city and the same cause but a later decade.
• Confusing the pen name Lokahitawadi with Lokamanya, which was Tilak's title.
• Assuming a Marathi reform text must be by Tilak because his name is the most familiar.

As an author-to-work pick, as a pen-name identification, or inside a matching item on reformers and their journals.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Shatapatre of Lokahitawadi were published in which one of the following periodicals?

  • (a)Kesari
  • (b)Prabhakar
  • (c)Bangadarshan
  • (d)Sudharak

  Answer(b) Prabhakar — a Marathi weekly. Kesari was Tilak's, Sudharak was Agarkar's, and Bangadarshan was Bankim's Bengali journal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who among the following founded the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay?

  • (a)Gopal Hari Deshmukh
  • (b)Atmaram Pandurang and M. G. Ranade
  • (c)Jyotiba Phule
  • (d)Dayanand Saraswati

  Answer(b) Atmaram Pandurang and M. G. Ranade — Deshmukh later started a branch of it at Ahmedabad, Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj and Dayanand the Arya Samaj.