Which social reformer’s autobiography, entitled Looking Back, describes his experiences in setting up schools for women in Poona in the 1890s?

Correct — A, (a) Dhondo Keshav Karve. Looking Back, published in 1936, is the English autobiography of Dhondo Keshav Karve, the Maharashtrian teacher and reformer usually called Maharshi Karve, and the decade it dwells on is the one the stem names. Karve had married a widow himself in 1893, at a time when doing so cost a man his standing in his own community, and he built the rest of his life on the conclusion he drew from it: that a widow needed an education and a livelihood far more than she needed sympathy. In 1896 he opened a home and school at Hingne, on the edge of Poona, for widows and destitute girls, running it on subscriptions he collected himself; a women’s school followed in 1907; and in 1916 he founded the Indian Women’s University, the first of its kind in the country, later endowed and renamed as the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University. He wrote a Marathi account of his life as well, but the English volume is the one printed in this stem. The other three names all belong to the reform movement in western India, which is why the option list is difficult, and all three are excluded by dates: two of the men were dead before the schools described were opened, and the third was a child.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)K. T. Telang — Kashinath Trimbak Telang was a considerable figure — a judge of the Bombay High Court, a Sanskrit scholar whose translation of the Bhagavad Gita appeared in the Sacred Books of the East, a Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University, and one of the men around the founding of the Indian National Congress. But he died in 1893, before the institutions this book describes were established, so no memoir of his could recount setting up schools for women in Poona later in that decade. His work was in law, scholarship and public life rather than in running institutions for women.
• (c)Jyotirao Phule — Jyotirao Phule belongs to the same city and the same cause but to an earlier generation. With his wife Savitribai he opened a school for girls in Pune in 1848 — the pioneering act in this whole story — and went on to found the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873 and to write Gulamgiri, an attack on caste and priestly authority. He died in 1890, which places him before the decade the stem names, and his own writings are polemical works rather than an autobiography with this title. The option is there for a candidate who matches on the words Poona and women’s education without checking the years.
• (d)Dr. B. R. Ambedkar — Ambedkar was born in 1891, so the 1890s were his infancy and the schools in question cannot be his. His writings, when he came to write them, took a different form: Annihilation of Caste, the studies of caste and untouchability, The Buddha and His Dhamma and the early economics that opens this section of the paper. Waiting for a Visa is the nearest thing to an autobiography he left, and it is a short set of remembered incidents rather than a memoir of institution building.

Women’s education in western India runs through three overlapping generations, and keeping them apart is what this item tests. The first is Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, who opened schools for girls and for untouchable children in Pune from 1848 and framed the question as one of caste as much as of gender. The second is the reformers of the 1880s and 1890s — Pandita Ramabai with the Arya Mahila Samaj and the Sharada Sadan, Ramabai Ranade with her club and later the Seva Sadan, and D. K. Karve with the widows’ home at Hingne — who moved from argument to institutions, and specifically to residential institutions, because the women they were trying to reach could not be educated while remaining where they were. The third is the university generation, which Karve himself opened in 1916 by founding the Indian Women’s University and which culminated in the national women’s organisations of the 1920s. Karve’s long life, ending in 1962 in his hundred and fifth year, spans the whole of it, and he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1958.

Key facts

• Looking Back, published in 1936, is D. K. Karve’s autobiography in English; he also wrote an account of his life in Marathi.
• Karve married a widow in 1893, at considerable social cost, and made the education and self-support of widows his life’s work.
• In 1896 he opened a home and school for widows and destitute girls at Hingne, near Poona; a women’s school followed in 1907.
• In 1916 he founded the Indian Women’s University, the first women’s university in India, later named after Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey.
• Karve was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1958 and died in 1962, aged over a hundred.
• Jyotirao Phule, with Savitribai Phule, opened a school for girls in Pune in 1848 and founded the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873; he died in 1890.
• K. T. Telang, a judge of the Bombay High Court and Sanskrit scholar associated with the founding of the Congress, died in 1893.

Common traps

• Matching on city and subject without checking dates. Poona produced several reformers of women’s education across three generations.
• Assuming a famous author with a famous body of writing must also have written the memoir in the stem.
• Confusing Karve’s 1896 home at Hingne with Phule’s 1848 girls’ school, which is half a century earlier.
• Treating a plain English title as evidence that the author wrote mainly in English. Karve’s other account of his life is in Marathi.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indian Women’s University, founded in 1916 and later renamed after Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey, was established by whom?

  • (a)Pandita Ramabai
  • (b)Dhondo Keshav Karve
  • (c)Gopal Krishna Gokhale
  • (d)Behramji Malabari

  Answer(b) Dhondo Keshav Karve

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who, along with Savitribai Phule, opened a school for girls in Pune in 1848 and later founded the Satyashodhak Samaj?

  • (a)K. T. Telang
  • (b)M. G. Ranade
  • (c)Jyotirao Phule
  • (d)Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

  Answer(c) Jyotirao Phule