MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 3 of 100

Correct — option (4), Krushnaji Bhalekar. Read the stem first, because its English is compressed: it is not asking who defended Chiplunkar, it is asking who answered Chiplunkar's attack on Jyotirao Phule, and it identifies that man by the newspaper he ran — a paper reckoned to mark the beginning of non-Brahmin journalism in Marathi. Both halves point to one person. Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar (1850-1910) was a cultivator's son from the Pune district, a close associate of Jyotirao Phule and a worker of the Satyashodhak Samaj, and in January 1877 he started the weekly Deenbandhu at Pune. Deenbandhu was the first newspaper to be run from inside the Satyashodhak movement and to speak for the peasant, the labourer and the non-Brahmin castes rather than about them, and it is on that ground that Marathi accounts treat it as the founding moment of bahujan or non-Brahmin journalism. The attack it had to answer came from Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, whose Nibandhamala — the celebrated series of essays that began in 1874 and did more than any other writing of the decade to shape modern Marathi prose — turned its polemical force on Phule and on the Satyashodhak position. Phule's reply, Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Pustak and his other writings apart, needed a periodical that could answer week by week, and Bhalekar's Deenbandhu supplied it. The other three names in the options belong to the same broad reforming decades but to different work: none of them founded this paper, and the paper is what the stem uses to identify the man.

• (1)Narayan Meghaji Lokhande — This is the near-miss of the question and the one that catches candidates who know a good deal rather than a little. Narayan Meghaji Lokhande is genuinely bound up with Deenbandhu — he took charge of the paper after Bhalekar and carried it to Bombay, where it became the voice of the mill workers, and he went on to found the Bombay Mill-Hands Association in 1884 and to win the weekly Sunday holiday in 1890. But editing a paper later is not founding it, and the stem is about the man whose newspaper began non-Brahmin journalism and answered Chiplunkar. Whenever a question turns on a periodical, it is worth separating three roles that are constantly confused: who started it, who edited it afterwards, and from which city it was issued at each stage.
• (2)Bhau Daji Lad — Bhau Daji Lad belongs to an earlier and quite different Bombay world. He was a physician and antiquarian, a scholar of inscriptions, a Sheriff of Bombay and a moving spirit in the city's learned and municipal life, commemorated today in the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum at Byculla. He died in 1874, three years before Deenbandhu was founded, so he cannot be the man the stem describes. He appears in the options because he is a familiar nineteenth-century Bombay name of unquestioned reforming credentials, which is exactly the kind of plausibility MPSC likes to offer; the candidate's protection is to date the newspaper first and then ask who was alive and active to run it.
• (3)Tukaram Tatya Padval — Tukaram Tatya Padval belongs to the anti-caste writing of the generation just before this one — his Jatibhed Viveksar, a critical examination of caste distinction, is the work he is remembered for, and it circulated in the 1860s, well before the newspaper named in the stem existed. His medium was the book and the pamphlet rather than the weekly press, which is precisely the difference the stem is testing: the beginning of non-Brahmin journalism required a periodical that could answer an opponent week by week, and that is what Bhalekar's Deenbandhu was. Choosing this option usually means the candidate has correctly placed the name inside the anti-caste tradition but has not asked which of these men actually ran a newspaper.

The quarrel between Vishnushastri Chiplunkar and Jyotirao Phule is the central argument of Marathi public life in the 1870s and 1880s, and the press is where it was fought. Chiplunkar's Nibandhamala, begun in 1874, is the founding text of a confident, nationalist, Sanskrit-rooted Marathi prose; its author went on to help found the New English School in 1880 and the newspapers Kesari and Mahratta in 1881, and his essays attacked Phule's Satyashodhak criticism of caste and of Brahmanical authority. Phule's side of the argument needed a periodical of its own, and it got one when Krishnarao Bhalekar, a Satyashodhak worker and cultivator, started Deenbandhu at Pune in January 1877. The importance of Deenbandhu is not only that it defended Phule but that it changed who was speaking: it was written from within the non-Brahmin and peasant world for readers of that world, which is why it is treated as the beginning of non-Brahmin journalism in Marathi. The paper then had a second life under Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, who took it to Bombay and turned it into an organ of the mill workers, so the same title carries both the anti-caste and the early labour movements — and that continuity is exactly why the two men are so often confused.

MPSC's Maharashtra section is unusually fond of the newspaper question, and it asks it in every direction: name the founder of a paper, name its editor, name the city it was published from, name the movement it served, or, as here, identify a man by the paper he ran. The reliable method is to store each periodical as a small record rather than a single name — Darpan 1832 Balshastri Jambhekar, Deenbandhu 1877 Krishnarao Bhalekar and later Lokhande, Kesari and Mahratta 1881 Chiplunkar with Tilak and Agarkar, Sudharak 1888 Agarkar, Mooknayak 1920 and Bahishkrit Bharat 1927 Ambedkar. Once the record has a founder and a successor in it, the near-miss option that names the successor stops being dangerous. The second habit this question rewards is reading a badly printed English stem for its sense rather than its grammar; 'defended Chiplunkar's attack' is not idiomatic English, and a candidate who parses it literally will look for a defender of Chiplunkar and find nobody in the options.

• Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar (1850-1910), a Satyashodhak worker and associate of Jyotirao Phule, started the weekly Deenbandhu at Pune in January 1877.
• Deenbandhu was the first periodical run from within the Satyashodhak movement and is treated in Marathi accounts as the beginning of non-Brahmin, or bahujan, journalism.
• Vishnushastri Chiplunkar's Nibandhamala, the essay series begun in 1874, carried the attack on Jyotirao Phule and the Satyashodhak position that Deenbandhu was founded to answer.
• Narayan Meghaji Lokhande took over Deenbandhu after Bhalekar and ran it from Bombay as an organ of the mill workers, going on to found the Bombay Mill-Hands Association in 1884.
• Bhau Daji Lad, the Bombay physician and antiquarian commemorated in the Byculla museum that bears his name, died in 1874, three years before Deenbandhu appeared.

• Naming Lokhande for Deenbandhu because he is the better-known figure; he edited the paper after Bhalekar founded it, and the stem asks for the man whose newspaper began non-Brahmin journalism
• Parsing the printed English literally and hunting for someone who defended Chiplunkar, when the stem means the man who answered Chiplunkar's attack on Phule
• Placing Bhau Daji Lad in the 1877 story when he died in 1874, which rules him out of anything to do with this newspaper
• Treating a pamphleteer and a newspaper founder as the same kind of figure; the stem specifically identifies the man by 'his newspaper'

Newspapers and their founders are among MPSC's most reliable repeat topics, and the Commission's favourite device is to place the founder and the later editor of the same paper in the same set of options, so that a half-memory picks the wrong one. Expect questions that identify a person only by the paper he ran, questions that ask which paper carried a particular movement's message, and questions that pair a paper with the year and city of its first issue. The Chiplunkar-Phule controversy is asked about in its own right as well, usually through the Nibandhamala on one side and the Satyashodhak Samaj on the other. A compact table of periodical, year, founder, later editor and city answers most of this family, and it is worth adding the movement each paper served, because that is the phrase MPSC most often uses in the stem.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Marathi weekly Deenbandhu, regarded as the first newspaper of the Satyashodhak and non-Brahmin movement, was started in 1877 by whom ?

  • (a)Narayan Meghaji Lokhande
  • (b)Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar
  • (c)Gopal Ganesh Agarkar
  • (d)Vishnushastri Chiplunkar

  Answer(b) Krishnarao Pandurang Bhalekar — a Satyashodhak worker and associate of Jyotirao Phule, he began Deenbandhu at Pune in January 1877. Lokhande is the standard distractor because he took charge of the paper afterwards and made it a workers' organ in Bombay; Agarkar founded Sudharak in 1888, and Chiplunkar was on the opposing side of this argument altogether.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Nibandhamala, the series of Marathi essays that attacked Jyotirao Phule's position and shaped modern Marathi prose, was written by which of the following ?

  • (a)Bal Gangadhar Tilak
  • (b)Gopal Ganesh Agarkar
  • (c)Vishnushastri Chiplunkar
  • (d)Balshastri Jambhekar

  Answer(c) Vishnushastri Chiplunkar — the Nibandhamala essays, begun in 1874, are his, and their attack on the Satyashodhak position is what Bhalekar's Deenbandhu was founded to answer. Tilak and Agarkar were his younger colleagues in the New English School and in Kesari and Mahratta from 1881, and Jambhekar belongs to a much earlier generation as the founder of Darpan in 1832.