MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 12 of 100

Correct — option (2), Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar. Read the four descriptions and notice that only one of them is a hard, checkable act: statement (d), the consent to his own widowed daughter's remarriage. The other three — courage, support for women's education, opposition to child marriage — could be written about several reformers of the Bombay Presidency, and are therefore doing no work. The daughter's remarriage is the discriminator, and it belongs to Bhandarkar, who arranged it in 1891 and took heavy criticism from his own community for it. That act is precisely why statement (a) is phrased as it is: the whole point of the description is a reformer who did in his household what he argued for in public. Bhandarkar had the standing to make the argument stick, because he was a Sanskritist and orientalist of the first rank before he was a reformer — professor of Oriental languages at Deccan College, later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, author of the Early History of the Dekkan and of Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems, and the man in whose honour the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute was founded at Pune in 1917. He supported widow remarriage on scriptural ground, citing the Vedic and Brahmana literature, which is the characteristic method of the Maharashtra reformers: fight the orthodox on their own textual territory rather than appeal to English opinion. He was also among the leading figures of the Prarthana Samaj, founded at Bombay in 1867, whose programme was exactly the one the four statements describe — widow remarriage, women's education, an end to child marriage and the loosening of caste restriction. The item is a portrait question, and portrait questions are answered by finding the one sentence that only one person could have earned.

• (1)Justice K.T. Telang — A genuine figure of the same city and the same decades — a Sanskrit scholar whose translation of the Bhagavad Gita appeared in the Sacred Books of the East, a judge of the Bombay High Court, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay and an early Congress leader — which is why the name is placed first on the list. But the specific domestic act in statement (d), consent to the remarriage of his own widowed daughter, is not attached to him in the record, and this card will not invent a reform biography to make the elimination tidier. The general lesson is that in a portrait question the famous public career is never the discriminator; the private act is.
• (3)V.A. Modak — The least familiar name on the list, and included for that reason: a portrait question needs at least one name the candidate cannot confidently place, so that recognition alone cannot settle it. This card does not attach specific reform acts to the name, because none could be verified, and a card that manufactured them would be committing the error it exists to prevent. The technique that matters here is positive identification. When a description contains one act that is unmistakably attached to a particular person, you answer on that attachment, and an unplaceable name in the list neither helps nor hinders — it simply cannot be the one you can positively identify.
• (4)Justice M.G. Ranade — The trap the question is built on, and a superb one, because Ranade is the first name any candidate associates with social reform in Maharashtra — Prarthana Samaj, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Indian National Social Conference, and a lifelong argument for widow remarriage and women's education. Statements (b) and (c) fit him comfortably. Statement (a) is exactly what does not. Ranade is the standing textbook example of a reformer who did not practise what he preached: after his first wife's death he married a young girl in deference to his father, rather than marrying a widow as his own movement urged, and the episode was held against him for the rest of his life. The sentence about courage in practice is there to exclude him.

The Prarthana Samaj, founded at Bombay in 1867 and shaped by Atmaram Pandurang, R.G. Bhandarkar and M.G. Ranade, was the institutional centre of moderate social reform in western India. It grew out of contact with the Brahmo Samaj of Bengal but adapted itself to Maharashtrian conditions, remaining inside the Hindu fold and arguing from within the tradition rather than breaking with it. Its programme was fourfold and consistent: widow remarriage, women's education, the abolition of caste restrictions and the raising of the age of marriage. Its method was scriptural argument backed by personal example — reformers who read Sanskrit could contest the orthodox reading of the texts, and reformers who married their widowed daughters could not be accused of preaching what they would not live by. Running alongside it were two other currents: Jyotirao Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873, which attacked Brahmanical authority directly rather than arguing within it and worked among the non-Brahmin castes, and a conservative nationalist position which held that social reform should wait upon political self-government. The split between the last two positions defined public life in Maharashtra for a generation.

This is a portrait item, and portrait items are decided by locating the one statement that could only have been earned by one person. Three of the four descriptions here are general reform virtues, shared by every name on the list who can be placed at all; the fourth names a specific act in a specific household. Read for the specific act first and the question shortens dramatically. The second technique is to read a description for what it excludes as well as for what it includes. The opening sentence about courage in practising what he preached is not decoration — it is there to eliminate the most famous reformer on the list, because Ranade's failure to marry a widow after his first wife's death is one of the best-known episodes in the whole reform story and is invariably taught as the gap between the reformer's public argument and his private conduct. Once you see that a description is doing exclusion work, the option it excludes becomes the option you can be surest about, which on a paper deducting a quarter of the marks for error is worth as much as knowing the answer.

• Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar arranged the remarriage of his own widowed daughter in 1891 and was heavily criticised in his community for it — the act that makes the description in this question fit him and no one else on the list.
• Bhandarkar was a Sanskritist and orientalist before he was a reformer: professor of Oriental languages at Deccan College, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, and author of the Early History of the Dekkan and of Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems; the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute was founded at Pune in 1917 in his honour.
• He argued for widow remarriage on scriptural ground, citing the Vedic and Brahmana literature — the characteristic method of the Maharashtra reformers, who contested orthodoxy on its own textual territory rather than appealing to colonial opinion.
• The Prarthana Samaj, founded at Bombay in 1867, was the institutional home of this moderate reform current; its programme was widow remarriage, women's education, the abolition of caste restrictions and the raising of the age of marriage, and Bhandarkar and Ranade were among its leading figures.
• Mahadev Govind Ranade, the best-known reformer of the region, is the standing example of the gap between reform argument and reform practice: after his first wife's death he married a young girl in deference to his father rather than marrying a widow, and the episode dogged his reputation.

• Answering a portrait question from the general descriptions rather than the specific act: three of the four sentences here fit several reformers, and only the daughter's remarriage identifies one
• Choosing Ranade because he is the most famous reformer on the list, when the opening sentence about practising what he preached is placed specifically to exclude him
• Assuming every Sanskrit scholar on a Maharashtra reform list is interchangeable — Telang, Bhandarkar and others share the scholarly profile, and only the private acts separate them
• Overlooking that a description can be doing exclusion work; a sentence that seems like praise is often the discriminator that removes the obvious candidate

MPSC likes the portrait format for Maharashtra's reformers — a short list of characteristics followed by four names from the same city and generation — because it defeats candidates who have memorised organisations and dates without reading anything about the people. The descriptions are usually a mix of generic virtues and one biographical act, and the act is always the answer. UPSC asks the same reform history through legislation and controversy: what the Age of Consent Act changed, why a particular case divided the nationalists, how one samaj differed in method from another. So a candidate preparing both should carry, for each reformer, the organisation, the dates, and one concrete act from the person's own life — the third of those is what MPSC's portrait items are built from and it is the element most revision notes leave out.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, one of India's principal centres of Sanskrit and Indological scholarship, was founded in 1917 in which of the following cities ?

  • (a)Mumbai
  • (b)Pune
  • (c)Nagpur
  • (d)Kolhapur

  Answer(b) Pune — the institute was established there in 1917 in honour of Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, the Sanskritist, orientalist and Prarthana Samaj reformer, and it later became known for its critical edition of the Mahabharata. Bhandarkar had taught at Deccan College in the same city and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Prarthana Samaj, established at Bombay in 1867, is best described as which one of the following in its approach to religious and social reform ?

  • (a)A movement that broke away from Hinduism and formed a separate religious community
  • (b)A reform body working within Hinduism, shaped by contact with the Brahmo Samaj of Bengal
  • (c)An organisation of the non-Brahmin castes opposed to scriptural authority as such
  • (d)A revivalist movement calling for a return to Vedic ritual and the authority of the Vedas alone

  Answer(b) A reform body working within Hinduism, shaped by contact with the Brahmo Samaj of Bengal — the Prarthana Samaj stayed inside the tradition and argued from the texts, pressing for widow remarriage, women's education, the end of caste restrictions and a higher age of marriage. The description of an organisation of the non-Brahmin castes opposed to scriptural authority fits the Satyashodhak Samaj, and the revivalist description fits the Arya Samaj.