MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 14 of 100

The Commission cancelled this question. It is one of six struck out of this paper — Q14, Q22, Q25, Q50, Q51 and Q70 — and for a cancelled question the final key credits no option at all, so there is no correct answer to explain and this card does not attempt to reconstruct the matching that was intended.

The Commission cancelled this question. It is one of six struck out of this paper — Q14, Q22, Q25, Q50, Q51 and Q70 — and for a cancelled question the final key credits no option at all, so there is no correct answer to explain and this card does not attempt to reconstruct the matching that was intended. The topic behind the question is entirely real, however, and worth having. Modern Marathi theatre is conventionally dated from 1843, when Vishnudas Bhave staged Sita Swayamvar at Sangli under the patronage of the ruler of the state, and it grew through the second half of the nineteenth century into one of the most vigorous theatrical traditions in India. Two developments define that growth. The first was historical drama in Marathi, of which Vinayak Janardan Kirtane's Thorale Madhavrao Peshwe of 1861 is the pioneering example — a play that took the Maratha past as serious dramatic material at a moment when that past was becoming central to Maharashtra's sense of itself. The second, and far larger in its consequences, was the sangeet natak or musical play, created by Balwant Pandurang Kirloskar, universally known as Annasaheb Kirloskar, who staged Sangeet Shakuntal in 1880 and Sangeet Saubhadra in 1882 and founded the Kirloskar Natak Mandali to perform them. Saubhadra, built on the Mahabharata episode of Subhadra and Arjuna, became the most durable work in the Marathi repertoire and fixed the form that dominated the stage for the next half-century.

After Kirloskar the sangeet natak passed to a generation that used it for more than entertainment. Govind Ballal Deval's Sharada of 1899 attacked the marriage of young girls to old men and became a reform document as much as a play. Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar's Kichaka Vadha of 1907 dramatised an episode from the Mahabharata in terms transparent enough to be read as an attack on colonial rule, and the colonial government proscribed it. Ram Ganesh Gadkari's Ekach Pyala turned the form towards tragedy and the social wreckage of drink. The singing actor Bal Gandharva made the musical play a mass phenomenon in the early twentieth century, and the songs of these dramas entered Marathi popular memory in a way the texts alone never could. From the 1930s the stage turned again, this time towards prose drama and psychological realism, under the influence of European theatre and often through adaptation of it — a shift that eventually produced the modern Marathi theatre of Vijay Tendulkar and after. That whole arc is examinable in its own right, which is why the cancellation of one question about it is no reason to set the topic aside. For revision, the productive frame is not a list of plays but a sequence of turns: the founding performance, the historical play, the musical play, the reformist and nationalist play, and the turn to prose realism.

• Modern Marathi theatre is conventionally dated from Vishnudas Bhave's staging of Sita Swayamvar at Sangli in 1843, performed under the patronage of the ruler of the state.
• Balwant Pandurang Kirloskar, known as Annasaheb Kirloskar, created the sangeet natak or musical play with Sangeet Shakuntal in 1880 and Sangeet Saubhadra in 1882, and founded the Kirloskar Natak Mandali; Saubhadra, drawn from the Mahabharata episode of Subhadra and Arjuna, became the most durable work in the Marathi repertoire.
• The sangeet natak became a vehicle for reform and for nationalist argument — Govind Ballal Deval's Sharada of 1899 against the marriage of young girls to old men, and Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar's Kichaka Vadha of 1907, which the colonial government proscribed for its political allegory — before the stage turned in the 1930s towards prose drama and psychological realism.

• Assuming that a question you found impossible must have been unfair, or that one you answered confidently must have stood — six questions on this paper were cancelled and the marks went neither way
• Spending time in the hall reconstructing a matching item from two remembered pairs when the other two are genuinely unknown; the cost of a long reconstruction is paid on the questions you never reach
• Treating Marathi literature as a low-yield area because it is state-specific — MPSC draws on it steadily, and the cancellation of one item is not evidence that the topic is out of favour
• Learning Marathi drama as a flat list of play titles rather than as a sequence of turns — the founding performance, the historical play, the musical play, the reform and nationalist play, and the turn to prose realism

MPSC examines Marathi literature and theatre in its own right, most often as an author-and-work matching item drawn from a pool of writers that a candidate preparing only from national-level material will never have met. That is a deliberate feature of a state commission's paper, not an eccentricity, and it rewards reading a short history of Marathi literature alongside the standard preparation. The cancellation of this particular item does not change that judgment: the Commission struck out six questions across this paper, spread across several subjects, and a cancellation is a statement about one defective question rather than about a topic. UPSC does not examine regional literature at this level of detail at all, so this is one of the areas where MPSC preparation genuinely diverges and has to be built separately rather than borrowed.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The beginning of modern Marathi theatre is conventionally dated to the staging of Sita Swayamvar in 1843. Who was responsible for that performance ?

  • (a)Vishnudas Bhave
  • (b)Annasaheb Kirloskar
  • (c)Govind Ballal Deval
  • (d)Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar

  Answer(a) Vishnudas Bhave — he staged Sita Swayamvar at Sangli in 1843 under the patronage of the ruler of the state, and the performance is taken as the starting point of the modern Marathi stage. Kirloskar created the sangeet natak nearly forty years later, while Deval and Khadilkar belong to the generation that turned the musical play towards social reform and political argument.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Marathi play of 1907, drawing its plot from an episode of the Mahabharata, was proscribed by the colonial government because its allegory was read as an attack on British rule ?

  • (a)Sangeet Shakuntal
  • (b)Sharada
  • (c)Kichaka Vadha
  • (d)Ekach Pyala

  Answer(c) Kichaka Vadha — Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar's play of 1907, whose mythological plot was transparent enough to be read as political comment and which the government banned. Sharada is Deval's play of 1899 against the marriage of young girls to old men, Sangeet Shakuntal is Kirloskar's first musical play of 1880, and Ekach Pyala is Gadkari's tragedy of drink.