MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 6 of 100

Correct — option (4), which reads (a)-(iii), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iv), (d)-(i). Take the four pairings one at a time. Vitthal Ramji Shinde, statement (a), goes with Bhartiya Asprushatecha Prashna, item (iii): his 1933 treatise on the question of untouchability in India, the culmination of a lifetime's work that had begun with the Depressed Classes Mission he founded in Bombay in 1906 and that had already produced Bahishkrut Bharat in 1908, a modern history of the movement against untouchability in 1922 and a study of the excluded classes in Burma in 1927. Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar, statement (b), goes with Dharmavivechan, item (ii): published in 1868 under the pen name Ek Jagadwasi Arya, it belongs beside his other religious writing such as Paramhamsik Brahmadharma of 1880, and sits in the rationalist current that ran through the Manav Dharma Sabha and the Paramhansa Sabha in Bombay, though he is more widely remembered for his Marathi grammar of 1836 and for his tract against the plight of widows in 1857. Gopal Hari Deshmukh, statement (c), the essayist who wrote as Lokhitwadi, goes with Jatibhed, item (iv): caste was his standing subject, the hundred and eight letters collected as the Shatapatre had attacked the caste order and priestly authority directly, and Jatibhed is among the thirty-five books he wrote. That leaves Jyotirao Phule, statement (d), with Ishara, item (i), which he published in October 1885, late in a career whose other titles are far better known — Tritiya Ratna of 1855, Brahmananche Kasab of 1869, Gulamgiri of 1873, Shetkaryacha Asud of 1881 and the Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Pustak of 1889. That last pairing is also the fastest route through the item: the four choices attach four different items to Phule, and only this one gives him Ishara, so a candidate who is sure of Phule alone can settle the whole question without adjudicating the other three rows at all.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — Every row of this choice is displaced. It hands Dharmavivechan to Vitthal Ramji Shinde, Ishara to Dadoba Pandurang, Bhartiya Asprushatecha Prashna to Gopal Hari Deshmukh and Jatibhed to Jyotirao Phule. The last of those is the one that will tempt a candidate, because Phule did write at length against caste and a title meaning caste distinction looks like his. But Jatibhed belongs to Lokhitwadi, and Phule's contribution to this list is Ishara. The choice also puts the 1933 book on untouchability in the hands of a writer of the 1840s and 1850s, which a candidate who carries approximate dates for each reformer can reject at once without knowing the titles at all.
• (2)(a) - (i), (b) - (iv), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iii) — This choice gives Ishara to Vitthal Ramji Shinde, Jatibhed to Dadoba Pandurang, Dharmavivechan to Gopal Hari Deshmukh and Bhartiya Asprushatecha Prashna to Jyotirao Phule. The fatal row is the last: Phule died in 1890, and the treatise on untouchability is Shinde's work of 1933, so no amount of thematic plausibility can bridge the gap. This is the value of carrying lifespans rather than only titles — Phule 1827 to 1890, Dadoba Pandurang in the generation of the 1810s to the 1880s, Lokhitwadi 1823 to 1892, Shinde 1873 to 1944 — because a matching question of this shape can often be broken on chronology before any title is recognised.
• (3)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — Here Shinde is given Jatibhed, Dadoba Pandurang is given Bhartiya Asprushatecha Prashna, Deshmukh is given Ishara and Phule is given Dharmavivechan. Two of these are thematically seductive: Shinde did write on caste, and Phule did write on religion, so a candidate matching by subject rather than by authorship can talk themselves into both. Matching by theme is the standard failure mode on this format, because the examiner chooses the four items precisely so that each one is thematically compatible with more than one of the four names. The only reliable route is authorship — this title, that author — and the dating check as a second filter.

The four names in this question are four successive layers of Maharashtra's reform tradition, and reading them as a sequence makes the titles easier to place. Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar belongs to the earliest layer, the Bombay of the Elphinstone Institution and the Manav Dharma Sabha, where reform meant rationalist criticism of ritual conducted largely in English-educated circles and often anonymously — his Dharmavivechan of 1868 appeared under a pen name. Gopal Hari Deshmukh, writing as Lokhitwadi from Poona, took the same rationalism into Marathi journalism and made it public and combative, attacking caste and priestly authority in the Shatapatre and founding papers to carry the argument. Jyotirao Phule broke the frame altogether by shifting the subject from reforming Hinduism to the condition of the shudras, atishudras and women, founding the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873 and writing for a readership the earlier reformers had not addressed. Vitthal Ramji Shinde belongs to the fourth layer, the organised twentieth-century movement against untouchability, working through the Depressed Classes Mission from 1906 and through scholarship of which the 1933 treatise is the summit.

Match-the-columns items are the single most common structural device in MPSC Paper-I, and thirteen of the hundred questions in this paper use it. Two things about the format are worth fixing in mind before answering any of them. The first is that the two columns are printed side by side only because the page has two halves; the item that happens to sit on the same line as a name is not a hint of any kind, and treating adjacency as a suggestion is a way of being led by the typesetter. The second is that the answer choices are rarely independent. Here all four choices offer a different item for Phule, which means a single secure pairing decides the question; on other items two choices will share a row and the decision will turn on a different one. The efficient method is therefore to find the pairing you are surest of, strike every choice that contradicts it, and only then look at what is left. On Maharashtra reform questions the securest anchor is usually Phule, because his bibliography is the most heavily examined of the four.

• Vitthal Ramji Shinde, 1873 to 1944, founded the Depressed Classes Mission in 1906 and wrote Bharatiya Asprushyatecha Prashna in 1933, preceded by Bahishkrut Bharat in 1908 and studies of the movement against untouchability in 1922 and of the excluded classes of Burma in 1927.
• Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar wrote Dharma Vivechan in 1868 under the pen name Ek Jagadwasi Arya, along with Paramhamsik Brahmadharma in 1880; his Marathi grammar of 1836 ran to seven editions in his lifetime.
• Gopal Hari Deshmukh, who wrote as Lokhitwadi, produced about thirty-five books including Jatibhed, and the hundred and eight essays collected as the Shatapatre; he was associated with the papers Gyan Prakash, Indu Prakash and Lokhitwadi.
• Jyotirao Phule published Ishara in October 1885; his dated list also includes Tritiya Ratna 1855, Brahmananche Kasab 1869, Gulamgiri 1873, Shetkaryacha Asud 1881 and the Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Pustak of 1889.
• In a matching question the side-by-side printing of the two columns is page layout and never a proposed pairing; the four answer choices supply the only pairings the question actually offers.

• Matching by theme rather than by authorship; every one of the four items here is thematically compatible with at least two of the four names, which is exactly why they were chosen
• Reading the side-by-side printing of the two columns as a suggested pairing — the adjacency is layout and carries no information
• Giving Jatibhed to Phule because he wrote about caste; the title belongs to Lokhitwadi, and Phule's item here is Ishara
• Ignoring lifespans — Phule died in 1890 and cannot be the author of a book of 1933, which alone eliminates one of the four choices

MPSC pairs Maharashtra's reformers with their books almost every year, and the pool it draws on is small and stable: Phule, Lokhitwadi, Dadoba Pandurang, Agarkar, Ranade, Karve, Shinde, Shahu Maharaj, Ambedkar and the Satyashodhak journalists. The commission varies the format rather than the content — sometimes a four-by-four match, sometimes a single who-wrote-this question, sometimes an odd-one-out, sometimes a pairing embedded in a statement list. What defeats all of these is a two-column list of author against title with an approximate date beside each, revised until any single pairing can be recalled without hunting. The date matters as much as the pairing, because chronology is the filter that kills a plausible but impossible match faster than recall does.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Marathi treatise Bharatiya Asprushyatecha Prashna, published in 1933 on the question of untouchability in India, was written by which reformer ?

  • (a)Gopal Hari Deshmukh
  • (b)Vitthal Ramji Shinde
  • (c)Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar
  • (d)Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

  Answer(b) Vitthal Ramji Shinde — the 1933 treatise is the summit of his life's work against untouchability, which had begun with the Depressed Classes Mission he founded in 1906 and had already produced Bahishkrut Bharat in 1908. The other three names belong to the earlier rationalist and reformist generation and none of them wrote on untouchability at book length.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Marathi work Dharma Vivechan, published in 1868 under the pen name Ek Jagadwasi Arya, was the work of which of the following ?

  • (a)Jyotirao Phule
  • (b)Bal Shastri Jambhekar
  • (c)Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar
  • (d)Mahadev Govind Ranade

  Answer(c) Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar — he published Dharma Vivechan in 1868 under that pen name, in the same rationalist vein as his Paramhamsik Brahmadharma of 1880. He is better known for the Marathi grammar of 1836 and for his tract on widows of 1857, which is what makes this title a useful discriminator in a matching question.