MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 91 of 100

Correct — option (2), Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar. He is the one man who stands behind both of the bodies named in the stem, and the reason lies in his own movements. Born on 9 May 1814 in Bombay into a family that used the surname Tarkhadkar, he became a schoolteacher in 1830 and moved to Surat in 1840, where the headmaster of his school was Henry Green, a free thinker whose influence marked him. It was there, with Durgaram Manchharam Mehta and a few others, that he founded the Manav Dharma Sabha on 22 June 1844. That body — the Society of the Religion of Man — held public meetings every Sunday at which speakers attacked caste, idol worship and the prohibition on the remarriage of widows, and preached a religion of one God grounded in truth and morality rather than in ritual. It did not last long: Dadoba returned to Bombay in 1846 and Durgaram left for Rajkot in 1852, and with them the Sabha came to an end. Back in Bombay, Dadoba carried the same ideas into a new body, the Paramahansa Mandali, established in 1849 and generally counted the first socio-religious reform organisation of Maharashtra. It was deliberately secret, because its members were doing what respectable society could not forgive: they professed one God, they set themselves to break the rules of caste, and at their meetings they took food cooked by persons of the lower castes, which under the social code of the day was an act of self-excommunication. They also argued for the education of women and for widow remarriage. Dadoba set out the principles of the two bodies in writing, Dharma Vivechan in 1848 for the Manav Dharma Sabha and the Paramhansik Brahmyadharma for the Mandali. The Mandali's secrecy was its protection and its weakness: when its existence and its membership became known in 1860 the exposure hastened its collapse. Dadoba's other and more lasting achievement lay in language — his Maharashtra Bhasheche Vyakaran, the grammar of Marathi published in 1836, went through seven editions in his lifetime — and he later served as Deputy Collector and Magistrate at Ahmednagar and retired in 1861. He died on 17 October 1882. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)Atmaram Pandurang Tarkhadkar — Atmaram Pandurang was Dadoba's own brother, which is what makes this option the trap of the question: the surname is identical and the field of activity is adjacent, so only the first name and the institution separate them. He was born in 1823, took his medical degree at Grant Medical College and practised as a physician, and his place in the reform movement rests on a different and later body — the Prarthana Samaj, which he founded at Bombay on 31 March 1867 with Waman Abaji Modak and others at the time of Keshub Chandra Sen's visit to Maharashtra, and which became a major force after Mahadev Govind Ranade joined it. He was also one of the two Indian co-founders of the Bombay Natural History Society and served briefly as Sheriff of Bombay in 1879, dying on 26 April 1898. The safest way to keep the brothers apart is by the year and the body: Dadoba with 1844 and 1849, the Manav Dharma Sabha and the Paramahansa Mandali; Atmaram with 1867 and the Prarthana Samaj.
• (3)R.G. Bhandarkar — Sir Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, who lived from 6 July 1837 to 24 August 1925, belongs to the generation after the one this question is about, and to scholarship as much as to reform. He was among the first Indians to take a university degree at Bombay, became a Sanskritist and orientalist of international standing, wrote on the early history of the Deccan and on the Vaishnava and Shaiva sects, and was a leading figure of the Prarthana Samaj rather than of the two bodies named in the stem — he was in the movement Atmaram Pandurang had founded, not Dadoba's. He argued for widow remarriage and against child marriage from a base of Sanskrit learning, which gave those arguments a particular force. The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute at Pune, founded in 1917, is named after him. A candidate who groups him with the earliest Bombay reform societies is out by a generation.
• (4)K.T. Telang — Kashinath Trimbak Telang, who lived from 20 August 1850 to 1 September 1893, is later still and belongs to law and politics rather than to the socio-religious societies of the 1840s. He was an indologist who translated the Bhagavad Gita and other texts, a judge of the Bombay High Court, a member of the early Indian National Congress and a Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, and he is remembered in the reform debate as a moderate who preferred social change led by opinion rather than by legislation. He was ten years old when the Paramahansa Mandali was exposed in 1860, and not yet born when it was founded in 1849, so the option can be eliminated on chronology alone. Notice that this is the third of three wrong options, each of which fails on a different ground — the first on identity within a family, the second on generation and movement, the third on plain arithmetic of dates.

The reform movement in western India begins earlier than the Prarthana Samaj and in a more combative form. The Manav Dharma Sabha, founded at Surat on 22 June 1844 by Durgaram Manchharam Mehta and Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar, and the Paramahansa Mandali, founded at Bombay in 1849, were both built on a single religious proposition — that there is one God, and that ritual, idols and caste have no sanction — and on the practical corollary that the reformer must break caste himself rather than merely argue against it. Hence the notorious practice of the Mandali's meetings, at which members ate food cooked by men of the lower castes, and hence its secrecy, since exposure meant social ruin. Both bodies also stood for the education of women and the remarriage of widows, the two demands that would occupy the movement for the next half-century. Neither survived long: the Sabha ended when its founders left Surat, and the Mandali collapsed after its existence became public in 1860. What followed them was less confrontational and more durable — the Prarthana Samaj, founded at Bombay on 31 March 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang, brother of Dadoba, and given its national standing by Mahadev Govind Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar, which worked openly and through institutions: night schools, orphanages, widows' homes and the depressed classes mission.

Maharashtra's social reform movement is the single most heavily examined block in an MPSC history paper, and questions on it are almost always identification questions — who founded what, in which year and in which city. The Commission's favourite way to raise the difficulty is to offer options that are close together in family, in place or in movement, and this question uses all three devices at once: two of the options are brothers with the same surname, all four men are from the same reforming milieu in Bombay, and the two bodies in the stem are institutions of the same period and outlook. The defence is a table with four columns — founder, organisation, year, city — filled in for the whole sequence from the Manav Dharma Sabha of 1844 to the Depressed Classes Mission of 1906, and read as a chronology rather than as a list. Chronology is what makes elimination possible in this question: Telang was born in 1850 and Bhandarkar in 1837, so neither could have founded a body of the 1840s, and once they are gone the question is a choice between two brothers, decided by the first name. It is worth adding that the Marathi column of this paper prints Telang's initials as कृ. त्र्यं., which is a printing detail and not a difference of substance.

• The Manav Dharma Sabha was founded at Surat on 22 June 1844 by Durgaram Manchharam Mehta, Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar and others; it met every Sunday and preached one God, attacking caste, idol worship and the prohibition of widow remarriage.
• The Paramahansa Mandali was established at Bombay in 1849 by Dadoba Pandurang and his associates and is generally counted the first socio-religious reform organisation of Maharashtra; it worked in secret, and its members ate food cooked by lower-caste persons as a deliberate breach of caste.
• Dadoba set out the principles of the two bodies in Dharma Vivechan, written in 1848, and in the Paramhansik Brahmyadharma; the Mandali's existence became known in 1860 and the exposure hastened its end.
• Dadoba Pandurang lived from 9 May 1814 to 17 October 1882; he moved to Surat in 1840 and returned to Bombay in 1846, wrote the Marathi grammar Maharashtra Bhasheche Vyakaran published in 1836, and served as Deputy Collector and Magistrate at Ahmednagar from 1852.
• His brother Atmaram Pandurang, a physician, founded the Prarthana Samaj at Bombay on 31 March 1867, which R. G. Bhandarkar and Mahadev Govind Ranade later led; that body, not the two named in the stem, is the one associated with the other Tarkhadkar brother.

• Confusing Dadoba Pandurang with his brother Atmaram Pandurang, who founded the Prarthana Samaj in 1867 — the surname is the same and only the institution and the year separate them
• Placing R. G. Bhandarkar or K. T. Telang in the 1840s; both belong to a later generation, Telang having been born only in 1850
• Attributing the Manav Dharma Sabha to Durgaram Mehta alone or to Dadoba alone, when it was founded by both together at Surat in 1844
• Forgetting that the Paramahansa Mandali was a secret society and that its exposure in 1860 is the reason it disappeared

The reform movement is asked in MPSC papers through four interchangeable slots — founder, organisation, year, place — and a question may supply any one, two or three of them and ask for the rest. Match-the-columns questions pairing reformers with organisations are as common as the direct form used here, and this paper carries eight match questions in all. Because the options are usually drawn from the same milieu, the discrimination is fine and depends on precise dates; a candidate who knows that the Prarthana Samaj is 1867 and the Paramahansa Mandali 1849 can separate two brothers without knowing anything else about either. The Commission also likes to test the pair of bodies attached to one reformer, as here, since a candidate who has memorised one association will often not have the second. Learning the sequence as a chronology, with each body's city attached, covers almost every form the question can take.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following statements about the Paramahansa Mandali is correct ?

  • (a)It was founded at Pune in 1873 by Jyotirao Phule
  • (b)It was a secret society founded at Bombay in 1849 whose members broke caste rules by taking food cooked by lower-caste persons
  • (c)It was the Bombay branch of the Brahmo Samaj established by Keshub Chandra Sen
  • (d)It was founded by Atmaram Pandurang and later led by Mahadev Govind Ranade

  Answer(b) It was a secret society founded at Bombay in 1849 whose members broke caste rules by taking food cooked by lower-caste persons. Founded by Dadoba Pandurang and his associates and generally counted the first socio-religious reform organisation of Maharashtra, it professed one God and worked for women's education and widow remarriage; its secrecy protected members from social ruin, and the revelation of its existence in 1860 hastened its end. Option (4) describes the Prarthana Samaj of 1867, and option (1) the Satyashodhak Samaj.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Manav Dharma Sabha, founded in 1844, was established in which city and by whom ?

  • (a)Bombay, by Atmaram Pandurang and Waman Abaji Modak
  • (b)Surat, by Durgaram Manchharam Mehta and Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar
  • (c)Pune, by Mahadev Govind Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar
  • (d)Ahmedabad, by Karsandas Mulji and Behramji Malabari

  Answer(b) Surat, by Durgaram Manchharam Mehta and Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar. It was founded on 22 June 1844 and held public meetings every Sunday against caste, idol worship and the prohibition of widow remarriage, on a monotheistic basis. Its life was short: Dadoba left Surat for Bombay in 1846 and Durgaram left for Rajkot in 1852. Dadoba then founded the Paramahansa Mandali at Bombay in 1849, carrying the same ideas into a secret society.