MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 95 of 100

The Commission cancelled this question. It carries no correct option in the final answer key, and nothing here should be read as identifying one. What is worth taking from the item is the man it is about, because Vitthal Ramji Shinde is one of the central figures of social reform in Maharashtra and appears in these papers regularly in questions that were not withdrawn. Shinde was born on 23 April 1873 in the princely state of Jamkhandi, in what is now Karnataka, into a Maratha family, and took his Bachelor of Arts from Fergusson College, Pune, in 1898. In that same year he joined the Prarthana Samaj, the monotheistic reform society founded at Bombay in 1867, and his religious thinking was formed by two streams at once — the Marathi saints Tukaram, Eknath and Ramdas on the one side, and John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Max Muller, Mahadev Govind Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar on the other. In 1901 he went to Manchester College, Oxford, to study comparative religion, with the financial support of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda, and spent two years on comparative theology, the history of Christianity and Buddhism, the Pali language and sociology. He returned in 1903 to work as a preacher of the Bombay Prarthana Samaj and to begin the work by which he is remembered. In 1905 he opened a night school in Pune for children of the untouchable castes, and on 16 October 1906 he founded the Depressed Classes Mission in Bombay to carry education, hostels and health care to the Mahars, Chamars, Namasudras and other communities excluded by the caste order. He set up the Murali Pratibandhak Sabha in 1910 against the dedication of girls as murali, convened an Asprushyata Nivaran Parishad, a council for the removal of untouchability, in 1912, and in 1917 was instrumental in the passing of a resolution against untouchability at the Indian National Congress. Between 1918 and 1920 he organised conferences on untouchability chaired by Mahatma Gandhi and by Sayajirao Gaekwad III among others, and in 1919 he gave evidence before the Southborough Franchise Committee arguing for the political representation of the excluded castes. He contested the Bombay Presidency Council election of 1920 from Pune, publishing a Marathi statement of the aims of a party of the bahujan samaj, and in 1930 he was imprisoned for six months in Yerwada Central Jail for taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement. He resigned from the executive of the Depressed Classes Mission in 1923 after internal disagreements but remained committed to its objects, taught at a Brahmo school from that year and remained a Brahmo for the rest of his life. He died on 2 January 1944. He is remembered by the honorific Maharshi, and his career is the bridge between the liberal reform of the Prarthana Samaj generation and the assertion of the depressed classes that followed it.

Vitthal Ramji Shinde belongs to the liberal reformist tradition of western India — the tradition of Ranade, Bhandarkar and the Prarthana Samaj — and he turned it towards the single question of untouchability. His method was institutional rather than agitational: schools and night classes, hostels, dispensaries, and a permanent society to run them. The Depressed Classes Mission, founded at Bombay on 16 October 1906, was the largest of these efforts, and its work among the Mahars, Chamars and Namasudras was carried on for decades. Alongside it he built smaller bodies for particular purposes — the Murali Pratibandhak Sabha of 1910 against the dedication of girls to temples, and the Asprushyata Nivaran Parishad of 1912. He also worked on the political side of the question, pressing the Indian National Congress to condemn untouchability in 1917 and appearing before the Southborough Franchise Committee in 1919 to argue that the depressed classes needed representation of their own. Shinde's position was that untouchability was a problem for Hindu society as a whole to solve, and it was on this ground that the later, more assertive leadership of the depressed classes came to differ from him; the argument between reform led by sympathisers from above and self-assertion by the excluded castes themselves runs through the history of the period and is the reason his career is set beside those of Jyotirao Phule, Shahu Maharaj and B. R. Ambedkar rather than in isolation. Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda, who had paid for Shinde's studies at Oxford, was a reforming ruler of the same generation whose patronage supported several such careers.

Social reform in Maharashtra is the largest single block in the history section of an MPSC paper, and V. R. Shinde is one of the dozen names within it that a candidate must know in detail rather than in outline. The Commission examines him through his institutions and their years — the Depressed Classes Mission of 1906 above all — through his association with the Prarthana Samaj, through his part in the Congress resolution of 1917 and his evidence before the Southborough Committee, and through his imprisonment in 1930. Questions in this area are usually built on a single date or a single institutional name, so the preparation should be a table of reformer, organisation, year and place covering Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873, Shinde's Depressed Classes Mission of 1906, Shahu's measures in Kolhapur, Karve's widows' home, and Ambedkar's Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha of 1924. It is also worth holding the relationships between these figures, since the Commission likes questions that turn on who supported whom: Sayajirao Gaekwad III paid for Shinde's studies at Oxford and chaired one of his conferences, and the same ruler's support of Ambedkar's education is a fact examined just as often.

• Vitthal Ramji Shinde was born on 23 April 1873 at Jamkhandi and died on 2 January 1944; he took his BA from Fergusson College, Pune, in 1898 and joined the Prarthana Samaj in the same year.
• With the financial support of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda he studied comparative religion at Manchester College, Oxford, from 1901, working on comparative theology, Christian and Buddhist history, Pali and sociology.
• He opened a night school for children of the untouchable castes at Pune in 1905 and founded the Depressed Classes Mission at Bombay on 16 October 1906 to provide schools, hostels and health care to the Mahars, Chamars and Namasudras.
• He founded the Murali Pratibandhak Sabha in 1910 and convened the Asprushyata Nivaran Parishad in 1912, helped secure a resolution against untouchability at the Indian National Congress in 1917, and gave evidence before the Southborough Franchise Committee in 1919.
• He was imprisoned for six months in Yerwada Central Jail in 1930 for taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement; he had resigned from the executive of the Depressed Classes Mission in 1923 and taught thereafter at a Brahmo school.

• Confusing Vitthal Ramji Shinde with the other Shindes of Maharashtra's public life, or with the Prarthana Samaj's founders of an earlier generation
• Dating the Depressed Classes Mission to the year of Shinde's return from Oxford in 1903 rather than to its actual founding on 16 October 1906
• Treating Shinde as an agitator on the Ambedkarite model, when his method was institutional — schools, hostels and societies — and his position was that reform must come from within Hindu society
• Forgetting the Baroda connection in his biography, which is the link between his career and Sayajirao Gaekwad III's patronage of reform

MPSC examines the Maharashtra reformers through institutions, years and books, and it asks the same four things of each figure: what did he found, in which year, in which city, and what did he write. For Shinde the recurring answers are the Depressed Classes Mission of 1906, the Prarthana Samaj association from 1898, the Murali Pratibandhak Sabha of 1910 and his writings on untouchability. The Commission also builds questions on the relationships between reformers and princely patrons, particularly Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda and Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur, both of whom financed education and reform outside their own states. Because this area is dense with names that resemble one another, the safest preparation is chronological: a single timeline from Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873 to Ambedkar's conversion of 1956, with each institution entered in the year it was founded.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Depressed Classes Mission, founded to provide education and social support to communities excluded by the caste order, was established in which year and by whom ?

  • (a)1873, by Jyotirao Phule
  • (b)1906, by Vitthal Ramji Shinde
  • (c)1924, by B. R. Ambedkar
  • (d)1867, by Atmaram Pandurang

  Answer(b) 1906, by Vitthal Ramji Shinde. The Mission was founded at Bombay on 16 October 1906 and worked among the Mahars, Chamars, Namasudras and other communities through schools, hostels and health care. Option (1) describes the Satyashodhak Samaj, option (3) the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha and option (4) the Prarthana Samaj — a sequence worth learning in order, since MPSC tests these four foundations against one another.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  V. R. Shinde studied comparative religion at Manchester College, Oxford, from 1901. Whose financial support made that possible ?

  • (a)Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur
  • (b)Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda
  • (c)The Governor of the Bombay Presidency
  • (d)The Prarthana Samaj of Bombay

  Answer(b) Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda. The Baroda ruler financed Shinde's two years at Oxford, where he studied comparative theology, the history of Christianity and Buddhism, Pali and sociology, and he later chaired one of the conferences on untouchability that Shinde organised between 1918 and 1920. Sayajirao's patronage of students and scholars from outside his own state is a recurring fact in the history of reform in western India.