MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 96 of 100

The Commission cancelled this question. It carries no correct option in the final answer key, and nothing in this card should be read as identifying one. The subject the question was drawn from, however, is one of the most important in the Maharashtra syllabus and repays study in its own right. Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, who lived from 26 June 1874 to 6 May 1922, ruled the princely state of Kolhapur from 1894 to 1922. He was born Yeshwantrao Ghatge into the Ghatge Maratha family of Kagal, was adopted into the Kolhapur royal family on 17 March 1884 after the death of the childless Shivaji IV, was educated at Rajkumar College in Rajkot and trained in administration by Sir Stuart Fraser, and came to the throne on 2 April 1894. Education was the centre of his programme, and he approached it from two directions at once. The first was to remove the obstacles that kept the children of the lower castes out of school, which he did by building hostels in Kolhapur for students of particular castes and communities so that boys from the villages had somewhere to live while they studied, and by opening the state's schools to all. The second was to make schooling a duty rather than an opportunity: in 1917 his government made primary education both free and compulsory throughout the state, which is to say that it removed the cost of schooling and at the same time placed an obligation on parents, enforced by the authority of the state. Kolhapur was among the earliest Indian states to legislate in this way, some years before British India managed anything comparable. Education was one strand of a much larger reforming programme. The reservation order of 26 July 1902 set aside half the posts in the state service for the backward classes, one of the earliest measures of positive discrimination anywhere in India. Legislation followed on the social questions of the day — widow remarriage permitted on 1 January 1917, inter-caste and inter-religious marriage legalised on 12 July 1919, and the devadasi system prohibited on 11 November 1920. He founded cooperative societies, built the Shahu Chhatrapati Spinning and Weaving Mill in 1906, and began the Radhanagari dam on the Bhogawati in 1907, a work completed in 1935 after his death, which brought irrigation to some fifteen thousand hectares. He fought the Vedokta controversy from 1899 over the refusal of priests to perform Vedic rites for his family, and drew from it a lifelong argument against the claims of ritual hierarchy. He met B. R. Ambedkar repeatedly between 1917 and 1921, made him chairman of a conference for the depressed classes held on 21 and 22 March 1920, and gave money to help start his newspaper Mooknayak. The University of Cambridge gave him an honorary doctorate of laws on 10 June 1903, and the title Rajarshi, by which he is universally known, was conferred on him by the Kurmi community of Kanpur.

Compulsory primary education was one of the great unfinished projects of colonial India, and the princely states moved on it earlier than British India did. Gopal Krishna Gokhale's bill for compulsory primary education was defeated in the Imperial Legislative Council in 1911, and it was left to individual states to legislate for themselves; Baroda under Sayajirao Gaekwad III and Kolhapur under Shahu Maharaj are the two examples always cited. Kolhapur made primary education free and compulsory in 1917. The significance of the measure lies in the second word rather than the first. Making education free removes the fee, but a poor household with land to work or animals to graze loses a child's labour by sending it to school, and in a caste society there is the further obstacle that the school may not admit the child or the child may not be safe in it. Compulsion was the state's answer to the first problem, and Shahu's hostels, which housed students of particular castes and communities in the capital, were the answer to the second. Around this stood the rest of his programme — the reservation order of 1902, the marriage and devadasi legislation, the cooperative societies, the Radhanagari dam — and behind all of it a consistent position, formed in the Vedokta dispute of 1899, that the ritual hierarchy had no claim to govern who might learn, serve or rule.

Shahu Maharaj is examined in every MPSC paper in some form, usually through the dated measures of his reign: 1902 for the reservation order, 1917 for free and compulsory primary education and for widow remarriage, 1919 for inter-caste marriage, 1920 for the abolition of the devadasi system. A candidate should hold those years exactly, because the Commission builds questions on the year as often as on the measure. This item is worth one further note as a matter of reading. It contains the word 'not', and yet it is not a negative question at all: the negation belongs to the situation described — parents who did not send their children to school — and not to the instruction given to the candidate, who is asked simply for an amount. Five questions in this paper do carry a genuine negative or exclusionary stem, and in all five the negating word is printed in bold in both the Marathi and the English block. The habit worth taking from this is to decide, in one word, what the stem is asking for before evaluating any option, rather than reacting to the presence of a negative word anywhere in the sentence.

• Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj lived from 26 June 1874 to 6 May 1922 and ruled Kolhapur from 2 April 1894; born Yeshwantrao Ghatge of Kagal, he was adopted into the royal family on 17 March 1884 and educated at Rajkumar College, Rajkot.
• His government made primary education free and compulsory in the state of Kolhapur in 1917, at a time when British India had no such law, and he built hostels in Kolhapur for students of particular castes and communities so that village boys could study in the capital.
• The reservation order of 26 July 1902 reserved fifty per cent of posts in the state service and places in education for the backward classes, among the earliest measures of positive discrimination in India.
• His social legislation included permission for widow remarriage on 1 January 1917, the legalisation of inter-caste and inter-religious marriage on 12 July 1919 and the prohibition of the devadasi system on 11 November 1920.
• He met B. R. Ambedkar repeatedly between 1917 and 1921, made him chairman of a conference for the depressed classes on 21 and 22 March 1920 and helped fund his newspaper Mooknayak; the University of Cambridge conferred an honorary LL.D. on him on 10 June 1903, and the title Rajarshi was given him by the Kurmi community of Kanpur.

• Reading a stem as a negative question merely because it contains the word 'not', when the negation may belong to the situation described rather than to the instruction
• Confusing the dates of Shahu's measures, particularly the reservation order of 1902 and the education and marriage measures of 1917
• Attributing compulsory primary education in this period to British India, when it was the princely states of Kolhapur and Baroda that legislated first
• Treating Shahu's hostels as ordinary schools; they were residential provision that made it possible for students of excluded communities to attend school at all

Shahu Maharaj appears in MPSC papers more often than almost any other single figure, and the questions are built on dates, institutions and relationships. The dated measures are the commonest form — which year the reservation order was issued, which year education was made compulsory, which practice was prohibited in 1920 — and the second commonest is his connection with other figures, particularly Ambedkar, the Satyashodhak Samaj and the non-Brahmin movement. A candidate should also expect questions on the institutions of his reign, the mill of 1906, the cooperative societies and the Radhanagari dam, and on the Vedokta controversy, which is the episode most often used to explain his politics. The efficient preparation is a single dated timeline of the reign from 1894 to 1922, which answers nearly every question the Commission can build from it.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The reservation order issued by Shahu Maharaj on 26 July 1902 provided for what ?

  • (a)Twenty-five per cent of seats in the state legislature for the backward classes
  • (b)Fifty per cent of posts in the state service and places in education for the backward classes
  • (c)The abolition of land revenue for cultivators of the backward classes
  • (d)Free travel on the state railway for students of the backward classes

  Answer(b) Fifty per cent of posts in the state service and places in education for the backward classes. The order of 26 July 1902 is among the earliest measures of positive discrimination anywhere in India and preceded the comparable provisions of British India by decades. It belongs with the rest of Shahu's programme in Kolhapur — free and compulsory primary education from 1917, hostels for students of particular communities, and legislation permitting widow remarriage and inter-caste marriage.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs relating to the reign of Shahu Maharaj is correctly matched ?

  • (a)Prohibition of the devadasi system — 1902
  • (b)Legalisation of inter-caste and inter-religious marriage — 12 July 1919
  • (c)Founding of the Shahu Chhatrapati Spinning and Weaving Mill — 1935
  • (d)Completion of the Radhanagari dam — 1907

  Answer(b) Legalisation of inter-caste and inter-religious marriage — 12 July 1919. The devadasi system was prohibited on 11 November 1920, the spinning and weaving mill was established in 1906, and the Radhanagari dam on the Bhogawati was begun in 1907 and completed in 1935, after Shahu's death, irrigating some fifteen thousand hectares. Dates are the currency of questions on this reign, and they are worth learning as a single timeline rather than as isolated facts.