Mahadev Govind Ranade

Indian social reformer

• Born: January 18, 1842
• Birthplace: Niphad, India
• Died: January 16, 1901
• Place of death: Pune, India

Ranade was a social reformer and political leader who attempted to bring about change in colonial India through peaceful means, while believing that Indians should use British overrule as an opportunity to reform their country, and was one of the founders of India’s most powerful political party, the Indian National Congress.

Early Life

Mahadev Govind Ranade (MAH-hah-dayv goh-VIHND RAH-nah-day) was born in the Indian state of Maharashtra to a Hindu Chitpavan Brahman family. His father was a government official. His given name was Mahadev, but people called him Mahadeo, and he is known by both names. Until the age of fifteen he was raised at Kolhapur. From 1851 to 1856, he attended Kolhapur English School, where he was so quiet and calm a pupil that his behavior masked his academic brilliance. In 1856, two years after he married Sakhubai Dandekhar, he went to Elphinstone College in Bombay, where he became a voracious reader. He matriculated there in 1859 and received his bachelor’s degree in 1862.

From 1863 to 1866, Ranade was a teaching fellow at Bombay University, and he received his law degree in 1866. In 1868, he was appointed assistant professor of English and history at Elphinstone College. In 1871, he passed his advocate examination and was appointed a judge of a Bombay court equivalent to an American small claims court. There he began the legal career for which he became professionally renowned. In 1873, his first wife died and he married Ramabai (1862-1924).

Life’s Work

When British-educated Indians in Maharashtra founded the Prarthana Samaj , or Prayer Society, in 1867, Ranade immediately became a member. It was the first of many reform and political movements in which he would become involved. All the societies and schools in which he became involved were in one way or another connected with his deeply held belief in the value of education or in social reform and in religious service.

Ranade also pursued an active political career and a distinguished legal career. Between 1885 and 1894, he served three one-year terms as an appointed member of the Bombay Legislative Council. In 1886, he was appointed to the government of India Finance Committee. His legal appointments included “small causes courts” in Poona (1867), Nasik (1878), and Dhulia (1879). In 1881, he was appointed a presidency magistrate for Bombay and joint judge of the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act. From then until 1893, he made annual tours of the district. In 1893, he was appointed to the Bombay High Court; during that the same year, he was also elected to the Bombay University Senate—one of his many appointments to educational boards.

Most members of the Prarthana Society were Chitpavan and Saraswat Brahmans, but the organization was also supported by Gujerati merchants and Parsis. The organization set up a managing committee to organize the Sunday services at which bhakti hymns were chanted, and lectures and readings from Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist scriptures were delivered. Members pledged to worship one God and to find truth in all religions.

In 1874, Ranade wrote A Theist’s Confession of Faith , a tract that created an ideological basis for the Prayer Society that was reflected in its creed when a new meeting hall was opened. The creed stated that members would not use carved or painted images or symbols employed by other religious sects, while at the same time they would not condemn other religious groups that used them. Moreover, members pledged not to acknowledge any one book as the infallible word of God, while not condemning any books used by others.

Members of the society had an intellectual, rather than an emotional, approach to both religious and social issues and attempted to reform others along these lines. In 1873, the society started a night school for working people and started a journal, the Subodh Patrika. Members advocated a variety of Hindu reform: ending the ban on remarriage of widows, abolishing caste restrictions, abolishing child marriage, and educating women. However, the organization took a cautious approach and left it to individual members to advance these issues.

The society opened more than twenty branches in Maharashtra, Madras, and the south. In addition to its Sunday services, it created a free reading room, a library, night schools for working people, an orphanage, and, in 1906, a mission dedicated to the disadvantaged classes. Between 1878 and 1896, Ranade himself edited a daily newspaper, Induprakash, to further his ideas on reforming social and religious traditions, but he also believed in economic reforms. One of his modernist ideas was that agricultural banks should be set up to lend money directly to poor farmers in order to bypass extortionist moneylenders. Another was the creation of joint stock companies to start new industries. In 1885, he was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress.

Significance

Ranade saw himself as a teacher and was hailed as a guru by many of the moderate leaders of the day. He was also admired by his great “radical” political rival, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920). Indeed, there were few areas of Maharashtrian life that remained untouched by Ranade and his reforming spirit. Through his various educational and social organizations and his fervent belief in social, economic, and political progress, he served as an inspiration to an entire generation, and his following continued into the twentieth century under the leadership of his disciple Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915). Ranade’s nonsectarian and noncommunal beliefs were also shared by many others, including Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948). By the end of his life, Ranade’s stature was so great that he was truly a legend in his own time.

Organizations that Ranade Founded or Cofounded

1873

• Elocution Society

1878

• Sahitya Parishad

1878

• Society for Promoting Marathi Books

1880

• New English School

1881

• elementary school for girls in Poona

1884

• Deccan Association

1885

• Indian National Congress

1887

• Indian National Social Conference

1891

• Industrial Conference of Western India

1894

• Deccan Vernacular Translation Society

1896

• Deccan Sabha

Bibliography

Brown, D. Mackenzie. Indian Nationalist Thought from Ranade to Bhave. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. This short classic study places Ranade’s political thought in historical and comparative perspective by comparing one of his writings with writings of other political leaders, including Gandhi.

Grover, Verinder, ed. Political Thinkers of Modern India. Vol. 3. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1990. This useful volume contains short biographical pieces on Ranade and offers a selection of his essays and speeches that includes “The Rise of Maratha Power,” “The Key to Progress,” “Indian Political Economy,” “The Reorganisation of Rural Credit in India,” and nine others, mostly on economic themes.

Jones, Kenneth W. Socio-Religious Movements in British India. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989. A contribution to The New Cambridge History of India, this volume places Ranade’s thought in perspective with the numerous other reform movements from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Parvate, T. V. Mahadev Govind Ranade: A Biography. New York: Asia Publishing House, 1964. This erudite and rich biography not only presents the life of Ranade in chronological order but also offers useful essays on a numebr of topics such as his second wife and Gandhi.

Ranade, Ramabai. Ranade: His Wife’s Reminiscences. Translated by Kusumavati Deshpande. New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1963. Ranade educated his second wife Ramabai personally, and she became an activist on behalf of women and continued on his work after his death. Her Reminiscences, originally written in Marathi, provide an important record of Ranade’s life, ideas, and activities.

Tucker, Richard P. Ranade and the Roots of Indian Nationalism. 1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. This well-written and well-researched book shows how Ranade’s liberal political beliefs were increasingly becoming questioned by the end of his life as Indians (and Ranade himself) became impatient at the pace of political reforms.