RANADE, MAHADEV GOVIND

RANADE, MAHADEV GOVIND (1842–1901), Indian jurist and reformer. One of India's most brilliant jurists, social reformers, and early nationalist leaders, Mahadev Govind Ranade inspired Gopal Krishna Gokhale and entire generations of young Maharashtrians to follow in his path of national service. Born to the Chitpavan Brahman community of Pune's ruling Peshwas, Ranade graduated from the first class of Bombay University in 1862, receiving highest honors, then went on to study law; he was appointed a subordinate judge in Pune in 1871, the youngest Indian jurist of Bombay State.

Social and Religious Reformer

Ranade recognized the cruel and archaic inequities of Hinduism, especially its harsh household laws dealing with women, child marriages, widow immolation, and the treatment of "untouchables." He resolved to start a society in Western India, similar to earlier reform groups that had been founded in Bengal, starting with Ram Mohan Roy's enlightened "Brahmo Samaj." Ranade called his organization Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society), bringing several like-minded reformers together for its first meeting in 1869 in Bombay (Mumbai). They focused first on educational reforms and later on legislative widow-remarriage reforms, encouraging young Hindu widows, whose lives would otherwise have remained wasted in dismal neglect and total isolation, to improve their minds and to remarry. Ranade himself helped to arrange the first widow remarriage in Bombay. On 2 April 1870 Ranade took charge of Pune's Sarvajanik Sabha (Public Society), which Gokhale later joined and helped him run, petitioning the governor, the viceroy, and the British House of Commons for various legal as well as sociopolitical reforms. In 1887 Ranade founded the National Social Conference, which met each year just after India's National Congress, since Bal Gangadhar Tilak and other devout Hindus threatened to riot if social reform issues were ever raised in the annual meetings of the nation's largest political association.

Political Reforms

As a justice of the High Court, Ranade could not become an official delegate to India's National Congress, but he was instrumental in inviting all seventy-three initial delegates to Bombay in December 1885 for the inaugural meeting of what was soon to become India's leading political association. In 1895, when the Congress and Social Conference both held meetings in Pune, Tilak protested against Ranade and Gokhale's desire to hold their Social Conference in the tent for which he had collected funds as "joint secretary" of the Congress. Bitter factionalism ensued and continued to divide the liberal Ranade-Gokhale mainstream of moderate political and social reform from Tilak's reactionary Hindu cultural traditionalism and radical anti-British political demands. "Sweet reasonable" Ranade died, however, before that conflict tore Congress apart in 1907.

Stanley Wolpert

See alsoCongress Party ; Gokhale, Gopal Krishna ; Maharashtra ; Tilak, Bal Gangadhar

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Karve, D. G. Ranade: The Prophet of Liberated India. Poona: Aryabushan Press, 1942.

Kellock, J. Mahadev Govind Ranade: Patriot and Social Servant. Kolkata: Association Press, 1926.

Mankar, G. A. A Sketch of the Life and Works of the Late Mr. Justice M. G. Ranade. 2 vols. Mumbai: Caxton, 1902.

McLane, John R. Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Parvate, T. V. Mahadev Govind Ranade. New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963.

Ranade, M. G. Religious and Social Reform. A Collection of Essays and Speeches. Mumbai: 1902.

——. The Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Hon'ble Mr. Justice M. G. Ranade. 1915. Reprint, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992.

Wolpert, Stanley A. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953 and 1961.