Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T07:19:59.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hindu Traditionalism and Nationalist Ideologies in Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Richard Tucker
Richard Tucker
Affiliation:
Oakland University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Historians of modern India have recently been paying increased attention to the founders of nationalist politics in the provinces, in growing recognition that the heredity of the Indian National Congress was influenced by complex institutional patterns going back some decades before its birth in 1885. These patterns were rooted in widely varying local and regional conditions. To the extent that the local political associations were designed by a Western-educated professional class with the common purpose of influencing policy decisions of the British Raj, they can all be understood within the context of British imperial politics. But the associations' leaders, the spokesmen of Indian nationalism in its early forms, had to confront a second audience as well as the British: the largely traditional society of their birth. Their relationship to that society was probably the most controversial and misunderstood dimension of their lives, yet it was crucial to the growth of regionally distinctive variations of later mass nationalism.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1976 , pp. 321 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mehrotra, S. R., The Emergence of the Indian National Congress (New Delhi, 1971);Google ScholarGordon, Leonard, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement 1876–1940 (New York, 1974);Google ScholarSuntharalingam, R., Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India, 1852–1891 (Tucson, 1974).Google ScholarFor Maharashtra in this period, see esp. Johnson, Gordon, Provincial politics and Indian Nationalism (Cambridge, 1973);Google Scholar and Dobbin, Christine, Urban Leadership in Western India (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Social Policy and Social Change in Western India, 1817–1830 (Oxford, 1957), Chs 3–4.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., pp. 248–9.

4 Smith, George, The Life of John Wilson (London, 1878).Google Scholar

5 Oriental Christian Spectator, 1830, pp. 186–95; Dandekar, Morbhat, Hindū Dharma Sthāpanā (Bombay [1834]);Google ScholarWilson, John, A Second Exposure of the Hindu Religion (Bombay, 1835).Google Scholar

6 For example, see Native Opinion, March 10, 1867, p. 74.

7 Smith, , The Life of John Wilson, pp. 221–2;Google ScholarJambhekar, G. G., Memoirs and Writings of Acharya Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar (Poona, 1950), I, xxxviii–xli;Google ScholarDnyanoday, 1845, pp. 22–3, 37–8, 199–200.

8 For their early activities, see Annual Reports of the Students' Literary and Scientific Society (from 1850 onwards).

9 The only reliable account is Priyolkar, A. K., Paramahamsasabhā va tīce ādhyaksha Rāmchandra Bālkrishna (Bombay, 1966).Google Scholar

10 Hindūdharmatattva, published in Dnyanoday, July 1, 1852, p. 199.

11 Ibid.; the work is analyzed in Lederle, M. R., ‘Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra,’ Diss. Poona University, 1964, pp. 274–5.Google Scholar

12 See periodic, detailed reports in Dnyanoday from October 1, 1852, to 06 1853.

13 Azrekar, R. P., Shri Vishnubava Brahmacārī yāṅceṅ caritra (Bombay, 1894);Google Scholar for a briefer account in English, see Lederle, ‘Philosophical Trends,’ pp. 281–92.

14 Brahmachari, , Vedokta Dharmaprakāsh, ed. Ranade, K. B. (Bombay, 1867).Google Scholar

15 Among the surviving tracts are Sahajasthīticā nibaṅdha (Bombay, 1868)Google Scholar, and the political manifesto, Sukhadāyaka rajyaprakaranī (Bombay, 1868).Google Scholar

16 Gandhi's struggles to overcome similar challenges in a later generation are considered in detail in Rudolph, L. I. and Rudolph, S. H., The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, 1967), Part II.Google Scholar

17 The detailed history in Marathi is Vaidya, D. G., Prārthanāsamājācā itihāsa (Bombay, 1927).Google Scholar See also Tucker, Richard, Ranade and the Roots of Indian Nationalism (Chicago, 1972), pp. 82–90.Google Scholar

18 In a more highly institutionalized religious system such as Islam, the religious hierarchy, or ulama, constituted, at least in theory, a well-ordered hierarchy of authority. But in nineteenth-century India, even for Muslims it became very difficult to determine who decided what religious and social practices should be or what their political implications were. See Hardy, Peter, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972), Ch. 2. The difficulty was even more basic for Hinduism, which had never had as clear a system of authority for the community, either in theory or in its functioning institutions.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Tucker, Ranade, p. 94; Richard, P. Tucker, ‘From Dharmashastra to Politics: Aspects of Social Authority in Nineteenth Century Maharashtra,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review, VII:3 (09 1970), 325–46;Google ScholarJohnson, Gordon, ‘Chitpavan Brahmins and Politics in Western India in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,’ in Leach, Edmund and Mukherjee, S. N. (eds), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 99–102;Google ScholarGujar, M. V., Karavira chhatrapatī gharānyacyā itihāsāciṅ sādhaneṅ 1700–1878, 3 vols (Poona, 1962).Google Scholar

20 Authority in non-Brahmin jatis was exercised by a highly complex and flexible system of caste elders and panchayats, who sometimes consulted Brahmin scholars in the process of resolving disputes. Steele, Arthur, The Law and Custom of Hindoo Castes within the Dekhun Provinces (London, 1868), Ch. 2. This contrasted sharply with the situation in adjacent Gujarat, where most high castes were governed by elders who controlled religious, social and economic power.Google Scholar Dobbin, Urban Leadership, Ch. 5.

21 Coats, Thomas, ‘Notes Respecting the Trial by Punchiet, and the Administration of Justice at Poona, Under the Late Paishwa,’ Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay, II (1820), 273–80;Google ScholarGune, V. T., The Judicial System of the Marathas (Poona, 1953), pp. 44–50, 83–6, 107–14.Google Scholar

22 For an account of an important cult of this type in pre-modern Bengal, see Edward, C. Dimock Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar

23 Raeside, Ian, ‘A Bibliographical Index of Mahānubhāva Works in Marathi,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXIII:3 (1960), 464–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 It is uncertain whether a Mahanubhav group as such was active in Poona, but its doctrines, labelled Vāmamārga in Marathi, were the heart of the controversy. See Dnyan Prakash, August 30, 1852, p. 280, and November 29, 1852, pp. 378–80.

25 Dnyan Prakash, December 13, 1858, pp. 587–8. Since before Poona's modern preeminence began in the 1720s, Wai, a small Brahmin center some sixty miles to the south, had been the region's most highly regarded center of Brahmin learning and authority. This struggle was another chapter in Poona's gradual displacement of other district towns.

26 An 1855 survey revealed that there were 158 pantojis in Poona District, including 114 Brahmins; the schools enrolled 4,144 students, 1,510 of them Brahmin. There were also nine Sanskrit schools with 74 students, all of them Brahmin. Khanolkar, V. P. (ed.), Indigenous Education in the Bombay Presidency and Thereabouts (Bombay, 1965), pp. 19–20. See also two broader studies: L. P. Patterson Maureen, ‘Changing Patterns of Occupation Among Chitpavan Brahmans,’ presented to the Conference on Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra,Chicago,June 6–8, 1969, esp. pp. 39–42;Google Scholar and Ellen, E. McDonald and Craig, M. Stark, English Education, Nationalist Politics and Elite Groups in Maharashtra, 1885–1915 (Berkeley, 1969), pp. 16–48.Google Scholar

27 Ranade, M. G., ‘Hindu and Mohammadan Religious Endowments,’ Quarterly Journal of the Sarvajanik Sabha, III (01 1881), 1–16.Google Scholar

28 The results can be suggested by the fact that both Mor Shastri Sathe and Krishna Shastri Sathe were members of the Sanskrit Department staff at Poona College for many years, and Gangadhar Shastri Phadke was employed by the government Translators' Department for over twenty years.

29 For a fuller account of these developments, see Kumar, Ravinder, Western India in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1968), pp. 264–75.Google Scholar

30 Poona Observer, March 12, 1853, p. 43.

31 Anon, ‘The Origin of Deccan College,’ Deccan College Quarterly, I (1892), 26.Google Scholar

32 Mahadev, L. Apte, ‘Lokahitavadi and V. K. Chiplunkar: Spokesmen of Change in Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra,’ Modern Asian Studies, VII:2 (1973), 193–208;Google ScholarInamdar, N. R., ‘Introduction,’ in Lokahitawādīṅcī shatapatreṅ (Poona, 1960), pp. 1–57.Google Scholar

33 See the essays entitled ‘Inglish Rājyāci Avashyakati,’ and ‘Rājyasudhāranā,’ in Tikekar, S. R. (ed.), Shatapatreṅ (Poona, 1963), pp. 22ff. and 33ff.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

35 Dnyanoday, June 15, 1850, p. 218.

36 Dnyanoday, December 16, 1850, pp. 438–9.

37 Mehrotra, S. R., ‘The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha: The Early Phase (1870–1880),’ Indian Economic and Social History Review, VI:3 (09 1969), 299–300.Google Scholar

38 Bombay Telegraph and Courier, March 27, 1852, p. 300; Dnyanoday, April 1, 1852, pp. 109–12.

39 Among others, Mor Shastri Sathe was transferred later that year from Poona College to the courts of Surat. Dnyanoday, December 22, 1852, p. 404.

40 The fullest English account is Kolhatkar, W. M., ‘Widow Remarriage,’ Indian Social Reform, ed. Chintamani, C. Y. (Madras, 1901), Pt I, pp. 293ff.Google Scholar In Marathi, see Daftardar, R. V. and Bedekar, A. D., Vidhavāvivāhakhandanācā sādyaṅta itihāsa (Poona, 1870).Google Scholar See also Vaidya, C. V., The History of Hindu Social Reform Agitation (Poona, 1890), pp. 9ff;Google Scholar and Tucker, Ranade, pp. 90–103.

41 Pandit, V. P., trans. and author of introduction to Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Vidhavāvivāha (Bombay, 1865).Google Scholar

42 Pandit, S. S., Vishnū Parashūrām Pandit yāṅcen caritra (Poona, 1936).Google Scholar

43 The Two Half-Yearly Reports of the Widow Marriage Association, from 1st February 1869 to 30th January 1870 (Bombay, 1870) describes the organization in great detail.Google Scholar

44 Khanolkar, G. D., Aravācin Marāthi Vāṅgmayasevak (Bombay, 1938), II, 46–7.Google Scholar

45 Masselos, James, ‘Liberal Thought in Maharashtra,’ Diss. Bombay University, 1964, p. 270.Google Scholar

46 A detailed account was soon published: Vidhavāvivāhācyā ashāstratevishayī nirnayapatra (Poona, 1870).Google Scholar

47 Kunte, M. M., The Reform Question (Bombay, 1870), Pt I, p. 30.Google Scholar

48 Tucker, Ranade, pp. 116–18.

49 Punā asosieshana mhaṅje puṅyaṅtīl sārvajanik sabhā hyā sabhece nīyam (Poona, 1867);Google Scholar Mehrotra, ‘Poona Sarvajanik Sabha,’ pp. 300ff.

50 Dnyanoday, December 1, 1853, p. 371.

51 Dnyan Prakash, August 5, 1858, p. 372.

52 Masselos, ‘Liberal Thought in Maharashtra,’ pp. 277–83; Native Opinion, 08 1, 1880, p. 485. Full details, including the legal forms employed, are included in Pune yetil sārvajanik sabhecī racanā va niyam (Poona, 1870), pp. 6, 7, 11, 12.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., p. 8, Regulations Nos. 15, 16.

54 See Sabha, Vedashastrottejaka, First Annual Report (rpt Poona, 1914), annual reports for following five years;Google Scholar and Vedashāstradipika: Hirak-mahotsava-smārakagraṅtha (Poona, 1941).Google Scholar

55 For a later development of this character, see Kumar, Western India, pp. 308–9.

56 See Apte, ‘Lokahitavadi, and Chiplunkar, V. K.’; Inamdar, N. R., ‘Political Thought of Vishnushastri Chiplunkar,’ Journal of the University of poona, Humanities Section, No. 31, pp. 15–24;Google ScholarMadkholkar, G. T. and Banhatti, S. N., Vishnū Krishna Chiplunkar (Bombay, 1934).Google Scholar

57 Buddhisagar, M. G. (ed.), Chiplunkar Lekhasangraha (Bombay, 1963), p. 246.Google Scholar

58 Nibandhamālā, ed. Sathe, V. V. (Poona, 1926), pp. 1046–205.Google Scholar

59 Heimsath, Charles, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton, 1964), ch. 7;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Tucker, Ranade, Ch. 7.

60 For the ‘orthodox party’ and its support of Tilak's campaigns in the 1890s, see Cashman, Richard, ‘The Politics of Mass Recruitment: Attempts to Organize Popular Movements in Maharashtra, 1891–1908,’ Diss. Duke University, 1968, pp. 50–1, 95ff.Google Scholar