Abstract
The editor, Murali Ranganathan, is to be congratulated for bringing together as many as twenty essays and papers by Professor J.V. Naik relating mainly to the ideological and social movements in nineteenth-century Maharashtra. Professor Naik has devoted almost a lifetime to the study of the contributions of Maharashtra to the cause of social uplift and political freedom in its early phase. He has used a large amount of archival and printed material, and this enables him to bring to light many facts that are otherwise little known. For instance, in Chapter 2, Naik describes the controversy over criticisms of British rule in letters published in Bombay Gazette, 1841, under the pseudonym ‘Hindoo’. These letters contain besides complaints of specific acts of oppression and injustice that the British had committed, a remarkable reference to the Tribute or the Drain of Wealth, the phenomenon much exposed and criticised later by Dadabhai Naoroji and early nationalists. ‘A Third Hindu’ argued that while Muslim rulers never sent any wealth outside India to countries of their origin, the British were drawing wealth from India to Britain ‘at the expense of the prosperity and happiness of the poor and inoffensive inhabitants’ (p. 65).
Another discovery Naik makes is the fact of Tilak being aware of Karl Marx’s theories, as early as 1881. In that year he reprinted in the Mahratta an article which declared that wealth ‘scientifically defined, is concentrated, accumulated, crystallised—as Marx has it—labour’ (p. 142).
Naik’s studies of the early stirrings for social reform in Maharashtra show that while critics of the British regime risked the ire of the officialdom and angry clamour from the European community, supporters of social reform too had to hide their views and identities for fear of attacks by conservative elements, as happened in the case of the Paramahansa Sabha, which, owing to the exposure of its membership records, collapsed in 1860 (p. 207).
In delineating the characters and ideas of important individuals, for whom Naik provides informative biographical studies, he is always objective with no inclination to drive any embarrassing facts under the carpet. Yet almost in every case, he wishes to understand rather than censure, whether it is in the case of Gokhale’s two marriages (pp. 338–39) or Jyotirao Phule’s support of British rule in India (p. 314).
One incongruity in the volume seems to be the inclusion of the biography of Raghunath Dhondo Karve (1882–1953), the birth-control advocate, rather than that of his father, Dhondo Keshav Karve, the great crusader for women’s education. Not that the son does not deserve a biographical notice, but it does not seem to sit well in a volume on nineteenth-century Maharashtra. On the other hand, one should surely welcome the inclusion of R.G. Bhandarkar, the historian among the eminent figures of Maharashtra considered worthy of biographical notice by Professor Naik. His A Peep into the Early History of India, the text of which he delivered as an address in 1900, served for this reviewer, when (1948) an ‘Intermediate’ student, as his first source of instruction in historical method; and for this purpose it is surely of value today as well.
The editor devotes the first part of his Introduction to a very informative description of the press and archival material from the mid-eighteenth-century Bombay (pp. 2–29). One learns much, for example, about that interesting character, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (1783–1859), the opium merchant and ship-owner, who so freely criticised the British government’s measures, and possibly encouraged the press attacks launched against it by the ‘Hindoo’, who has been identified by Professor Naik with Jejeebhoy’s employee, Bhaskar Pandoorung (pp. 17–21).
Professor Naik’s essays constitute an indispensable reading for both the researcher and the general reader interested in the ideological stirrings of Maharashtra that contributed so much to the awakening of India as a whole. The author’s balanced and objective approach also merits a salute.