CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER IX

A FAR-SEEING PIONEER

THE SIGNIFICANCE of India's historic development cannot be properly grasped unless she is seen, as seers have seen her, in her own true light: India is a Sakti, a Mother-Force of the world, a power of God manifest in a material form, her geographical integrality indivisible from her soul, her history and geography inseparably bound up, her culture an age-old unity of rich diversities.

This oneness of India is confirmed by her history which all down the ages shows that when for any reason the whole country could not be reached by a new movement—and in ancient times the paucity of communications and transport was an obvious hindrance—one, two or more of the four ends of India emerged as the originating centres of such movements from where their ideas would penetrate the inlying regions and cover up the entire country. Was it a calculated step of the human mind ? or was it the intention of evolutionary Nature that when conditions were not favourable to a wider dissemination of a new idea the movement started from convenient geographical sites, often from the ends of the land, whence it fanned out in different directions ? Even in modern times this appears to have been the process followed, for India to be able to fulfil herself and fulfil as well her mission on earth must prepare herself and grow in stregth in every part of her being, in every vein and artery of her body.

That is perhaps why the first modern movement of India's national being having its birth in Bengal, her eastern end, did not take long to resound in her western, southern and northern parts. Though primarily for commercial and strategic importance Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were chosen by the English as their early trading ports, yet it is significant that the first three universities in India—the only three existing centres of Western learning— were founded, one in each of these places, in the same historic year, 1857, with the object of propagating the new knowledge of the West based on rationalism that India needed at that particular hour of her history. The national movement the seed of which had been sown by Raja Rammohun Roy in Bengal more than three decades earlier, could realise its aims only with its expansion over the whole country whose all-round progress was the sole concern of the Raja. Though it had to wait for years to grow into an all-India movement, yet, urged by the force of will of the early leaders, the national being began to move and various spheres of Indian life were stirred into activity.

It was now the turn of Maharashtra to develop the movement on its own line so that western India might join the eastern and help the promoting the movement for the benefit of the whole country.

The impact of Western ideas produced in the Indian society a class of people who regarded reason as the most needed force in the progress of India's collective life, and wanted all its activities to be guided by rationalism, and not, as hitherto, by 'traditionalism'. What this attitude resulted in in Bengal has been shown in detail. Although Bombay was the first and Bengal the last to have this impact, the former responded much later than the latter, and that also in a manner not exactly the same as Bengal. This was but natural. The Marathas are a predominantly intellectual people. An intrepid mind impels them to deeds of valour and greatness that characterise their history and mark them out as one of the most advanced sub-nations of India to whom she owes so much of her achievements in modern times.

Two worthy scions of the famous Chitpawan brahmanas were therefore chosen to lead the movement of national reconstruction, the two possessing the best of their racial characteristics yet different in their temperament and attitude towards the problems which both of them tried with their puissant intellect and large heart to solve for the well-being of the whole country. The Chitpawanas trace their history from a hoary antiquity. What they had done in their recent past bore promise of a future worthy of their legendary origin and significant name—purified consciousness —since in almost every sphere of life they play today a dominant role to which is due much of the progress not only of Maharashtra but of the whole of India.

Mahadev Govind Ranade and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the latter fourteen years younger than the former, were the two outstanding Chitpawan brahmanas whose life and work were part of the national movements that took the country a long way towards the goal, its glorious future. Although Ranade and Tilak worked all their lives for the same goal, their methods and immediate objectives were different. If their vision of the Dawn that was to break over their country was the same they were wide apart in their outlook on the problems that demanded early solutions. For Ranade it was a question of social, religious and economic reform. For Tilak it was one of freedom. Ranade, like the social reformer of Bengal, wanted to eradicate the social evils even by legislation. Tilak, like Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, believed in reform springing from within the heart of the people and not imposed by law. How these two patriotic and sincere souls worked for their country's welfare is an interesting story, important too to a study of the rise and growth of resurgent India whose cause both of them furthered but by different methods. These have to be appraised in the context of their individual life and work. If Ranade wanted his people's social and national consciousness to grow through education and

reform as the primary condition of their future greatness, Tilak considered nothing but "his country's freedom which alone he felt could reconstitute her true self and put her on the path to her destined glory.

Mahadev Govind Ranade was born on 18 January 1842, at Niphad, in the Nasik District. Govindrao, his father, was a man of deep orthodox inclinations which were largely the cause of many a conflict between him and his son; the Old and the New, the Old sticking to the traditions of the great past as sacrosanct, the New seeking to forge ahead towards a greater future. But the conservative father had the better of his son when he married Mahadev, then only twelve, to Sakhubai of nine years age. Though Mahadev was then too young to protest against the evil of early marriage, in his later life he made it one of the important items of his social reform programme and advocated its abolition with an uncompromising determination.

Quite early in life Ranade had his English education in Kolhapur State where his father held a responsible position. In his childhood he showed those moral and emotional qualities which he evinced throughout his career. His sense of rectitude and love of fair-play were exemplary. While very young, he would often play a game of chess with a pillar as an imaginary opponent, and 'he would have the awkwardness to lose the game but the fairness to give to the pillar what was due to it'.

At school, Ranade gave proofs of such exceptional qualities of head and heart as led his teachers to predict his rise to fame. He was one of the twenty one students who passed the first Matriculation Examination of the Bombay University in 1859, with a scholarship. He took his B.A. degree with a first class and was given teaching work in the Elphinstone Institution where he had read. In 1862 he was appointed English editor of the Indu Prakash, an English-Marathi weekly founded in the same year 'to advocate political advance, social reform and national progress'. Ranade, however, did not leave his studies. In 1864 he took the M.A. degree, and next year became the first Indian Fellow of the Bombay University. Then he graduated in law with first class honours. As a college student, Ranade was regarded by his professors as 'the only student who could think'. One of his professors was a famous Hellenic scholar whose influence on Ranade was such as developed in him 'a Socratic spirit of humility and a Socratic bent of mind'. The same professor, Sir Alexander Grant, suspended Ranade's scholarship for six months when on one occasion he attacked British rule characterising it as inferior to Maratha rule.

Apart from Ranade's excellent English, specimens of which his professor sent to England in appreciation, his successful English education had, without doubt, a most formative influence upon his life. He came to look upon his English education as an important and necessary part of his training, and the training as well for the youths of his country. The

English language was to him 'not simply an English affair but rather an affair of all the advanced nations of the West'. The English rule also, he held, was 'a fortunate occurrence for India.. ..Instead of decrying the impact upon India of Western thought the true lover of India will rejoice in it.' And these views, as seen before, were shared by progressive Indians of the time, particularly of Bengal. His English education had thus opened before Ranade a new world of ideas which he took care to adapt to his own needs as also to the needs of his countrymen whose welfare was the sole concern of his life. Ranade's synthetic Indian mind absorbed new ideas and, so enriched, it could see with its eye of reason the evils that had been sapping his country's life. At the same time he could see as well whatever was of value in ancient Indian culture.

Ranade began life as a teacher and a teacher he remained all his life though in a wider sense of the term. English, economics and his tory were mostly to his liking. His approach to history was in the main biographical, but he could never think of history without reference to geography. The field of activity for a man of Ranade's learning and outlook could certainly not be merely the college class room. As editor of the Indu Prakash he boldly upheld the cause of social reform including the plight of the Hindu widow. As a member of the Widow Marriage Association he assisted Vishnu Sastri in controverting the orthodox pandits and in bringing about many re-marriages of widows among the Deccani and Gujarati brahmanas, for which Ranade, Vishnu Sastri and five other leading members of the Association were excommunicated by the Sankaracharya of western India.

Ranade's appointment as Oriental Translator to the Government of Bombay in 1868 gave him an opportunity to suggest lines on which Marathi literature should develop. Many writers profited by his suggestions. Though nurtured in the best of Indian culture Ranade did not find in the prevalent Hinduism what could satisfy his mind and heart. He therefore wanted a new form of religion without, however, breaking completely with the religion of his fathers, the fundamental truths of which, he knew, were eternal and had, therefore, always their value for him. This need of his soul was met by the Prarthana Samaj (the Prayer Society), which was inaugurated in Bombay in March, 1867, 'amid the wave of religious enthusiasm that marked the second visit to Bombay of the Brahmo Samaj missionary, Keshubchandra Sen'. Ranade's close association with this 'Theistic Church' and the very important part he played in the forming of its creed have a bearing on modern Indian renaissance.

The Prarthana Samaj, however, was not the first attempt in western India to fight social and religious evils. In 1890 was started in Bombay a society called Paramhansa Mandali—'the Divine Society'—the objects of which were the abolition of caste, introduction of widow-marriage, and the renunciation of idolatry. There was to be absolute secrecy regarding

the objects of the society until its membership reached a thousand. The Prarthana Samaj may be said to have 'arisen from the ashes of this society'. Its difference in name from the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal was evidently deliberate, for unlike the followers of Brahmo Samaj, the followers of Prarthana Samaj never 'looked upon themselves as adherents of a new religion or of a new sect, outside and alongside of the general Hindu body, but simply as a movement within it'.

Ranade was thirty when he was appointed a First Class First Grade Subordinate Judge at Poona in November 1871. The famous Sarvajanik Sabha was founded at Poona the year before, with the main object of representing to the Government the needs and wishes of the people. The members were generally men of position and influence including a number of ruling chiefs. Ranade, then bent on turning the social and political consciousness of his people to the light of truth and reason that his Western education had fostered in him, came into active touch with the Sabha and soon became its brain. A year after the appointment, in 1871, by Gladstone of a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into Indian finance, Ranade on behalf of the Sabha prepared a very important report on the material conditions of Maharashtra. It proves how such independent views could be a valuable supplementary and corrective to the Government publication on the subject. An epitome of this report made by him was published in 1877. He also sent a petition to the British Parliament about responsible self-government, not so much for any response from them, which he thought was premature at that time, as for the growth of national consciousness among the people, resulting from a possible discussion of the petition itself. He felt the need of political education for Indians and such occasions could serve that end. Another notable work of Ranade was to show up the Government's system of land-taxation as the root of India's many agrarian troubles. Ranade knew and was never tired of emphasising that Indians should more and more be trusted with administrative responsibility, and to that end suggested the formation of a Council of Representatives. In his paper on 'Famine Administration in the Bombay Presidency' Ranade expressed his appreciation of the Government's relief measures for the dreadful Deccan famine of 1877, but he also 'held up the weak points of the system before the bar of public opinion'.

In order to review and discuss the more important political problems of the day the Sarvajanik Sabha started publishing its quarterly journal in 1878. For full fifteen years two-thirds of its contents were Ranade's contributions, a considerable number of which dealt with India's agrarian problems regarded by this her patriotic and humane son as the most pressing. Seventyfive per cent of India's population were agriculturists for whose 'wretched condition', Ranade pointed out in his articles, the Government's land policy, the system of rural credit and lack of capital were largely responsible. Local self-government was another

subject Ranade discussed in the journal and he was glad when its cause was advanced under the liberal regime of Lord Ripon. Ranade made certain very wise suggestions for administrative improvement of the Native States. He even outlined a new constitution for them. An idea of his views on social and religious problems also may be had from the pages of the journal. He pleaded, among other things, for raising the marriageable age, for abolishing enforced widowhood. Ranade wanted primary education for the widest possible rural population of the country with provision for 'a small capitation grant for every boy in regular attendance'.

Mention may be made here of two incidents of this time in Ranade's life. Within two years of his coming to Poona in 1871 he lost his wife. His orthodox father apprehended that a social reformer himself, Ranade would marry a widow. He therefore manoeuvred his son into a situation in which Ranade, then thirty, had to marry Ramabai of eleven. An ardent advocate of social reform was now a victim of intense pain, suffering severe public calumny. Years later his new wife who knew his self-shocked inner self characterised it as 'one of the examples of his true self-sacrifice and nobleness of mind'. Another occasion when his orthodox opponents hit him hard was when he cooperated with Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, during the latter's visit to Poona on a lecturing campaign against idol-worship, child marriage and caste distinction, all of which were to Ranade such social and religious evils as required immediate eradication—the declared aim of the Prarthana Samaj, a reform movement within Hinduism.

Under Ranade's wise guidance the activities of the Sarvajanik Sabha expanded even beyond Poona. It encouraged the production and sale of indigenous goods—a precursor of Swadeshi—which affected the sale of foreign goods. It 'aroused political consciousness and moulded political thought' with the result that Poona developed into a most important centre of national work for which Maharashtra has since become famous in history. And this was almost wholly due to the labours of Ranade. 'For twenty years from 1871,' says D.G. Karve, 'the history of Poona became the history of Ranade's doings.' The period witnessed the coming into being of a good number of institutions for the promotion of national work. Young men, in one such, displayed their knowledge and powers of debate by cultivating the art of public speaking. Other institutions revived handicrafts, and encouraged physical culture. The Prarthana Samaj sought to reform society, and purify religious belief and practice.

Such nation-building activities are not for a foreign government to look upon with favour. Ranade, 'the master-mind at the back of the whole movement,' was therefore transferred to Nasik. But nothing could stop the patriot from serving his motherland. At Nasik Ranade founded

a society for the development of Marathi literature and for the publication of good books in Marathi on all subjects. These efforts to reconstruct the national life on progressive lines increased the suspicion of the Government so much that they did not hesitate to connect him with any anti-Government activity of which some beginning had already been made—one of them being the attempt by V.B. Phadke at inciting the peasants to rebellion. Ranade admired Phadke's patriotism but not his methods. Nevertheless, he was transferred from Nasik to Dhulia — a distant place of less importance. The police were then trying their best to implicate Ranade in other 'seditious' acts. Meanwhile several of his claims for promotion in service were ignored. When the Chief Justice of Bombay asked him to curtail his (patriotic) efforts if he wanted promotion, Ranade wrote back : 'I must speak out what seems to me true.' In about two years the Government came to realise that his activities were not anti-Government. He was then appointed Presidency Magistrate at Bombay from where after three months he came to his beloved town of Poona as Subordinate Judge. In 1893 he had the honour of filling up a vacancy on the bench of the Bombay High Court. There was jubilation all over the country, every society in Poona participating in it. And why ? Because Poona knew what Ranade had done for it. More than twenty-four institutions—educational, literary, social and industrial—Ranade founded or helped to found, strengthen or rebuild in that blessed city of the Bombay Presidency—a fact which is enough for his memory to be enshrined in the hearts of the people as their greatest benefactor.

Ranade's forte was social reform to enforce which he sought the help of the Government. Apart from the Hindu orthodoxy, eminent public men like R.G. Bhandarkar and N. Chandravarkar opposed this move. Ranade suggested some broad lines on which such laws might be framed. But the Government of India was unwilling to interfere in social matters. He therefore decided to educate public opinion against the social evils and the greatest thing he did in that connection was the starting of the Indian National Social Conference in 1887, the annual sessions of which strengthened the forces for reform and helped forward its cause. The immense zeal and tireless perseverance with which Ranade threw himself into the work of the Conference attracted the attention of social workers all over India and they joined him and gave him their whole-hearted cooperation in advancing the cause so dear to them all. Thus reinforced, the Conference grew from more to more and before long became a dynamic factor in the collective endeavour of Indians to reform their society.

Ranade believed in the force of higher thoughts and better ideas under the discipline of which alone, he felt, could the mind and heart of the race be moved against the evils of the time, the roots of which were wrong and narrow ideas that had dominated the social mind of medieval India

and brought about her downfall. His speeches at the sessions of the Social Conference were masterly analytical studies of the country's problems and the solutions he suggested could only be those of a wise lover and benefactor of his people. But the illuminating and inspiring ideas with which these speeches were interspersed were his more important contribution to the growth of what he wanted in his countrymen —'a new social consciousness,' 'a new mould of thought which must be cast in fraternity, in a general recognition of the essential equality between man and man'. 'We are children, no doubt, but the children of God, and not of man, and the voice of God in us is the only voice to which we are bound to listen.' In the voicing of this eternal truth rings the power of a new ideal.

This is not to say that the past had no meaning for Ranade. 'We could not,' he said, 'break with the past, if we would. We must not break with it, if we could.' The present and the future were, however, for him more important than the past the lessons of which 'sustain us in our struggle and furnish guidance in our work'. The annual reports of the Social Conference, generally prepared by Ranade, showed how his ideas were working in the minds of the people, and how steps were being taken in different parts of the country to give form to his ideas on which were based the resolutions adopted at the open sessions of the Conference.

Ranade's work for the political advancement of his country took a more definitive shape when he along with seventy-one leading Indians collaborated with A. O. Hume and founded the Indian National Congress whose first session was held in December, 1885. Ranade's role in this was outstanding. Hume called him his 'political guru'. The Vernacular Press Act, the Arms Act, the Civil Service Examination, the Central Asia Questions were among the important questions of the day on which Ranade's weighty utterances moulded public opinion. The Government policy of centralisation was a subject of much criticism by Ranade. He pointed out its defects suggesting how decentralisation could solve very many problems peculiar to a vast country like India with strongly-defined regional variations. His clearest statement on the Ilbert Bill controversy categorically exposed 'the arrogance of the ruling race'.

Apart from his actual political work, his influence as one of the leaders of the national movement of the time turned many a young man towards a dedication to national work. A most eminent one of them, who called Ranade his guru, was Gopal Krishna Gokhale who in a missionary spirit and on a mere subsistence allowance taught for about twenty years in the Fergusson College at Poona, under the Deccan Education Society, in the foundation of both of which Ranade had a hand. Gokhale started in 1905 the famous Servants of India Society 'to train national missionaries for the service of India and to promote by all constitutional means the true interests of the Indian people'. He played a leading role in the

evolution of the Indian National Congress till the rise of the Nationalist Party with their goal of complete independence and a dynamic programme of action.

But Ranade and those of his way of thinking could not go beyond constitutional agitation as the means of achieving what to them were 'possible' political ends. 'Moderation,' said Ranade, 'implies the condition of never vainly aspiring after the impossible or after too remote ideals but striving each day to take the next step in order of natural growth, by doing the work that lies nearest to the hand in a spirit of compromise and fairness.' This was indeed the basic policy of the then Indian National Congress. When in 1893, ^m ^a series of articles in the Indu Prakash of Bombay, Sri Aurobindo exposed, without reservation, the hollowness and futility of 'this policy of protest, petition and prayer, Ranade,' wrote Sri Aurobindo, 'seeing how these articles were acting on the minds of the youths, exhorted me, for two quarters of an hour, to leave off such writing, and take up some Congress work.' But Sri Aurobindo did not give in, neither could his arguments be refuted by Ranade. It was exactly on this ground that Tilak differed with Ranade—Tilak to whom the freedom of his country was the one thing immediately necessary for its all-round progress.

In one of his best known essays Ranade pleaded for the industrialisation of India with the help of science and organised skill and this as an effective means of improving the country's economy and also as a corrective to ignorance, poverty and idleness that sat heavy on the mind and body of Indians. He himself made a move in this direction by helping to start in Poona industrial associations, exhibitions, and even a cotton and silk spinning and weaving company. Ranade was ridiculed by his young opponents when he explained the advantages of foreign capital for the purpose of industrialisation. While manufacture and trading are basic factors in any industrial set-up, in a country like India, Ranade held, they must be co-related to agriculture on which Indian industries should be dependent for their raw and other essential materials rather than on foreign supplies. This was how the country's agriculture could be modernised.

It may be remembered that whatever Ranade did even for the material well-being of his country had always behind it his clear perception of the glorious future of his country. Indeed, his chief concern was how to put his country on the path to progress in truth, reason and rectitude, and this gave meaning to his noble and patriotic efforts. Of an essentially religious nature, he was true to the spirit of his country's past and regarded religion as the governing principle of Indian life. But he was ever against orthodoxy of any kind and his catholic outlook was many a time the subject of severe criticism. In his sermons at the Prarthana Samaj he used often to mention the teachings of the Christ. Later, however, when he found his audience unable to understand him, he would also cite the words

of the medieval saints of Maharashtra, the Gita and the Upanishads. Not only this, he would go to temples and there deliver lectures on the saints of his country. It is said that he used to visit certain places of pilgrimage too.

What distinguished Ranade's religious beliefs, rather, the religious beliefs of the Prarthana Samaj of Bombay which was mostly his creation, was his illuminating exposition of the cult of the saints of Maharashtra as a new form of Theism based on the supremacy of one God. These saints worshipped God, one as Rama, another as Krishna, the third as Vithoba, the fourth as Siva, and so on. And when they visited other shrines, there would manifest to their eyes the image not in its own form but in the form they loved and worshipped. The recognition of this sublime fact of spiritual experience gave a new turn to the Prarthana Samaj movement in western India and it was in this that it differed from the Brahmo Samaj which rejected idol-worship as a hindrance to free religious development. While Keshub's wider outlook sought to bring about a rapprochement between Hinduism and Brahmoism, Ranade's view that the latter movement 'not being general in its character, failed to stir the heart of the nation', tended in the same direction.

Generally, the greatness of a great man lies in his contribution in one or a few fields of human activity and is appraised as such. Ranade's contribution to India's resurgence was not confined to any particular sphere of life. Though very near to it, he was no versatile genius. Yet his varied public activities in the cause of progress and well-being of his people in almost every walk of life, the influence on others of his devout and gentle nature, of his noble learning, his religious convictions and unbounded optimism, rank him as one of the builders of the India of today. Speaking of Ranade Sri Aurobindo says : 'If a foreigner were to ask us what this Mahratta economist, reformer, patriot precisely did that we give him so high a place in our memory, we should find it a little difficult to answer. We should have to point to those activities of a mass of men in which his soul and thought were present as a formless former of things, to the great figures of present-day Indian life who received the breath of his spirit. And in the end we should have to reply by a counter question, 'What would Maharashtra of today have been without Mahadev Govind Ranade and what would India of today be without Maharashtra ?'

Indeed, every field of national activity—religion, society, literature, history, economics, education and industry—received in his hands a new turn, a fresh life. That he touched life at all points is perhaps the truest estimate of him. And this is because Ranade felt that in the perfection of the whole man lies the future greatness of India—a perception of the great truth of the New Dawn that was to come. 'The end is to renovate', he said, 'to purify, and also to perfect the whole man by liberating his intellect, elevating his standard of duty, and perfecting all his powers. Till so

renovated, purified and perfected we can never hope to be what our ancestors once were—the chosen people, to whom great tasks were allotted and by whom great deeds were performed.'

A deep student of history, Ranade read in the historic evolution of India that process of synthesis and assimilation which has sustained her march through the ages towards the future. The history of India, according to Ranade, has all along been a continuous effort to evolve an integrated civilisation out of all creeds and cultures gathered in this land, all its spiritual forms and beliefs, all social and political experiments. 'By inheritence, tradition and discipline the Indian people are best fitted to work for the early dawn which will before long usher in full blaze the Sun of Righteousness and Glory uniting all nations in a common brotherhood.' The work of medieval India is to Ranade the continuation of this ancient process of synthesis in Indian history. In polity this process was evident in 'the genuine effort of the Marathas to achieve the formation of a Confederacy of States animated by a common patriotism.' Ranade also claimed a long ancestry for the Brahmo Samaj movement. He held that Raja Rammohan Roy, one of the fathers of the movement, was neither the first nor the last. 'We are the representatives of an old race; as old as the Bhagavata Gita and the Bhagavata Purana, much older still; as old as Narada, Prahlada, and Vasudeva and the nine sages who visited Janaka. From that time there is a continuity of sādhus and saints down to the present day.'

That this present will lead to a greater future was also his deep conviction. He said : T profess implicit faith in two articles of my creed. This country of ours is the true land of promise. This race of ours is the chosen race. It was not for nothing that God has showered His choicest blessings on this ancient land of Aryavarta. We can see His hand in history. Above all other countries, we inherit a civilisation and a religious and social policy which have been allowed to work their own free development on the big theatre of time. There has been no revolution, and yet the old condition of things has been tending to reform itself by the slow process of assimilation. The great religions of the world took their birth here and now they meet again as brothers prepared to welcome a higher dispensation, which will unite all and vivify all. India alone, among all the countries of the world, has been so favoured, and we may derive much strength of inward hope from such a contemplation.... With a liberated manhood, with a buoyant hope, with a faith that never shirks duty, with a sense of justice that deals fairly to all, with unclouded intellect and powers fully cultivated, and lastly, with a love that overleaps all bounds, renovated India will take her proper rank among the nations of the world, and be the master of the situation and of her own destiny. This is the goal to be reached; this is the promised land.'

And ardent patriot, a devoted servant of his people—this was the essence of Ranade whose life and work along with those of the pioneers have laid,

broad and deep, the foundation on which stands the India of, today.

On 16 December 1900, this noble son of India left his body.

Writing in the Kesari on Ranade's passing, Tilak stated : 'It was Madhavraoji who first took upon himself the impossible task of thinking how to breathe life into the cold lump of clay and ceaselessly work for it, and this has been his principal claim to extraordinary greatness... He was the only man of his time who thought day and night to bring back life to our fallen nation ...In fact, that Maharashtra later on showed greater life and greater public activities was all due to the unremitting labours of Ranade for more than a quarter of a century.'

It is these heroic labours of modern India's pioneers that chased away the darkness of the medieval times and opened the horizon to the gleamings of a New Dawn of which this great son of Maharashtra and of India was a far-seeing pioneer.