Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
Amongst the majority of Brahmans in Kolhapur and elsewhere this
proclamation, I fear, found no echo, for their hostility towards their
own Maharajah had often assumed or encouraged criminal forms of
violence. It had certainly not remained confined to the spiritual
domain, and it became absolutely savage when, in 1902, his Highness
declared that he would reserve at least half the posts in the State for
qualified men of the non-Brahman communities. Under the constant
inspiration of Poona, the Tilak Press waged relentless war against his
Highness, preaching disaffection towards his Government, just as it
preached disaffection towards the British _Raj_; and the agitation in
Kolhapur itself was reinforced by the advent of a large number of Poona
Brahmans who, in consequence of a recrudescence of plague, fled from
that city to the Maharajah's capital. They flung themselves eagerly into
the fray, and had the audacity even to start a mock "Parliament." But
the Maharajah was determined to be master in his own State, and in Mr.
Sabnis he had found a Prime Minister who loyally and courageously
carried out his policy for the improvement of the administration and the
spread of education amongst the non-Brahman castes. The Maharajah
realizes that Brahman ascendency cannot be broken down permanently
unless the non-Brahman castes are adequately equipped to compete with
them in the public services. Amongst these there is plenty of loyalty to
the ruling chief, for his Mahratta subjects have not wholly forgotten
the tyranny of Chitpavan Brahman rule either under Shivaji IV.'s Prime
Minister or in the less recent times of the Poona Peshwas. One of the
most interesting institutions in Kolhapur is a hostel specially endowed
for non-Brahman, Mahratta, Mahomedan, and Jain youths who are following
the courses of the Rajaram College. The control of education plays in
Kolhapur as conspicuous a part as at Poona in the struggle between the
forces of order and disorder, and it is amongst the Kolhapur youth that
the latter have made their most strenuous exertions and with the same
lawless results.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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