As part of his doctoral research in the early 1970s, JV Naik began to investigate the history of the Prarthana Samaj, a religious and socia...
As part of his doctoral research in the early 1970s, JV Naik began to investigate the history of the Prarthana Samaj, a religious and social reform movement that emerged in the 1860s in Mumbai under the influence of Dadoba Pandoorung (1814-1882).
Dadoba, a schoolteacher-turned-civil servant, was perhaps the first person to write an autobiography in Marathi. Edited by AK Priolkar and first published in 1947, the surviving text, which abruptly ends in 1847, is a valuable first-hand account of life in the 19th century.
Dadoba’s younger brother Bhaskar Pandoorung died in 1847, and as luck would have it, the last page of the text is devoted to him. Dadoba mentions in passing that Bhaskar, using the pseudonym “A Hindoo”, wrote numerous letters in the 1840s to English newspapers critical of the rule of the East India Company. Though scholars had been aware of this fact since the early 1920s when the autobiography was discovered, no one had actually attempted to trace them or thought of them as important.
JV Naik, working at the Asiatic Society of Mumbai and the Maharashtra State Archives, managed to discover a set of eight letters written by “A Hindoo” in the 1841 issues of the Bombay Gazette. In these letters, A Hindoo delivered...
