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Updated: June 15, 2025
He is the "Chhatrapati Maharajah," and is acknowledged to be as such the head of the Mahratta Princes of India. One would have thought that such a lineage would have sufficed in itself to invest the Maharajah of Kolhapur with a certain measure of sanctity in the eyes of Tilak and his followers. Far from it. His Highness is an enlightened ruler and a man of great simplicity of character.
Sabnis, besides portending unpalatable reforms, was therefore in itself very unwelcome to the Kolhapur Brahmans, amongst whom one of the most influential, Mr. B.N. Joshi, the Chief Judge, was a personal friend of Tilak.
In the year which preceded the Kolhapur conspiracy, and just after the first dastardly bomb outrage at Muzafferpur to which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy fell victims, an article appeared in the Vishvavritta, a Kolhapur monthly magazine, for which its editor, Mr. Bijapurkar, a Brahman, who until 1905 had been Professor of Sanscrit at the Rajaram College, was subsequently prosecuted and convicted.
There had been long minorities in Kolhapur, and, especially during the more or less nominal reign of the present Maharajah's predecessor, Shivaji IV., who ultimately went mad, the Prime Minister, a Chitpavan Brahman of Ratnagiri, acquired almost supreme power in the State, and filled every important post with his fellow caste men, of whom he introduced more than a hundred into the public service.
The dispute was aggravated when the Rajpadhya the family priest of the Kolhapur ruling family himself refused the Vedic ritual to his Highness, even when two Judges, both Brahmans, who were appointed to form with him a committee of three to decide the issue, pronounced in favour of the Maharajah's claim.
Thus, whereas we have seen in Kolhapur the Brahmans of the Deccan assert that in this "age of darkness" there can be no Kshatriyas, their fellow-caste-men in Bengal are quite willing to invest Kayasthas with the sacred thread, on the ground that they are really of Kshatriya descent, in order to stimulate martial virtues amongst the Bengalees by reviving for their benefit the old Vedic caste of warriors.
For in Kolhapur, as in Poona, it was the Brahman Press controlled by Tilak that familiarized the rising generation with the idea of political murder.
Absolute evidence in such matters is difficult to obtain, but there was a very significant and quite authentic case last year, which I may as well quote here, though it occurred in the Bombay Presidency. Two Brahman ladies of good position from Bombay were discovered at Kolhapur wearing the garb of sanyasis, i.e., mendicant ascetics.
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