Gopal Krishna Gokhale

01The teacher of Poona

Gokhale was born at Kotluk in Ratnagiri district into a poor family; his elder brother paid for his schooling out of a small clerk’s salary. After graduating from Elphinstone College in 1884 he joined the Deccan Education Society in Poona and taught English, history and economics at Fergusson College for nearly twenty years on a pittance. Mahadev Govind Ranade became his teacher in public life. Gokhale edited the Sudharak and the Sarvajanik Sabha’s quarterly and, unlike his fellow Poona man Tilak, believed in steady constitutional pressure.

02Council and Society

From 1902 he sat in the Imperial Legislative Council, where his budget speeches took apart British spending figure by figure and called for free primary education. On 12 June 1905 he founded the Servants of India Society in Poona, whose members took vows of poverty and lifelong service. That December he presided over the Congress at Banaras. In 1912 he toured South Africa at Gandhi’s invitation, and when Gandhi came home in 1915 Gokhale asked him to spend a year travelling India before speaking. Gokhale died on 19 February 1915, aged forty-eight.

Place · Old town on the Mula–Mutha; resettled by Shahaji and Jijabai in the 1630s; Peshwa capital from 1730PuneThe town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.Read →