Introduction

The difficulties which the Satyashodhak Samaj encountered shortly after its foundation were not the symptoms of a decline in the vigour and attractiveness of its ideas, but rather the opposite. The following decade witnessed a rich flowering of institutional and organisational activity. The original concerns of the society, and Phule's drawing of a closer identification with Maharashtra's cultivators, provided the ideological basis for this activity. Both Phule and other Satyashodhak polemicists had always sought to hold together different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas and symbols, and the resulting ambiguity was just what gave Satyashodhak ideology its tremendous appeal. This very diversity allowed new leaders to concentrate on their own areas of organisation, whilst maintaining a larger orientation held in common with others who identified themselves in some way with the cause of the lower castes. With this simultaneous continuity and dissension, the non-Brahman movement provides a fascinating example of the relationship between ideas and political organisation under British rule.

All groups within the non-Brahman movement united in agreeing on the extreme inequality of Maharashtrian society. Those who laboured on the land and in the new urban centres formed the vast majority of the population, and contributed almost all of the revenues of the Bombay government. However, the much smaller numbers of those who made a living in administrative, professional, and other clerical and service roles had monopolised the benefits of education and employment under British rule.