A True reformist: Raghunath Karve

To be a few steps ahead of the world, one needs extraordinary foresight, intelligence and strong resoluteness. To add to this, he came from the family of a social reformer. To be the topper at Matriculation, record unusual accomplishments in Mathematics and French was very easy for him. But he found it very difficult to get the people to digest his out of the world Reform Movement. Of course, he would not yield easily. The heat of his radical revolutionary ideas was intolerable even to the modern Wilson College and he had to forsake the job of a professor.

July 1927 introduced a new age in Maharashtra. The magazine ‘Samajswasthya’ [Public Health], which for 26 years was dedicated to contraception, family planning and population control, brought sleepless nights in the life of many stalwarts through its article on family planning.? In those days, even the so called progressive Maharashtra could not tolerate such a direct and fully scientific presentation of the theme. He tried to impress on the minds of the people that if they want to keep the family limited, use of family planning tools has no alternative. He pointed out that sexual pleasure is not the monopoly of man alone. He emphasizes that even women must enjoy this freedom of sexual pleasure. The magazine was declared obscene. But he believed that obscenity does not exist in any article, picture or story. It is in the mind of a person.

No wonder, he had to face a number of court cases. The courts even declared punishments on him.? But the flame of his social reforms became the brighter. The records show that senior barristers like Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar stood in the court to fight on his behalf.

He had the courage to directly state that a woman is physically shattered by giving birth to too many children. His wife Malati supported him wholeheartedly. They together started a family control centre in their house and invited public wrath to such an extent that while he was still alive, people took out his funeral. But that only resulted in making him immortal. He had foreseen ninety years ago what we are experiencing today – the suffocation due to population explosion . This social revolutionist, Raghunath Karve, the son of Bharatratna Dhondo Keshav Karve, passed away on 14th October, 1953.? article