Setumadhavarao Pagdi or Sethu Madhav Rao PagdiK. Venkateshwarlu
A slice of Marathi history
The Hindu, 9 May 2011. (27 August 1910 – 14 October 1994) was an Indian

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

, a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

, an accomplished

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and a distinguished man of letters specialised in modern

Maratha The Marathi people (Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as a ...

history, especially the history of

Shivaji Shivaji Bhonsale I (; 19 February 1630 – 3 April 1680), also referred to as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan. Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the declining Adi ...

. He also worked as the secretary of

Government of Maharashtra The Government of Maharashtra is the state governing authority for the states of india, state of Maharashtra, India. It is a democratically elected State governments of India, government with 288 Member of the Legislative Assembly (India), MLAs ...

. As a secretary he did his job fairly well. Setu Madhavrao was well versed in Marathi, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian, apart from Kannada, which was his mother tongue. As a linguist he discovered the sound system and the Grammar of tribal dialect called ''Gaudi''. He was one who served the cause of Marathi against all odds in pre and post - Independent

Hyderabad state Hyderabad State () was a princely state located in the south-central Deccan region of India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and ...

. Following in the footsteps of the noted Bengali historian

Jadunath Sarkar Sir Jadunath Sarkar (10 December 1870 – 19 May 1958) was a prominent Indian historian and a specialist on the Mughal dynasty. Academic career Sarkar was born in Karachmaria village in Natore, Bengal to Rajkumar Sarkar, the local Zamindar ...

, Setu Madhavrao wrote

's biography in Marathi and English and the theory enkindled the spirit of nationalism in his readers. The

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

awarded him the civilian honour of the

Padma Bhushan The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished servi ...

in 1992.

Early life

Madhavrao was born on 27 August 1910 in

Nilanga Nilanga(निलंगा) is a town with a Nagar panchayat, municipal council in Latur District in the Indian States and territories of India, state of Maharashtra. It is also the headquarters for Nilanga Taluka. The city being small is the Ta ...

Hyderabad State Hyderabad State () was a princely state located in the south-central Deccan region of India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and ...

(now part of Maharashtra) into a

Deshastha Madhva Brahmin Deshastha Brahmin is a Hindu Brahmin subcaste mainly from the Indian state of Maharashtra and northern area of the state of Karnataka. Other than these states, according to authors K. S. Singh, Gregory Naik and Pran Nath Chopra, Deshastha B ...

family of landlords. He was educated in

Gulbarga Kalaburagi, formerly known as Gulbarga, is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Kalaburagi district and is the largest city in the region of North Karnataka ( Kalyana-Karnataka). Kalaburagi i ...

Osmanabad Osmanabad (; pronounced as ''Usmānābād''),is a city and a municipal council in Osmanabad district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Osmanabad derives its name from the last ruler of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan. Osmanabad city is the ad ...

, and

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

. He obtained his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree from

Banaras Hindu University Banaras Hindu University (BHU) IAST: kāśī hindū viśvavidyālaya IPA: /kaːʃiː hɪnd̪uː ʋɪʃwəʋid̪jaːləj/), is a collegiate, central, and research university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, and founded in 191 ...

in 1930 and

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. ...

degree from

Allahabad University , mottoeng = "As Many Branches So Many Trees" , established = , type = Public , chancellor = Ashish Chauhan , vice_chancellor = Sangita Srivastava , head_label ...

three years later. He was well-versed in

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of North India, northern, Central India, centr ...

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

and

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Literary works

In English

* ''Among the Gonds of Adilabad'', 1949 * ''Grammar of the Kolami Language'', 1950 * ''Grammar of the Gondi Language'', 1954 * ''Tribal Welfare in Adilabad'', 1950 * ''History of Freedom Struggle in Hyderabad: 1800-1920'' (Edited work in three volumes), 1956 * ''Eighteenth Century Deccan'', 1963 * ''Maratha Mughal Relations: 1680-1707'', 1966 * ''Studies in Maratha History Vol. 2'', 1971 * ''Srinath Madhavji Shinde alias Alijah

Mahadji Scindia Mahadaji Shinde (b. 23 December 1730 – 12 February 1794), later known as Mahadji Scindia or Madhava Rao Sindhia, was a Maratha statesman and ruler of Ujjain in Central India. He was the fifth and the youngest son of Ranoji Rao Scindia, the f ...

Gwalior Gwalior() is a major city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; it lies in northern part of Madhya Pradesh and is one of the Counter-magnet cities. Located south of Delhi, the capital city of India, from Agra and from Bhopal, the ...

In Marathi

* ''Usha'', a collection of short stories, 1938 * ''Ashokachi Pane'', a collection of essays, 1941 * ''Warangalche Kakatiya Raje'', 1946 * ''Sufi Sampraday, Tatvadnyan Ani Karya'', 1953 * ''Mirza Ghalib Ani Tyachya Ghazala'', 1958 * ''Panipatcha Sangram'', 1961 * ''Marathe Va Aurangzeb'', 1963 * ''Mogal Maratha Sangharsh'' (मोगल मराठा संघर्ष), 1965 * ''Tahmasnama'', 1967 * ''Shivacharitra: Ek Abhyas'', 1971 * ''Chhatrapati Shivaji'', 1974 * ''भारतीय मुसलमानः शोध आणि बोध'' * ''१८५७चे आणखी काही पैलू''

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pagadi, Setuaadhavarao Marathi-language writers Marathi people 20th-century Indian essayists Indian male essayists 1910 births 1994 deaths 20th-century Indian historians Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in literature & education