Kashinath Tribak Telang was born in Bombay in 1850 in a Gowd Saraswat Brahmin family - one of the ten or twelve which had migrated from Goa to Bombay in the early years of this nineteenth century. Among his contemporaries, Telang was incomparable in many respects. He was highly respected for his scholarship and wisdom.

One of the best products of the Elphinstone High School and later of the Elphinstone College (of Bombay), Kashinath became a Master of Arts in 1869 before he was twenty, and took his degree in law in the same year. He was admitted to the Bar at the Bombay High Court at the age of twenty-two.

Among those who had a lasting influence on the young Kshinath’s adult years were his school friend, Shripad Babaji Thakur, the first Indian from Bombay to be recruited to the Indian Civil Service, and his two teachers, Bal Mangesh Wagle and Narayan Mahadev Paramanand. Later, in politics, Telang regarded Dadabhai Naoroji as his guru, and throughout his public career he worked in close collaboration with Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji and Dinshaw Wacha.

Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Mahadev Govind Ranade and Krishnajipant Nulkar regarded Telang as a valuable colleague in matters concerning social reform and social progress, and Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar, who was five years younger, worked with him in almost all public activities. Principal Wordsworth of the Elphinstone College found in Telang a man of rare devotion to every cause that was just.

At an early age, Kashinath was married to Putalben, daughters of Bhairavnath Kanvinde. After her marriage, and as Kshinath’s wife, Putalben was re-named Annapurabai. They had six children, four daughters and two sons.

The period of ten years from 1870 to 1880 was one of apprenticeship for Telang in his public career. During this period he read two papers which earned for him a reputation as a scholar and a thinker and as a powerful critic. The first paper was on Shankarcharya whose teachings profoundly influenced Telang’s thoughts and his outlook on life. In the second paper, which was on the Ramayana, he refuted the fantastic theory put forward by a German scholar that the great epic was copied from Homer’s ‘Iliad’.


During theses formative years, he entered the political arena with his powerful writings on the Vernacular Press Act of Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, and Indians. In his paper on the subject in favour of the retention of the duties on the import of cotton goods from Mnchester, in order that protection may be given to the Indian textile industry, although he was an advocate of the principle of Free Trade. Before he was thirty, Telang, had already become known to his contemporaries as “the brilliant specimen of the highest Indian intellectuality" as Dinshaw Wacha called him.

Two of the political bodies , in the activities of which Telang took a leading part, were the East India Association (1880-85) and the Bombay Presidency Association which took the place of the former in 1885.

By conviction, Telang was a reformer and was regarded by his great contemporary, Pherozeshah Mehta, as an authority on all matters concerning Hindu social reform and legislation on it. His address on “Should social reform precede political reform?” was intended as an answer to the Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, Sir Auckland Colvin, who, in a patronising mood and manner, advised the leaders of the newly founded Congress not to talk of political reform or presume to advisethe rulers about reforms in

administration until they had set their own house in order in social matters.

This address in which Telang pleaded that social reform and political reform could go hand in hand, reflected the role which he played in the public life of the country. He was an ardent social reformer and, at the same time, was among those who led the movement for political reform.

Although Telang’s name ranked high among those most highly respected in the domain of social reform, and although, as he said in one of his memorable address, he believed it did not bring with it peace but a sword to fight for justice”, he was not known for the heroism which is associated with pioneers of the movement of social reform like Rammohan Roy, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Vishnushastri Pandit, Agarkar and Karve.

After giving a tough fight to orthodoxy in the controversy over the Age of Consent Bill of 1891, he had the marriages of his two daughters performed at the ages of nine and thirteen. Telang himself confessed that he had done what he should not have done. He was severely criticised and condemned even by some of his friends. There were a few close friends who knew him better. They could appreciate and sympathise with his difficulties as a household and a husband.

His wife, who was very ill at the time, had set her illness if here husband refused to respect her wishes and adhered to his principles. He allowed his loyalty to his wife to supersede his loyalty to his principles. Telang himself was on his deathbed at the time and died, shortly after the marriages were performed, on 2 September 1893 when he was only forty-three.

Whenever Telang spoke on education, he impressed his audience by his broad vision and his progressive outlook in regard to all educational questions. He gave evidence of these qualities while he worked as a member of the Hunter Commission on Education and on the Joint Schools Committee appointed by the Bombay Municipality. No educational problem had a greater claim on his attention and energies than that of the education of girls.

The institution to which Telang gave his best were the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society and the Hindu Union Club. Many of his learned papers were read before the S. L. & S. Society, and he looked upon the Hindu Union Club as an institution which could promote “social union by interchange of ideas and sympathies” among the Hindus. As President of the Club, he successfully tried to bring together under its roof the elite among the Hindus of all castes and sections.

Although Telang regarded himself as an Indian first, he was proud to be a Hindu , and exemplified in himself the best type of the Hindu culture. He suffered from piles. A surgical operation could have cured him, but his parents would not let his plies be touched with a knife. John Adam, Telang’s intimate friend, described his submission to their objections as an unpardonable surrender to ignorance. “Yes, it is so.” Telang said to his friend from his death-bed,” but I am a Hindu and can no more help being a Hindu than you, being a Scotchman, can help being a Scotchman.” In him was exemplified the noblest type of a Hindu and, therefore, of an Indian.

Before Telang was forty, he was appointed a Judge of the Bombay High Court-the highest appointment conferred upon an Indian in those days. At the time of his death, he also filled another post of great honour, that of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay. He was the first Indian appointed to this exalted post, and it speaks of the esteem in which he was held in public life.