Page:Who's Who in India Supplement 2 (1914).djvu/179

SUPPLEMENT 113 and philanthropic work and to no small extent are the present popularity and manifold activities of the Sevasadan movement due to this great woman who to-day occupies, by her qualities of head and heart, a pre-eminent position in the Deccan, Dhondo Keshav Karve, b.a., Professorof Mathematics, Fergusson College, Poona, was born in May, 1858, and educated at the Elphinstone College, Bombay. Professor Karve has dedi- cated his life to the cause of womanhood in Southern India and in his own words " I love that cause as I love anything.'* After graduating at the age of 27 he lived in Bombay for 7 years and worked for sometime as mathematical teacher in the Cathedral Girls' High School and the Alexandra Native Girls' English Institution. At the end of 1891 when the mathematical teachership in the Fergusson College fell vacant it was offered to him by the Hon'ble Professor Gokhale who was his class fellow in the Elphinstone College. In 1893, he, then a widower, his wife having died shortly before, determined to inaugurate his work in the cause of the re- marriage of Hindu widows by himself marrying a widow. Eight years later, in 1901, he saw the wisdom of separating the two causes of women's education and widow remarriage and commenced to devote himself to the .former, transferring the management of the purely social reform cause to a friend. In 1907, the next step was taken by him of founding the Mahila Vidyalaya which was intended to be an institution for the encouragement of marriage at a later age than had been customary till then. In 19 10, again, Professor Karve inaugurated the movement to establish a self-denying body of women (chiefly widows) who were to devote their lives to the administration of the Mahila Vidyalaya or that part of it, at all events, which is intended to promote education and general social reform. This last body bears, in its idealism, a striking resemblance to and may be said to be the comple- ment of another body in Poona founded by the Hon'ble Mr. Gokhale, namely, the Servants of India Society. In the