G.K. Devadhar

Founder

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G.K. Devadhar is the founder of Servants of India Society (1905)[1], an Indian non-profit working on education, tribal welfare and rural & agriculture from Pune.

Gopal Krishna Devadhar was an Indian educator and social worker who was one of the founding members of the Servants of India Society, established by Gopal Krishna Gokhale at Pune on 12 June 1905. He is also known as a founder of the Poona Seva Sadan Society, an institution for the education and welfare of women.

Career

Devadhar joined Gokhale, Anant Vinayak Patwardhan and Natesh Appaji Dravid as a founding member of the Servants of India Society in 1905. The Society trained members through a five-year probation to work for modest salaries on literacy, rural and tribal development, emergency relief and social reform.

In 1909 Devadhar helped found the Poona Seva Sadan Society together with Ramabai Ranade, the widow of the reformer M. G. Ranade, to promote the welfare and training of women. The society was formally registered in 1917, and Devadhar published an account of its plan and results in 1921. He later served as vice-president of the Servants of India Society.

Recognition

Devadhar was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1927 New Year Honours, where he was listed as vice-president of the Servants of India Society, Bombay.[2][3][4][5]

Servants of India Society

Founded on 12 June 1905 in Pune by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the Servants of India Society trained 'young missionaries of Indian nationalism' to devote their lives to the country's cause, playing a critical role in the independence movement, famine relief, cooperatives and the uplift of tribal and depressed communities. One of India's oldest secular service societies, it still runs primary schools, hostels, a rural development centre and educational institutions for tribal and underprivileged communities across several states from its historic Pune headquarters.

Servants of India Society reports the following, on its own site: