Kursendas Mulji

Who was Kursendas Mulji?

Karsandas Mulji was an Indian journalist and social reformer. Born to a family belonging to the Bhatia or trading caste of western India, he was repudiated by his family because of his views on widow remarriage. He became a vernacular schoolmaster and started a weekly paper in Gujarati called The Satya Prakash, in which he attacked what he perceived to be the immoralities of the Maharajas or hereditary high priests of the Vallabhacharya sect of Vaishnavism, to which the Bhatias belong. In a libel suit brought against him in the High Court at Bombay in 1862, he won a victory on the main issue. After a visit to England on business in connection with the cotton trade, which was not successful and brought on him excommunication from his caste, he was appointed in 1874 to administer a native state in Kathiawar during the minority of the chief. He died there in August 1875.

See History of the Sect of Maharajas or Wallabhacharyas of Western India.