Chitpavan Brahman - Sociopolitical Organization

Chitpavans have had no caste panchayat as many other castes have had, but social control was firm, if informal. The reformer Justice Mahadeo Govind Ranade was made to perform penance after a nineteenth-century tea party in a Christian home, and D. K. Karve (1858-1962), founder of a widows' home and later the first women's university in India, was ostracized for marrying a widow in the late nineteenth century. Chitpavans have been fighters in the front ranks of reform as well as defenders of traditionalism.