Narayan Meghaji Lokhande

A social reformer who was associated with the cause of mill workers and was the first one to organise workers in 1884. He was part of the Satyashodak movement led by Jyotiba Phule. Lokhande took up the issues of regular working hours, weekly holidays. He was in opposition to Tilaks' idea of making Ganesh Chaturthi into a community event as he considered it to be a non-secular event which would only serve to take the masses towards superstition and ignorance. At that time he had unsuccessfully tried to get it banned by the British.

Sources: One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices by Neera Adarkar and Meena Menon.