Dattatreya Balkrushna Kalelkar

Dattatreya Balkrishna Kalelkar (1 December 1885 – 21 August 1981), popularly known as Kaka Kalelkar, was an Indian independence activist, social reformer, journalist and an eminent follower of the philosophy and methods of Mahatma Gandhi. Kalelkar was born in Satara on 1 December 1885. His family's ancestral village of Kaleli, near Sawantwadi in Maharashtra, gave him his surname Kalelkar. He matriculated in 1903 and completed B.A. in Philosophy from Fergusson College, Pune in 1907. He appeared in the first year examination of LL.B. and joined Ganesh Vidyalaya in Belgaum in 1908. He worked for a while on the editorial staff of a nationalistic Marathi daily named Rashtramat, and then as a teacher at a school named Ganganath Vidyalaya in Baroda in 1910. In 1912, the British government forcibly closed down the school because of its nationalistic spirit. He traveled to the Himalayas by foot and later joined Acharya Kripalani on a visit to Burma (Myanmar) in 1913. He first met Mahatma Gandhi in 1915.