| | T N Atre’s Gaav-Gada has been justly celebrated as a Marathi language classic from the point
of view of diction and style. Also, Atre must be considered the first author, after Jotirao
Phule, to attempt to make the educated urbanite aware of the problems of the farmer by
way of a full-length book. The core theme of Atre’s book is the disastrous social and
moral consequences of a medieval socio-economic system and mindset lingering on into the
early decades of the 20th century. This moral degeneration, according to Atre, is the progeny
of the vatan system and his book is an invocation to get rid of the vatan system and the hold
of the vatan mentality induced by it and to embrace the modern economic order of the market.
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