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“ A life well-disciplined from every point of view enabled him to live to a good old age. If Dadabhai and Bhandarkar were asked to give out the secret of their really glorious long lives, we have little doubt that they would have attributed it to the same cause as Surendranath. Early in life Bhandarkar realised that man is made of the body, the mind and the soul, and for the full realisation of his destiny he had to care equally for the three. ”

“ He most firmly believed that there could be no political advancement without social and moral advancement. In social matters, as in all other things, Sir Ramkrishna was not a revolutionary, at least he considered himself not to be so. Speaking on one occasion on the question of caste-distinction, he said, “I do not wish you to obliterate all distinctions at once,” because he realised that an evil of very long standing could not be destroyed in a short time and easily. It required patient and persevering labour to do it. ”

“ While Sir Ramkrishna certainly rendered uncommon services to the educational advancement of the Presidency and has for that reason a claim on the lasting gratitude of his country-men, in our opinion his life-long work as a religious and social reformer more even than his work in the field of education entitles him to the unstinted gratitude of all. ”

“ Those who have had the good fortune of listening to his sermons and Kirtans in the Samajes in Bombay and Poona will not fail to remember with gratitude the great service rendered by him to the cause of Theism on this side of the country. They will also realise now more fully than ever before, what a source of inspiration Sir Ramkrishna’s example and precept have been to them to live nobly and religiously as he did. ”

“ His services to the cause of Theism in Western India are unequalled. By his personal example, by his spotless character, by his sermons and lectures, by his writings and speeches, by his Kirtans, he has served the cause of the Samaj as no living man has done. Dr. Bhandarkar was one of the greatest exponents of the Bhakti School, but his Bhakti had the element of reason in it and was therefore free from the tinge of irrationality and morbidity. ”

“ By his passing away we have lost one who loved and practised truth, whose watchword was courage, whose precept and practice were never at variance with each other, whose faith in God nothing could shake and who, to speak in the words of Ramdas, was blessed because he in his lifetime conquered prapancha and obtained paramartha. ”

“ He abhorred the prevalent custom of marrying girls in their tender age and characterised it as human sacrifice. On the question of caste, he held very distinct and advanced views and was in favour of the uplift of the depressed classes. Social and moral reform was according to him the great and perhaps the only panacea for the many evils from which our country suffers. ”

“ He presided over the deliberations of the Anti-Untouchability Conference and from his knowledge of the subject showed that the people who are considered untouchables now were not so in the olden days, and that justice and fairplay required that they should be treated as our equals and every sympathy and love be shown to them. ”