one of India's Citpāvan Brahmans of Mahārāshtra who was a judge of the High Court of Bombay, a noted historian, and an active participant in social and economic reform movements.

During his seven years as a judge in Bombay, Ranade worked for social reform in the areas of child marriage, widow remarriage, and woman's rights. After his appointment as instructor of history at Elphinstone College, Bombay (1866), he became interested in the history of the Marāthās, a militaristic Hindu ethnic group that established the independent kingdom of Mahārāshtra (1674–1818). The publication of his Rise of the Maratha Power followed in 1900.

Ranade has been called the father of Indian economics for urging (unsuccessfully) the British government to initiate industrialization and state welfare programs. He was an early member of the Prarthana Samaj (“Prayer Society”), which sought to reform the social customs of orthodox Hinduism. He regularly voiced views on social and economic reform at the annual sessions of the Indian National Social Conference, which he founded in 1887. Ranade inspired many other Indian social reformers, most notably the educator and legislator Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who carried on Ranade's reform work after his death.