Setumadhavarao Pagdi or Sethu Madhav Rao Pagdi[1] (27 August 1910 – 14 October 1994) was an Indian civil servant, a polyglot linguist, an accomplished historian and a distinguished man of letters specialised in modern Maratha history, especially the history of Shivaji.
Setu Madhavrao was well versed in Marathi, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian, apart from Kannada, which was his mother tongue.
[3] Following in the footsteps of the noted Bengali historian Jadunath Sarkar, Setu Madhavrao wrote Shivaji's biography in Marathi and English and the theory enkindled the spirit of nationalism in his readers.
[5] Madhavrao was born on 27 August 1910 in Nilanga, Hyderabad State (now part of Maharashtra) into a Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family of landlords.
[7][8] He was well-versed in Marathi, Kannada, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Telugu and tribal languages like Gondi and Kolami [3]