BRAHMANISM AND DISAFFECTION IN THE DECCAN.
Fundamental as is the antagonism between the civilization represented by
the British _Raj_ and the essential spirit of Brahmanism. It is not, of
course, always or everywhere equally acute, for there is no more
uniformity about Brahmanism than about any other Indian growth. But in
the Deccan Brahmanism has remained more fiercely militant than in any
other part of India, chiefly perhaps because nowhere had it wielded such
absolute power within times which may still be called recent. Far into
the eighteenth century Poona had been the capital of a theocratic State
in which behind the throne of the Peshwas both spiritual and secular
authority were concentrated in the hands of the Brahmans. Such memories
are slow to die and least of all in an ancient and conservative country
like India, and there was one sept of Brahmans, at any rate, who were
determined not to let them die.
The Chitpavan Brahmans are undoubtedly the most powerful and the most
able of all the Brahmans of the Deccan. A curious legend ascribes their
origin to the miraculous intervention of Parashurama, the sixth Avatar
of the god Vishnu, who finding no Brahmans to release him by the
accustomed ritual from the defilement of his earthly labours, dragged on
to shore the bodies of fourteen barbarians that he had found washed up
from the ocean, burnt them on a funeral pyre and then breathed life and
Brahmanhood into their ashes. On these new made Brahmans he conferred
the name Chitpavan, which means "purified by fire," and all the land of
the Konkan from which, by a bolt from his arrow, he caused the sea for
ever to recede. Every Chitpavan to-day claims descent from one or other
of the fourteen divinely Brahmanized barbarians, whom some believe to
have been hardy Norsemen driven in their long ships on to the sandy
shores of what is now the Bombay Presidency. At any rate, as has been
well said of them, Western daring and Eastern craft look out alike from
the alert features and clear parchment skin and through the strange
stone-grey eyes of the Chitpavan. It was not, however, till about two
centuries ago that the Chitpavan Brahmans began to play a conspicuous
part in Indian history, when one of this sept, Balaji Vishvanath Rao,
worked his way up at the Court of the Mahratta King Shahu to the
position of Peshwa, or Prime Minister, which he succeeded even in
bequeathing to his son, the great Bajirao Balaji, who led the Mahratta
armies right up to the walls of Delhi. Bajirao's son not only succeeded
as Balaji II., but on the death of King Shahu disposed of his Royal
master's family by a bold Palace conspiracy and openly assumed sovereign
powers. The crushing defeat of Panipat brought him to his grave, and
though the dynasty was still continued, and regained some of its lustre
under Madhao Rao I., the Peshwas subsequently became little more than
_rois fainéants_ in the hands of their Ministers, and especially in
those of the great Regent Nana Phadnavis. He, too, was a Chitpavan
Brahman, and it was under his reign that his fellow caste-men acquired
so complete a monopoly of all the chief offices of State that the
Mahratta Empire became essentially a Chitpavan Empire. The British arms
ultimately defeated the dreams of universal dominion which, in the then
condition of India, the Chitpavans might well have hoped to establish
on the ruins of the great Moghul Empire. But British rule did not
destroy their power. They were quick to adapt themselves to new
conditions and above all to avail themselves of the advantages of
Western education. Their great administrative abilities compelled
recognition, and Chitpavans swarm to-day in every Government office of
the Deccan as they did in the days of Nana Phadnavis. They sit on the
Bench, they dominate the Bar, they teach in the schools, they control
the vernacular Press, they have furnished almost all the most
conspicuous names in the modern literature and drama of Western India as
well as in politics. Of the higher appointments held by natives in the
Presidency of Bombay, the last census tells us that the Hindus held 266
against 86 held by Parsees and 23 held by Mahomedans, and that out of
those held by the Hindus, more than 72 per cent. were held by Brahmans,
though the Brahmans form less than one-fourteenth of the total Hindu
population of the province. All Brahmans are not, of course, Chitpavans,
but the Chitpavans supply an overwhelming majority of those Government
officials, and their ascendency over every other Brahman sept in
Maharashtra is undisputed. From the Deccan, moreover, their influence
has spread practically all over India and, especially, in the native
States, which have recruited amongst the Chitpavans some of their ablest
public servants. Amongst Chitpavans are to be found many of the most
enlightened and progressive Indians of our times and many have served
the British _Raj_ with unquestioned loyalty and integrity. But amongst
many others--perhaps indeed amongst the great majority--there has
undoubtedly been preserved for the last hundred years from the time of
the downfall of the Peshwa dominion to the present day, an unbroken
tradition of hatred towards British rule, an undying hope that it might
some day be subverted and their own ascendency restored. Not to go back
to the exploits of Nana Sahib, himself a Chitpavan, and his followers
during the Mutiny, or to the Ramoshi rebellion round Poona in 1879, it
was in Poona that the native Press, mainly conducted by Brahmans, first
assumed that tone of virulent hostility towards British rule and British
rulers which led to the Press Act of 1879, and some of the worst
extracts quoted at that time by the Government of India in support of
that measure were taken from Poona newspapers. It was in Poona that some
years later the assassination of two English officials by a young
Chitpavan Brahman was the first outcome of a fresh campaign, leading
directly to political murder. It was by another Chitpavan Brahman that
Mr. Jackson was murdered last December at Nasik; his accomplices were
with one exception Chitpavan Brahmans, and to the same sept of Brahmans
belong nearly all the defendants in the great conspiracy trial now
proceeding at Bombay.
But if there were already, more than 20 years ago, wild and
irreconcilable spirits bent on fomenting disaffection, there were
amongst the Deccanee Brahmans themselves a small intellectual _élite_
who, though by no means servile apologists of British rule, fully
realized that their primary duty was not to stir up popular passion
against alien rulers, but to bring Hindu society into closer communion
with the higher civilization which those rulers, whatever their
shortcomings, undoubtedly represented. Conspicuous amongst such men was
Mahadev Govind Ranade. Equally conspicuous in the opposite camp was a
man of a very different stamp, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who was destined to
become one of the most dangerous pioneers of disaffection. It was a
Hindu gentleman and a Brahman who told me that if I wanted to study the
psychology of Indian unrest I should begin by studying Tilak's career.
"Tilak's onslaught in Poona upon Ranade, his alliance with the bigots of
orthodoxy, his appeals to popular superstition in the new Ganpati
celebrations, to racial fanaticism in the 'Anti-Cow-killing Movement,'
to Mahratta sentiment in the cult which he introduced of Shivaji, his
active propaganda amongst schoolboys and students, his gymnastic
societies, his preaching in favour of physical training, and last but
not least his control of the Press and the note of personal violence
which he imparted to newspaper polemics, represent the progressive
stages of a highly-organized campaign which has served as a model to the
apostles of unrest all over India." This was a valuable piece of advice,
for, if any one can claim to be truly the father of Indian unrest, it is
Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The story of his initial campaign in the Deccan,
though it dates back to the closing decades of the last century, is
still well worth studying, and has, in fact, never received adequate
attention, for on the one hand it pricks the shallow view that Indian
unrest is merely an echo of the Japanese victories in Manchuria, and, on
the other hand, it illustrates clearly the close connexion that exists
between the forces of Indian political disaffection and those of social
and religious reaction, whilst the methods which he employed and the
results which attended his activity have been reproduced with singular
fidelity in subsequent phases of the movement.
When Tilak entered upon public life in the early eighties, the Brahmans
of the Deccan were divided into two camps, one of which, headed at first
by the late Mr. Justice Ranade, consisted of a small intellectual
_élite_, who held, without forgoing their right to criticize British
administrators or to promote political reforms by constitutional
methods, that Indians of all creeds, including the Hindus, should begin
by reforming their own social institutions, and bring them into greater
harmony with Western standards. Tilak, a Chitpavan Brahman of
considerable erudition, who had graduated with honours at Bombay, had,
however, inherited his full share of Chitpavan hostility to British
ascendency. He was also by temperament and ambition impatient of all
restraint, and jealous of the commanding authority which a man like
Ranade owed quite as much to the nobility of his character as to his
social position and force of intellect. In opposition to Ranade, with
whom he had at first co-operated as an educationist, Tilak drifted
rapidly into the reactionary camp. The battle was first engaged over the
control of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Education Society, two
progressive associations which, though mainly composed of Brahmans,
included a sprinkling of Mahomedans and of non-Brahman Hindus. Tilak had
thrown himself into journalism, and after the repeal of the Indian Press
Law on the return of a Liberal Administration to office at home in 1881,
he had been amongst the first to revive the incendiary methods which it
had temporarily and very successfully checked. His first onslaught upon
Ranade's position, however, failed, and instead of supplanting him, it
was he who was compelled in 1890 to sever his connexion with the
Education Society.
Tilak's defeat was short lived. The introduction of the Age of Consent
Bill, in 1890, to mitigate the evils of Hindu child-marriage, gave him a
fresh opening. Ranade, discouraged and alarmed by the violence of the
Tilak party, had by this time retired from the forefront of the fray,
but in Dr. Bhandarkar, Mr. Justice Tilang, Mr. A.K. Nulkar, Mr. (now Sir
N.G.) Chandavarkar, and other courageous Hindu reformers, with whom Mr.
Gokhale was always ready to co-operate against the forces of religious
superstition, he had left disciples ready to carry on the good fight.
Tilak raised against them a storm of passion and prejudice. In the
columns of the _Kesari_, of which he had become sole proprietor, he
denounced every Hindu who supported the measure as a renegade and a
traitor to the cause of Hinduism, and thus won the support of
conservative orthodoxy, which had hitherto viewed with alarm some of his
literary excursions into the field of Vedantic exegesis. With the help
of the brothers Natu, who were the recognized leaders of Hindu
orthodoxy, he carried his propaganda into the schools and colleges in
the teeth of the Moderate party, and, proclaiming that unless they
learnt to employ force the Hindus must expect to be impotent witnesses
of the gradual downfall of all their ancient institutions, he proceeded
to organize gymnastic societies in which physical training and the use
of more or less primitive weapons were taught in order to develop the
martial instincts of the rising generation.
If amongst many Brahmans of Maharashtra hatred of the British is the
dominant passion, amongst the Mahratta population at large whatever
there is of racial and religious jealousy is mainly directed against the
Mahomedans. This is partly, no doubt, a legacy of the old days of
Mahomedan supremacy. In 1893 some riots in Bombay of a more severe
character than usual gave Tilak an opportunity of broadening the new
movement by enlisting in its support the old anti-Mahomedan feeling of
the people. He not only convoked popular meetings in which his fiery
eloquence denounced the Mahomedans as the sworn foes of Hinduism, but he
started an organization known as the "Anti-Cow-Killing Society," which
was intended and regarded as a direct provocation to the Mahomedans,
who, like ourselves, think it no sacrilege to eat beef. In vain did
liberal Hindus appeal to him to desist from these inflammatory methods.
Their appeals had no effect upon him, and merely served his purpose by
undermining the little authority they still possessed. Government had
forbidden Hindu processions to play music whilst passing in front of
Mahomedan mosques, as this was a fertile cause of riotous affrays. Tilak
not only himself protested against this "interference with the liberties
of the people," but insisted that the Sarvajanik Sabha should identify
itself with the "national" cause and memorialize Government for the
removal of a prohibition so offensive to Hindu sentiment. The Moderates
hesitated, but were overawed by popular clamour and the threats of the
Tilak Press. The Mahomedans and a few other members repudiated the
memorial and resigned. Tilak, though not yet in absolute control of the
Sabha, became already practically its master. No one knew better than he
how to compel submission by packed meetings and organized rowdyism.
Tilak's propaganda had at the same time steadily assumed a more and more
anti-British character, and it was always as the allies and the tools of
Government, in its machinations against Hinduism, that the Hindu
reformers and the Mahomedans had in turn been denounced. In order to
invest it with a more definitely religious sanction, Tilak placed it
under the special patronage of the most popular deity in India. Though
Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is the god of learning whom Hindu
writers delight to invoke on the title-page of their books, there is
scarcely a village or a frequented roadside in India that does not show
some rude presentment of his familiar features, usually smeared over
with red ochre, Tilak could not have devised a more popular move than
when he set himself to organize annual festivals in honour of Ganesh,
known as Ganpati celebrations, and to found in all the chief centres of
the Deccan Ganpati societies, each with its _mela_ or choir recruited
among his youthful bands of gymnasts. These festivals gave occasion for
theatrical performances[3] and religious songs in which the legends of
Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to stir up hatred of the
"foreigner"--and _mlenccha_, the term employed for "foreigner," applied
equally to Europeans and to Mahomedans--as well as for tumultuous
processions only too well calculated to provoke affrays with the
Mahomedans and with the police, which in turn led to judicial
proceedings that served as a fresh excuse for noisy protests and
inflammatory pleadings. With the Ganpati celebrations the area of
Tilak's propaganda was widely increased.
But the movement had yet to be given a form which should directly appeal
to the fighting instincts of the Mahrattas and stimulate active
disaffection by reviving memories of olden times when under Shivaji's
leadership they had rolled back the tide of Musulman conquest and
created a Mahratta Empire of their own. The legends of Shivaji's prowess
still lingered in Maharashtra, where the battlemented strongholds which
he built crown many a precipitous crag of the Deccan highlands. In a
valley below Pratabghar the spot is still shown where Shivaji induced
the Mahomedan general, Afzul Khan, to meet him in peaceful conference
half-way between the contending armies, and, as he bent down to greet
his guest, plunged into his bowels the famous "tiger's claw," a hooked
gauntlet of steel, while the Mahratta forces sprang out of ambush and
cut the Mahomedan army to pieces. But if Shivaji's memory still lived,
it belonged to a past which was practically dead and gone. Only a few
years, before an Englishman who had visited Shivaji's tomb had written
to a local newspaper calling attention to the ruinous condition into
which the people of Maharashtra had allowed the last resting-place of
their national hero to fall. Some say it was this letter which first
inspired Tilak with the idea of reviving Shivaji's memory and converting
it into a living force. Originally it was upon the great days of the
Poona Peshwas that Tilak had laid the chief stress, and he may possibly
have discovered that theirs were not after all names to conjure with
amongst non-Brahman Mahrattas, who had suffered heavily enough at their
hands. At any rate, Tilak brought Shivaji to the forefront and set in
motion a great "national" propaganda which culminated in 1895 in the
celebration at all the chief centres of Brahman activity in the Deccan
of Shivaji's reputed birthday, the principal commemoration being held
under Tilak's own presidency at Raighar, where the Mahratta chieftain
had himself been crowned. What was the purpose and significance of this
movement may be gathered from a _Shlok_ or sacred poem improvised on
this occasion by one of Tilak's disciples who to acquire sinister
notoriety.
Let us be prompt like Shivaji to engage in desperate enterprises.
Take up your swords and shields and we shall cut
off countless heads of enemies. Listen! Though we shall
have to risk our lives in a national war, we shall assuredly
shed the life-blood of our enemies.
It was on the occasion of the Shivaji "coronation festivities" that the
right--nay, the duty--to commit murder for political purposes was first
publicly expounded. With Tilak in the chair, a Brahman professor got up
to vindicate Shivaji's bloody deed:--
Who dares to call that man a murderer who, when only
nine years old, had received Divine inspiration not to bow
down before a Mahomedan Emperor? Who dares to condemn
Shivaji for disregarding a minor duty in the performance
of a major one? Had Shivaji committed five or fifty
crimes more terrible, I would have been equally ready to
prostrate myself not once but one hundred times before the
image of our lord Shivaji ... Every Hindu, every
Mahratta must rejoice at this spectacle, for we too are all
striving to regain our lost independence, and it is only by
combination that we can throw off the yoke.
Tilak himself was even more outspoken:--
It is needless to make further researches as to the killing
of Afzul Khan. Let us even assume that Shivaji deliberately
planned and executed the murder. Was the act good or
evil? This question cannot be answered from the standpoint
of the Penal Code or of the laws of Manu or according
to the principles of morality laid down in the systems of the
West or of the East. The laws which bind society are for
common folk like you and me. No one seeks to trace the
genealogy of a Rishi or to fasten guilt upon a Maharaj. Great
men are above the common principles of morality. Such
principles do not reach to the pedestal of a great man. Did
Shivaji commit a sin in killing Afzul Khan? The answer to
this question can be found in the Mahabharata itself. The
Divine Krishna teaching in the Gita tells us we may kill
even our teachers and our kinsmen, and no blame attaches
if we are not actuated by selfish desires. Shivaji did nothing
from a desire to fill his own belly. It was in a praiseworthy
object that he murdered Afzul Khan for the good of others.
If thieves enter our house and we have not strength to drive
them out, should we not without hesitation shut them in,
and burn them alive? God has conferred on the _mlencchas_
(foreigners) no grant of Hindustan inscribed on imperishable
brass. Shivaji strove to drive them forth out of the land of
his birth, but he was guiltless of the sin of covetousness.
Do not circumscribe your vision like frogs in a well. Rise
above the Penal Code into the rarefied atmosphere of the
sacred Bhaghavad Gita and consider the action of great men.
In the reflected blaze of this apotheosis of Shivaji, Tilak stood forth
as the appointed leader of the "nation." He was the triumphant champion
of Hindu orthodoxy, the high-priest of Ganesh, the inspired prophet of a
new "nationalism," which in the name of Shivaji would cast out the hated
_mlencchas_ and restore the glories of Mahratta history. The Government
feared him, for people could put no other construction on the official
confirmation of his election when he was returned in 1895 as a member of
the Bombay Legislative Council--above all, when inside the Council-room
he continued with the same audacity and the same impunity his campaign
of calumny and insult. His activity was unceasing. He disdained none of
the arts which make for popularity. His house was always open to those
who sought in the right spirit for assistance or advice. He had absolute
control of the Sabha and ruled the municipality of Poona. In private and
in public, through his speeches and through his newspapers, he worked
upon the prejudices and passions of both the educated and the
uneducated, and especially upon the crude enthusiasm of the young.
Towards the end of 1896 the Deccan was threatened with famine. Hungry
stomachs are prompt to violence, and Tilak started a "no-rent" campaign.
Like all Tilak's schemes in those days it was carefully designed to
conceal as far as possible any direct incitement to the withholding of
land revenue. His missionaries went round with a story that Government
had issued orders not to collect taxes where the crops had fallen below
a certain yield. The _rayats_ believed them, and when the tax-gatherer
arrived they refused payment. Trouble then arose. Outrages such as the
mutilation of the Queen's statue at Bombay, the attempt to fire the
Church Mission Hall, the assaults upon "moderate" Hindus who refused to
toe the line, became ominously frequent. Worse was to follow when the
plague appeared. The measures at first adopted by Government to check
the spread of this new visitation doubtless offended in many ways
against the customs and prejudices of the people, especially the
searching and disinfection of houses, and the forcible removal of
plague-patients even when they happened to be Brahmans. What Tilak could
do by secret agitation and by a rabid campaign in the Press to raise
popular resentment to a white heat he did. The _Kesari_ published
incitements to violence which were put into the mouth of Shivaji
himself[4]. The inevitable consequences ensued. On June 27, 1897, on
their way back from an official reception in celebration of Queen
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Mr. Rand, an Indian civilian, who was
President of the Poona Plague Committee, and Lieutenant Ayerst, of the
Commissariat Department, were shot down by Damodhar Chapekur, a young
Chitpavan Brahman, on the Ganeshkind road. No direct connexion has been
established between that crime and Tilak. But, like the murderer of Mr.
Jackson at Nasik last winter, the murderer of Rand and Ayerst--the same
young Brahman who had recited the _Shlok_, which I have quoted above, at
the great Shivaji celebration--declared that it was the doctrines
expounded in Tilak's newspapers that had driven him to the deed. The
murderer who had merely given effect to the teachings of Tilak was
sentenced to death, but Tilak himself, who was prosecuted for a
seditious article published a few days before the murder, received only
a short term of imprisonment, and was released before the completion of
his term under certain pledges of good behaviour which he broke as soon
as it suited him to break them.
Thus ended the first campaign of Indian unrest, which, in its details,
has served as an incitement and a model to all those who have conducted
subsequent operations in the same field.
The Poona murders sent a thrill of horror throughout India and caused a
momentary sensation even in England. But though Government was not
wholly blind to the warning, it could not decide what ought to be done,
and beyond tinkering at one or two sections of the Criminal Code bearing
on Press offences, it did nothing until history had repeated itself on a
much larger scale. Tilak was generously released from prison before the
expiration of his sentence, and his release was construed in the Deccan
as a fresh triumph. He was acclaimed by his followers as a "national"
martyr and hero. After a short "rest-cure" in a sanatorium Tilak
returned to the _Kesari_, which, in the hands of his co-adjutors, two
other Chitpavan Brahmans, Mr. Kelkar and Mr. Khadilkar, had lost nothing
of its vitriolic pungency in his absence. The celebration with renewed
pomp in 1900 of Shivaji's "birthday" at Raighar marked the resumption of
Tilak's operations. I need not stop to recount all the incidents of this
second campaign in the Deccan, in which Ganpati celebrations, Shivaji
festivals, gymnastic societies, &c., played exactly the same part as in
the first campaign. For three or four years the Tai Maharaj case, in
which, as executor of one of his friends, Shri Baba Maharaj, a Sirdar of
Poona, Tilak was attacked by the widow and indicted on charges of
forgery, perjury, and corruption, absorbed a great deal of his time,
but, after long and wearisome proceedings, the earlier stages of the
case ended in a judgment in his favour which was greeted as another
triumph for him, and not unnaturally though, as recent developments have
shown, quite prematurely,[5] won him much sympathy, even amongst those
who were politically opposed to him. But throughout this ordeal Tilak
never relaxed his political activity either in the Press or in the
manifold organizations which he controlled.
His influence, moreover, was rapidly extending far beyond, Poona and the
Deccan. He had at an early date associated himself with, the Indian
National Congress, and he was secretary of the Standing Committee for
the Deccan. His Congress work had brought him into contact with the
politicians of other provinces, and upon none did his teachings and his
example produce so deep an impression as upon the emotional Bengalees.
He had not the gift of sonorous eloquence which they possess, and he
never figured conspicuously as an orator at the annual sessions of
Congress. But his calculating resourcefulness and his indomitable
energy, even his masterfulness, impressed them all the more, and in the
two memorable sessions held at Benares in 1905 and at Calcutta in 1906,
when the agitation over the Partition of Bengal was at its height, his
was the dominant personality, not at the tribune, but in the lobbies. He
had been one of the first champions of _Swadeshi_ as an economic weapon
in the struggle against British rule, and he saw in the adoption of the
boycott, with all the lawlessness which it involved, an unprecedented
opportunity of stimulating the active forces of disaffection. As far as
Bengal was concerned, an "advanced" Press which always took its cue from
Tilak's _Kesari_ had already done its work, and Tilak could rely upon
the enthusiastic support of men like Mr. Bepin Chandra Pal and Mr.
Arabindo Ghose, who were politically his disciples, though their
religious and social standpoints were in many respects different, Mr.
Surendranath Banerjee, who subsequently fell out with Tilak, had at
first modelled his propaganda very largely upon that of the Deccan
leader. Not only had he tried to introduce into Bengal the singularly
inappropriate cult of Shivaji, but he had been clearly inspired by
Tilak's methods in placing the _Swadeshi_ boycott in Bengal under the
special patronage of so popular a deity as the "terrible goddess" Kali.
Again, he had followed Tilak's example in brigading schoolboys and
students into youthful gymnastic societies for purposes of political
agitation, Tilak's main object at the moment was to pledge the rest of
India, as represented in the Congress, to the violent course upon which
Bengal was embarking. Amongst the "moderate" section outside Bengal
there was a disposition to confine its action to platonic expressions of
sympathy with the Bengalees and with the principle of _Swadeshi_--in
itself perfectly legitimate--as a movement for the encouragement of
native industries. At Benares in 1905 the Congress had adopted a
resolution which only conditionally endorsed the boycott, and the
increasing disorders which had subsequently accompanied its enforcement
had tended to enhance rather than to diminish the reluctance of the
Moderate party to see the Congress definitely pledged to it when it met
at the end of 1906 in Calcutta. The "advanced" party led by Mr. Bepin
Chandra Pal had put forward Tilak's candidature to the presidency, and a
split which seemed imminent was only avoided by a compromise which saved
appearances. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, a leading Parsee of Bombay, who had
been drawn into co-operation with the Congress under the influence of
the political Liberalism which he had heard expounded in England by
Gladstone and Bright, played at this critical period an important part
which deserves recognition. He was as eloquent as any Bengalee, and he
possessed in a high degree the art of managing men. In politics he was
as stout an opponent of Tilak's violent methods as was Mr. Gokhale on
social and religious questions, and he did perhaps more than any one
else to prevent the complete triumph of Tilakism in the Congress right
down to the Surat upheaval. Thanks largely to his efforts, the veteran
Mr. Naoroji was elected to the chair at Calcutta. None could venture
openly to oppose him, for he was almost the father of the Congress,
which in its early days had owed so much to the small group of liberal
Parsees whom he had gathered about him, and his high personal character
and rectitude of purpose had earned for him universal respect.
Nevertheless, a resolution as amended by Tilak was adopted which,
without mentioning the word "boycott," pledged the Congress to encourage
its practice. But there was considerable heartburning, and the Moderates
were suspected of contemplating some retrograde move at the following
annual session. Tilak was determined to frustrate any such scheme, and
before the Congress assembled at Surat he elaborated at a Nationalist
conference with Mr. Arabindo Ghose in the chair, a plan of campaign
which was to defeat the "moderates" by demanding, before the election of
the president, an undertaking that the resolutions of the Calcutta
conference should be upheld. The plan, however, was only half
successful. The first day's proceedings produced a violent scene in
which the howling down of Mr. Surendranath Banerjee by the "advanced"
wing revealed the personal jealousies that had grown up between the old
Bengalee leader on the one hand and Tilak and his younger followers in
Bengal on the other. The second day's proceedings ended in still wilder
confusion, and after something like a free fight the Congress broke up
after an irreparable rupture, from which its prestige has never
recovered.
Tilak's own prestige, however, with the "advanced" party never stood
higher, either in then Deccan or outside of it. In the Deccan he not
only maintained all his old activities, but had extended their field.
Besides the _Kal_, edited by another Chitpawan Brahman, and the
_Rashtramadt_ at Poona, which went to even greater lengths than Tilak's
own _Kesari_, lesser papers obeying his inspiration had been established
in many of the smaller centres. A movement had been set on foot for the
creation of "national" schools, entirely independent of State support,
and therefore of State supervision, in which disaffection could, without
let or hindrance, be made part and parcel of the curriculum. Such were
the schools closed down last year in the Central Provinces and this year
at Telegaon. The great development of the cotton industry during the
last ten years, especially in Bombay itself--which has led to vast
agglomerations of labour under conditions unfamiliar in India--had given
Tilak an opportunity of establishing contact with a class of the
population hitherto outside the purview of Indian politics. There are
nearly 100 cotton spinning and weaving mills, employing over 100,000
operatives, congregated mostly in the northern suburbs of the city.
Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by
its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field
to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the
Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of
a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere
contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases,
politics were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of
labour in India are by no means wholly satisfactory, and it would be
unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate
the evils and hardships to which their humbler fellow-creatures were
exposed. Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and
it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the
cause of temperance, had he not perverted it, as he perverted everything
else, to the promotion of race-hatred. His primary motives may have been
excellent, but he subordinated all things to his ruling anti-British
passion, whilst the fervour of his philanthropic professions won for him
the sympathy and co-operation of many law-abiding citizens who would
otherwise have turned a deaf ear to his political doctrines. He must
have had a considerable command of funds for the purposes of his
propaganda, and though he doubtless had not a few willing and generous
supporters, many subscribed from fear of the lash which he knew how to
apply through the Press to the tepid and the recalcitrant, just as his
gymnastic societies sometimes resolved themselves into juvenile bands of
dacoities to swell the coffers of _Swaraj_. Not even Mr. Gokhale with
all his moral and intellectual force could stem the flowing tide of
Tilak's popularity in the Deccan; and in order not to be swept under he
was perhaps often compelled like many other Moderates to go further than
his own judgment can have approved. Tilak commanded the allegiance of
barristers and pleaders, schoolmasters and professors, clerks in
Government offices--in fact, of the large majority of the so-called
educated classes, largely recruited amongst his own and other Brahman
castes; and his propaganda had begun to filter down not only to the
coolies in the cities, but even to the rayats, or at least the head-men
in the villages.
More than that. From the Deccan, as we have already seen in his
relations with the Indian National Congress, his influence was projected
far and wide. His house was a place of pilgrimage for the disaffected
from all parts of India. His prestige as a Brahman of the Brahmans and a
pillar of orthodoxy, in spite of the latitude of the views which he
sometimes expressed in regard to the depressed castes, his reputation
for profound learning in the philosophies both of the West and of the
East, his trenchant style, his indefatigable activity, the glamour of
his philanthropy, his accessibility to high and low, his many acts of
genuine kindliness, the personal magnetism which, without any great
physical advantages, he exerted upon most of those who came in contact
with him, and especially upon the young, combined to equip him more
fully than any other Indian politician for the leadership of a
revolutionary movement.
The appeal which Tilak made to the Hindus was twofold. He taught them,
on the one hand, that India, and especially Maharashtra, the land of the
Mahrattas, had been happier and better and more prosperous under a Hindu
_raj_ than it had ever been or could ever be under the rule of alien
"demons"; and that if the British _raj_ had at one time served some
useful purpose in introducing India to the scientific achievements of
Western civilisation, it had done so at ruinous cost, both material and
moral, to the Indians whose wealth it had drained and whose social and
religious institutions it had undermined, and on the other hand he held
out to them the prospect that, if power were once restored to the
Brahmans, who had already learnt all that there was of good to be
learnt from the English, the golden age would return for gods and men.
That Tilak himself hardly believed in the possibility of overthrowing
British rule is more than probable, but what some Indians who knew him
well tell me he did believe was that the British could be driven or
wearied by a ceaseless and menacing agitation into gradually
surrendering to the Brahmans the reality of power, as did the later
Peshwas, and remaining content with the mere shadow of sovereignty. As
one of his organs blurted it out:--"If the British yield all power to us
and retain only nominal control, we may yet be friends."
Such was the position when, on June 24, 1908, Tilak was arrested in
Bombay on charges connected with the publication in the _Kesari_ of
articles containing inflammatory comments on the Muzafferpur outrage, in
which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy had been killed by a bomb--the first of a
long list of similar outrages in Bengal. Not in the moment of first
excitement, but weeks afterwards, the _Kesari_ had commented on this
crime in terms which the Parsee Judge, Mr. Justice Davar, described in
his summing up as follows:--"They are seething with sedition; they
preach violence; they speak of murders with approval; and the cowardly
and atrocious act of committing murders with bombs not only meets with
your approval, but you hail the advent of the bomb into India as if
something had come to India for its good." The bomb was extolled in
these articles as "a kind of witchcraft, a charm, an amulet," and the
_Kesari_ delighted in showing that neither the "supervision of the
police" nor "swarms of detectives" could stop "these simple playful
sports of science," Whilst professing to deprecate such methods, it
threw the responsibility upon Government, which allowed "keen
disappointment to overtake thousands of intelligent persons who have
been awakened to the necessity of securing the rights of _Swaraj_."
Tilak spoke four whole days in his own defence--21-1/2 hours
altogether--but the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty," and he was
sentenced to six years' transportation, afterwards commuted on account
of his age and health to simple imprisonment at Mandalay.
The prosecution of a man of Tilak's popularity and influence at a time
when neither the Imperial Government nor the Government of India had
realized the full danger of the situation was undoubtedly a grave
measure of which a weaker Government than that of Bombay under Sir
George Clarke might well have shirked the responsibility. There were
serious riots after the trial. From the moment of his arrest Tilak's
followers had put it about amongst the mill-hands that he was in prison
because he was their friend and had sought to obtain better pay for
them. Some of his supporters are said to have declared during the trial
that there would be a day's bloodshed for every year to which he might
be sentenced by the Court, and, as a matter of fact, he was sentenced to
six years' imprisonment and the riots lasted six days. The rioting
assumed at times a very threatening character. The European police
frequently had to use their revolvers, and the troops had several times
to fire in self-defence. But rigorous orders had been issued by the
authorities to avoid as far as possible the shedding of blood, and both
the police and the military forces exercised such steady self-restraint
that casualties were relatively few, and the violence of the mob never
vented itself upon the European population of the city. The gravity of
the disturbances, however, showed the extent and the lawless character
of the influence which Tilak had already acquired over the lower classes
in Bombay, and not merely over the turbulent mill-hands. In the heart of
the city many Hindu shops were closed "out of sympathy with Tilak," and
the most violent rioting on one day occurred amongst the Bhattias and
Banias employed in the cloth market, who had hitherto been regarded as
very orderly and rather timid folk. The trouble in Bombay was certainly
not a sudden and spontaneous outburst of popular feeling. It bore
throughout the impress of careful and deliberate organization. By a
happy combination of sympathy and firmness Sir George Clarke had,
however, won the respect of the vast majority of the community, and
though he failed to secure the active support which he might have
expected from the "moderates," there were few of them who did not
secretly approve and even welcome his action. Its effects were great and
enduring, for Tilak's conviction was a heavy blow--perhaps the heaviest
which has been dealt--to the forces of unrest, at least in the Deccan;
and some months later one of the organs of his party, the _Rashtramat_,
reviewing the occurrences of the year, was fain to admit that "the
sudden removal of Mr. Tilak's towering personality threw the whole
province into dismay and unnerved the other leaders."
The agitation in the Deccan did not die out with Tilak's disappearance,
for he left his stamp upon a new generation, which he had educated and
trained. More than a year after Tilak had been removed to Mandalay, his
doctrines bore fruit in the murder of Mr. Jackson, the Collector of
Nasik--a murder which, in the whole lamentable record of political
crimes in India, stands out in many ways pre-eminently infamous and
significant. The chief executive officer of a large district, "Pundit"
Jackson, as he was familiarly called, was above all a scholar, devoted
to Indian studies, and his sympathy with all forms of Indian thought was
as genuine as his acquaintance with them was profound. His affection for
the natives was such as, perhaps, to blind him to their faults, and like
the earliest victims of the Indian Mutiny he entertained to the very
last an almost childlike confidence in the loyalty of the whole people.
Only a few days before his death he expressed his conviction that
disaffection had died out in Nasik, and that he could go anywhere, and
at any hour without the slightest risk of danger. That he was very
generally respected and even beloved by many there can be no doubt, and
there is no reason to question the sincerity of the regrets which found
expression on the announcement of his impending transfer to Bombay in a
series of farewell entertainments, both public and private, by the
inhabitants of the city. Only two days before the fatal 21st of
December, an ode in Marathi addressed to him at a reception organized by
the Municipal Council dwelt specially upon his gentleness of soul and
kindliness of manner.
Yet this was the man whom the fanatical champions of Indian Nationalism
in the Deccan singled out for assassination as a protest against British
tyranny. The trial of the actual murderer and of those who aided and
abetted him abundantly demonstrated the cold-blooded premeditation which
characterized this crime. Numerous consultations had taken place ever
since the previous September between the murderer and his accomplices as
to the manner and time of the deed. It was repeatedly postponed because
the accomplices who belonged to Nasik were afraid of rendering active
assistance which might compromise them, though they were ready enough to
arm the hand of the wretched youth from Aurungabad who had volunteered
to strike the blow. Ready as he was to kill any Englishman, he himself
had some misgivings as to the expediency of selecting a victim whose
personal qualities were so universally recognized, and these misgivings
were only allayed by the assurance that all that was mere hypocrisy on
poor Jackson's part. It was the news of Jackson's approaching departure
for Bombay that finally precipitated the catastrophe. The murderer
practised carefully with the pistol given to him and other precautions
were taken so that, even if the first attempt was foiled, Jackson should
not escape alive from the theatre--the native theatre which he had been
asked to honour with his attendance. So the young Chitpavan Brahman,
Ananta Luxman Kanhere, waylaid the Englishman as he was entering, shot
him first in the back, and then emptied the contents of his revolver
upon him, as he turned round. Mr. Jackson fell dead in front of the
friends who were accompanying him, two young English ladies and a young
civilian of his staff, who had only joined a month before from England
and faced without flinching this gruesome initiation into the service.
It all happened in a moment, and the native Deputy Collector, Mr.
Palshikar, who leapt forward to Mr. Jackson's assistance, was only able
to strike down the murderer and tear from him the second weapon with
which he was armed. Thanks also to Mr. Palshikar's presence of mind,
information was at once sent to the railway station, and the escape of
some of the accomplices prevented, whose confessions materially helped
in promoting the ends of justice.
But besides the facts which were brought out in evidence during the
trial at Bombay, there are some features connected with the crime to
which attention may be usefully directed, as they lie outside the
province of the Law Courts. In the first place, it must be noted that
not only the murderer but the majority of those implicated in the crime
were Chitpavan Brahmans, and at the same time they were the strange
products both of the Western education which we have imported into India
and of the religious revivalism which underlies the present political
agitation. They were certainly moral, if not physical, degenerates, and
most of them notoriously depraved, none bearing in this respect a worse
character than the actual murderer. I happened, when at Nasik, to see
the latter whilst he was performing his ablutions in front of the
Government building in which he was confined. Four policemen were in
charge of him, but he seemed absolutely unconcerned, and after having
washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking
around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before
returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and
effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly
prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a passionate,
if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present
at the trial, betrayed itself shamelessly in their attitude and the
glances they exchanged with him during the proceedings. Distorted pride
of race and of caste combined with neuroticism and eroticism appear to
have co-operated here in producing as complete a type of moral
perversion as the records of criminal pathology can well show.
What are the secret forces by which these wretched puppets were set in
motion? Their activity was certainly not spontaneous. Who was it that
pulled the strings? There is reason to believe that the revolver with
which the murder was committed was one of a batch sent out by the Indian
ringleaders, who until the murder of Sir W. Curzon-Wyllie, had their
headquarters at the famous "India House," in Highgate, of which Swami
Krishnavarma was originally one of the moving spirits. Upon this and
other cognate points the trial of Vinayak Savarkar, formerly the London
correspondent of one of Tilak's organs and a familiar of the "India
House," and of some twenty-five other Hindus on various charges of
conspiracy which is now proceeding in the High Court of Bombay, may be
expected to throw some very instructive light.
The atmosphere of Nasik was no doubt exceptionally favourable for such
morbid growths. For Nasik is no ordinary provincial town of India. It is
one of the great strongholds of Hinduism. Its population is only about
25,000, but of these about 9,000 belong to the Brahmanical caste, though
only about 1,000 are Chitpavan Brahmans, the rest being mainly Deshastha
Brahmans, another great sept of the Deccanee sacerdotal caste. It is a
city of peculiar sanctity with the Hindus. The sacred Godavery--so
sacred that it is called there the _Ganga_--i.e. the Ganges--flows
through it, and its bathing _ghats_ which line the river banks and its
ancient temples and innumerable shrines attract a constant flow of
pilgrims from all parts of India. Indeed, many of the great Hindu
houses of India maintain there a family priest to look after their
spiritual interests. Nasik was, moreover, a city beloved of the Peshwas,
and, next to Poona preserves, perhaps, more intimate associations with
the great days of the Mahratta Empire than any other city of the Deccan.
But though no doubt these facts might account for a certain latent
bitterness against the alien rulers who dashed the cup of victory away
from the lips of the Mahrattas, just as the latter were establishing
their ascendency on the crumbling ruins of the Moghul Empire, they do
not suffice to account for the attitude of the people generally in
presence of such a crime as the assassination of Mr. Jackson. For if
murder is a heinous crime by whomsoever it may be committed, it ranks
amongst Hindus as specially heinous when committed by a Brahman. How is
it that in this instance, instead of outcasting the murderer, many
Brahmans continued more or less secretly to glorify his crime as "the
striking down of the flag from the fort"? How is it that, when there was
ample evidence to show that murder had been in the air of Nasik for
several months before the perpetration of the deed, not a single
warning, not a single hint, ever reached Mr. Jackson, except from the
police, whose advice, unfortunately, his blindly trustful nature led him
to ignore to the very end? How is it that, even after its perpetration,
though there was much genuine sympathy with the victim and many eloquent
speeches were delivered to express righteous abhorrence of the crime, no
practical help was afforded to the authorities in pursuing the
ramifications of the conspiracy which had "brought disgrace on the holy
city of Nasik"?
All this opens up wide fields for speculation, but there is one point
which a statement solemnly made by the murderer of Mr. Jackson has
placed beyond the uncertainties of speculation. In reply to the
magistrate who asked him why he committed the murder, Kanhere said:--
I read of many instances of oppression in the _Kesari_, the
_Rashtramat_ and the _Kal_ and other newspapers. I think
that by killing _sahibs_ [Englishmen] we people can get justice.
I never got injustice myself nor did any one I know. I now
regret killing Mr. Jackson. I killed a good man causelessly.
Can anything be much more eloquent and convincing than the terrible
pathos of this confession?[6] The three papers named by Kanhere were
Tilak's organs. It was no personal experience or knowledge of his own
that had driven Kanhere to his frenzied deed, but the slow persistent
poison dropped into his ear by the Tilak Press. Though it was Kanhere's
hand that struck down "a good man causelessly," was not Tilak rather
than Kanhere the real author of the murder? It was merely the story of
the Poona murders of 1897 over again.
Other incidents besides the Nasik tragedy have occurred since Tilak's
conviction to show how dangerous was the spirit which his doctrines had
aroused. One of the, gravest, symptomatically, was the happily
unsuccessful attempt to throw a bomb at the Viceroy and Lady Minto
whilst they were driving through the streets of Ahmedabad during their
visit to the Bombay Presidency last November. For that outrage
constituted an ominous breach of all the old Hindu traditions which
invest the personal representative of the Sovereign with a special
sanctity.
But in spite of spasmodic outbreaks, of which we may not yet have seen
the end, aggressive disloyalty in the Deccan has been at least
temporarily set back since the downfall of Tilak. The firmer attitude
adopted by the Government of India and such repressive measures as the
Press Act, combined with judicious reforms, have done much; but it was
by the prosecution of Tilak that the forces of militant unrest lost
their ablest and boldest leader--perhaps the only one who might have
concentrated their direction, not only in the Deccan, but in the whole
of India, in his own hands and given to the movement, with all its
varied and often conflicting tendencies, an organization and unity which
it still happily seems to lack.