by A K Bhagwat
At this time, again, two of the historical places of the Peshwas in Poona were suddenly, burnt down. The name of the culprit happened to be Ranade, who confessed that he was in league with Phadke. The bureaucracy, by an act of perverse ingenuity, which had always been its characteristic, connected the culprit with Mahadev Govind Ranade, who had already become an object of suspicion on account of his numerous social and political activities. In 1873, Ranade was therefore suddenly transferred from Poona to Nasik. Ranade’s transfer and the displeasure that he had incurred was a topic of common discussion in Poona and could not have failed to impress such a keen student of public affairs as Tilak. He must have noted the quiet acquiescence bordering on helplessness which even a person like Ranade had to show, because he was a government servant. The possibility of serving the country by being more independent may have entered his mind because of this and similar other instances.
Thus Ranade’s, influence was sobering, and sedate. Ranade looked upon the contact with the British as a providential arrangement and his scheme of reform was essentially theistic in character. He was conscious of the great cultural past of India and sought to take what was best in it. It is possible, however, that the minds of the college-going youth were drawn to more extreme attitudes, expressed in flamboyant language. A youth of 18, whose powers of intellect are above average, is usually impatient of the cautious and slow methods of the older generation. The extreme stand was to be found in the impassioned writings of Vishnushastri Chiplunkar who started his Nibandh-Mala in 1874, a year after Tilak had entered college. Chiplunkar’s caustic pen was largely responsible for awakening the moral wrath of the younger generation against foreign domination. His impassioned articles made the people conscious that they were heirs to a great cultural and national tradition. His appeal went home because it was sentimental, and though often one-sided and partial, he was always forceful and direct. Though he paid homage to the virility of the English language by calling it the milk of the tigress, he was very critical of British rule. He paid tribute to the love of independence and the feeling of nationalism that this essentially liberal education created. At the same time he had no sympathy with the belief of the elder statesmen like Ranade, that nothing but good would result from the contact between the British and Indians. In trying to define the objective of his periodical, he ironically discussed “the erroneous impressions of many who believe that the English have come to this hot country from a distance of 4,000 miles to do good to the Indians. Most people are now convinced that the object ot the British in ruling over India is something other than the good of this country.” This sentiment as also the bantering tone was apt to make an appeal to impressionable minds.
In essay after essay, Chiplunkar referred to the degradation of the language and culture of the Maratha people, railed at the missionaries for their attacks on Hinduism and hit back at the English, who tried to find fault with the natives for their English by quoting in turn the blunders of early English educationists like Major Candy in their Marathi writing.
It was, therefore, a mood of violent reaction against British rule expressed in an extreme form that we find in Vishnushastri. This second generation of English-educated persons differed in many important respects from its predecessors. They had seen that the liberal promises of the early British administrators had come to nothing; taking their cue from their elders they had realised the impoverishment of the people of India under the foreign rule; but their reaction was a more vehement opposition instead of supine co-operation, advocated by the elder statesmen. They had at the same time noted the futility of insurrectionary methods, and wanted to see if they could find a golden mean that would steer clear of looking to the government every time on the one hand and the insurrectionary methods on the other. The study of Mill had made them believers in the constitutional form of representative government and the path of constitutional agitation had already been blazed by Ranade and Dadabhai. Intellectually they were critical and analytical. Tilak also, like Agarkar, lacked the faith of the first generation of Ranade and Bhandarkar, who had tried to regenerate Hinduism by starting the Prarthana Samaj. Tilak does not seem to have had any sympathy with such attempts. He appears to have had his doubts regarding the essentially religious and theistic approach to the problems of life. It is here that the influence of Agarkar is to be clearly seen, though Tilak does not seem to have got out of the childhood influences of the daily religious ritual; for that was the first sentence that had come before him. The influence of the early religious teaching, when it was imparted by so upright and learned a man as his father, tended to build up a sense of moral values in him. Religion in such a case, though authoritarian, instilled in a young mind the desire to go beyond narrow egotism and the pleasures of a worldly life and made him think, however dimly, about salvation in the religious sense of the term. Tilak has made a very significant statement about his childhood influences in his later life. “When I was quite a boy, I was told by my elders, that strictly religious and philosophic life was incompatible with the humdrum life of every day. If one was ambitious enough to try to attain the highest goal a person could attain, then one must divest oneself of all earthly duties and renounce the world. One could not serve two masters, the world and God. This set me thinking. The question that I posed to myself was, ‘Does my religion want me to give up this world and renounce it before I attempt to attain the perfection of manhood?’”12 Renunciation of worldly life therefore was an ideal that Tilak had before him and his grandfather had, by his personal example, demonstrated it.
The idea of going beyond “the narrow domestic walls” must have entered the minds of both Tilak and Agarkar fairly early. With Tilak, it was a question of salvation in the religious sense. But with reading of Mill and Spencer, and Tyndall and Huxley, and under the influence of Agarkar he was led onwards in the path of doubt. This gave rise to a critical attitude towards life.
He must have been caught in the “wave of agnosticism and atheism, materialistic in its character and unsettling in its effectsthat was mainly due to ideas borrowed from the writings of Mill and Spencer”.13 In the first uncritical reaction to the teachings of Darwin and Mill’s Utilitarianism it was thought that man was descended from ape and God’s existence was to be questioned. The effect of this on many was the growth of latitudinarianism and a loss of faith. Agarkar and Tilak, being essentially selfless and sincere, had no fascination for a life of pleasure. Agarkar could therefore see the idealistic message of service to humanity in Mill’s Utilitarianism. From Mill the younger generation learnt fairness in argument and precision in thought and language. The agnosticism of Spencer and Mill was not the agnosticism of the 18th century writers, who played at criticism while dealing with the problems of life. Spencer held before his readers a high ideal which served to lift a conscientious student above the petty vanities of life. “If they teach us doubt,” says Chandavarkar, who was a contemporary of Tilak and Agarkar, “they teach us to doubt well. And their own pure lives added to the moral earnestness, only go to foster in the mind a tone of seriousness and teach it to approach the problems of life in a reverential spirit.” Tilak’s love of science attracted him to the Positivism of Comte which formulated a philosophy founded on the sciences and their higher generalisations. From his religion of Humanism he had gathered the thought that disinterested service of humanity would be the religion of the future.
His conservative mind must have been impressed by Comte’s Sociology which was based on an idea of a sort of four estate system where the first position would be occupied by the scientist and the industrialist. This had an interesting parallel with the Hindu idea of a caste system.
It is a matter of conjecture again, but it is likely that Agarkar must have influenced Tilak to reconcile his ideas of salvation of the soul with the secular idea of selfless service to humanity. While discussing philosophical questions with Agarkar, Tilak admitted that they were worth a careful consideration though
he was inclined to suspend his judgment as his thoughts had not attained maturity. In spite of certain differences there were similarities between them. Both had shown their independence right from the beginning - first in childhood pranks and later in defiance of authority. Both were equally impatient of injustice in any form. To Tilak it was the political injustice of foreign domination that had to be tackled first, while to Agarkar the primary task was to break the chains of social injustice and tyranny. During their college days, these differences surfaced in intellectual discussions, which Tilak and Agarkar carried on in many long-drawn bouts with all the zeal they were capable of.
Though both felt the need, however vaguely, of fighting against political domination, the exact nature of their struggle was not clear In fact the contact between the British and the Indians had not been analysed in all its aspects till then. It was not clear therefore if severance from Britain was necessary for the regeneration of India or whether it could be done under the aegis of the British Empire. Political life, with all that it brings in its train such as organising political parties, party propaganda, etc., had not yet begun. In the field of social reform the task was beset with numerous difficulties. Being essentially men of action Tilak and Agarkar could not carry on a discussion which was both endless and fruitless. They had an urge to chalk out a plan of action. They thought, therefore, of a middle way in the form of an educational effort that would strike at the foot of all evil, social or political. This effort, they believed, could pave the way of regeneration. It was to be their common platform on which they were determined to stand together with a crusader’s zeal.
Thus through their friendship with each other, and contact with the mighty minds of old and of their own time, was born a great idea - the pioneering effort in private western education in the 80’s of the last century. The time had now come when education was to be made cheaper and was to be freed from the narrow, official channels through which it seemed to flow in government institutions. These young men were, therefore, living up to the ideal with which their Alma Mater had been started in 1852, “The improvements in education, which most effectually contribute to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of a people, are those which concern the education of the higher class - of the persons possessing leisure and natural influence over the minds of their countrymen. By raising the standard of instruction among these classes, you would eventually produce a much greater and more beneficial change in the ideas and feelings of the community than you can hope to produce by acting directly upon the more numerous class.” Tilak and Agarkar were trying to spread the light of knowledge further among the middle-class people and were thus the purveyors of a new idea. They were cutting out a new path in public life of dedicating themselves to an ideal, gladly embracing poverty and hardship. They deliberately turned away from the lures of government service and the enticements of other professions then easily within reach and launchied a new type of public work, fraught with uncertanties.
It was a propitious moment that they had chosen, for Vishnu-shastri Chiplunkar, whose writings they had come to admire, had actually broken away from the shackles of government service and was also thinking along the same lines and the young men decided to join him.
It was a life of voluntary poverty and selfless service that they had chosen and therefore the elders at home, who naturally had dreams about their bright prospects, had to be convinced. Agarkar wrote to his mother when he became a fellow in the Deccan College: “Mother, perhaps you have ambitious schemes for your son that he would get a high salaried post after graduation. I may as well tell you just now that I am not going after wealth, but shall be content to live only on that which just keeps body and soul together and devote all my time to the good of others.” Also in one of his speeches in 1919 Tilak described Agarkar’s thoughts and his own during college days: “We were men,” he said, “with our brains in a fever heat with the thoughts of the degraded condition of our country and after long cogitation we had formed the opinion that the salvation of our motherland was to be found in education alone.”
1 Lecture on ‘Bhakti’, Tilak
2 Khot: Originally a rent-collector, representing the government, the Knot came to be invested with the rights of land ownership. Under the British, Khotì became a quasi-hereditary right.
3 K. G. Sharang pani, Judge, Bawda State. See Bapat, II, P. 611.
4 ‘This “Coat” does not seem to be the Parsee style long coat but the typically Maharashtrian robe fastened with strings at one side.
5 P. 99, The Communal Triangle in India, by Ashok Mehta Achyut Patwardhan.
6 See page 38, Poverty and Unbritìsh Rale in India.
7 Pages 133-36, Adhumk Bharat, by Acharya Javadekar.
8 K.G. Sharangpani, Bapat, II, p. 611.
9 See Ranade: The Prophet of Liberated India, by D. G. Karve.
10 History of the Indian National Congress, p 14.
11 Pp. 32-33, Indian National Evolution, by Ambika Charan Mazumdar.
12 Lecture at Amraoti, 1917.
13 N. G. Chandavarkar : Speeches and Writings, p. 231.
* N. C. Kelkar gives in his biography of Tilak a few Sanskrit verses which Tilak composed at school and college. They show his easy mastery over the language and metre but are mostly conventional in ideas.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE, PRESS AND PRISON
2
The dreams of youth many a rime vanish at the first touch of reality. There is a wide gap between the promise of youth and the actual performance in later life. Young men aspire to pursue a noble ideal and yet, when overwhelmed by a hostile environment, give up the ideal as impracticable. This surrender to difficulties is an agonising process; but these wounds of the mind are soon healed and reluctant surrender takes the form of a willing compromise. Only in a few cases the scars remain and these sensitive minds betray a sentimental attitude in later events. Generally the giving up of an ideal is followed by rationalisation; but the attempt to deceive the world almost invariably ends in self-deception.
Tilak and Agarkar were, however, made of sterner stuff. Theirs was a resolve of the mind rather than of the heart only. The mightier the challenge, the greater was their determination to meet it. Both of them had the peculiarly realistic attitude of Maharashtrians1 and were aware of the tremendous difficulties they would have to face. They were not interested in the dramatic thrill of martyrdom, but were determined to tread a thorny path, the end of which was not in sight. They did not wish to dazzle the world with anything that was flashy and brilliant. And yet they had the consciousness of being torch-bearers.
It was the torch of knowledge that Agarkar and Tilak wanted to hold aloft in a society where darkness prevailed. The discussions during college days had clarified the issue for these two ambitious young men. They were capable of launching a pioneering effort on their own. They, however, found in Vishnushastri Chiplunkar a worthy leader for piloting an ambitious scheme. Through his Nibandh-Mala, Vishnushastri had stirred the mind of Maharashtra and cast a spell on its younger generation. Tilak and Agarkar, therefore, looked up to him for a bold lead and discussed with him their plan for establishing a private school on the model of missionary institutions. Two other young men B. A. Bhagwat and V. B. Karandikar also agreed to join Tilak and Agarkar. Chiplunkar enthusiastically agreed to captain this team of idealists, and it was decided to start a school in Poona by 1880. These young men also consulted Ranade, who was a friend, philosopher and guide to all those who wanted to render some service to the motherland. Ranade’s mature judgment was in sharp contrast with Chiplunkar’s impetuosity, and yet he recognised in the proposed plan of these young men the signs of a new era. An interesting anecdote is told by the late Justice Chandavarkar. In the summer of 1879, when Chandavarkar was out for a walk in the evening along with a friend, he was accosted by Agarkar and Tilak who intimated to him their plan of starting a private school
and of starting two journals one in Marathi and the other in English. Agarkar also informed Chandavarkar that they had obtained the consent of Ranade to this plan. Chandavarkar who thought the enterprise rather quixotic, expressed his doubts to Ranade the next day. Ranade immediately replied, “So far, most of our social workers were government servants. These enthusiastic young men are resolved to dedicate their lives to our country. They are a step ahead of us and it is our first duty to encourage them. We must not look at them with suspicion.”
This anecdote clearly indicates how Tilak and Agarkar had impressed a sober leader like Ranade by their idealistic fervour. The plan was taking shape and one can imagine how Chiplunkar, Tilak and Agarkar must have lent all their energies to the ambitious undertaking. Chiplunkar in a letter to his younger brother, written on 13th September 1879, writes enthusiastically in English: “The memorable 1st of October is approaching. I shall enjoy the pleasure of kicking off my chains that day. Mr. Agarkar, Mr. Tilak, Mr. Bhagwat and Mr. Karandikar have tendered proposals for joining me in the enterprise. This they have done of their own accord. We have settled the 1st of January for the hoisting of the standard.”
The difficult nature of their task was first realised by them when Bhagwat and Karandikar, who had first lent their support to the scheme, withdrew. Chiplunkar therefore did not mention any names in the prospectus which he published on behalf of himself and his colleagues on the 15th December 18. He was conscious of the significance of the effort undertaken, and yet he had a realistic attitude which prevented him from giving flamboyant expression to it in public. While mentioning the aims and objectives of the proposed educational institution, he only mentioned one objective, viz. to facilitate and cheapen education. There was yet one more difficulty right at the beginning. Agarkar got the Senior Fellowship in the Deccan College and therefore deferred joining his colleagues for a year. Chiplunkar and Tilak were therefore the only two persons left to open the New English School on 1st January 1880. At this time Mahadeo Ballal Namjoshi joined them and after a time, another able young man, Vaman Shivram Apte, also came forward to shoulder the responsibility and was made superintendent.