by A K Bhagwat
Those who associate Tilak’s name with the Chaphekar brothers point to the fact that Damodar Chaphekar asked for the Bhagawad-Gita from Tilak, Tilak sent it to him and after Damodar was executed, he arranged for his funeral. In the first place there is nothing wrong in giving a sacred book to anyone who asks for it; in fact, if his end is near, it is all the more necessary to give it to him as a solace. Secondly, human considerations demand that funeral rites of a person should be performed according to his last wishes. Tilak, with his religious bent of mind, would regard this as his sacred duty. Moreover, whatever Tilak’s views were about the act of assassination, he was convinced of Chaphekar’s patriotism and had great admiration for the supreme sacrifice he had made. Tilak regarded all political workers as members of one family and his sentiments for Damodar were those of an elder brother. Just as he refused to give any information even if he might accidentally get it, he also thought that he should not pronounce any judgment on the act of a person who had acted with patriotic motives. Unlike Gandhiji, he would never condemn a political murder on ethical grounds alone. He thought that an alien government was an immoral situation and it was therefore quite wrong to dub as immoral any action of a patriot. Tilak believed that the most moral motive, as the love for one’s country is, might, owing to the immoral situation, lead to a violent action. Tilak, therefore, blamed the environment rather than the individual. It is alleged that though Tilak was not responsible for promoting the attitude of terrorism, he had definitely inspired Chaphekar and had created in him a desire to do something for the country. Such vague allegations are made loosely and therefore do not deserve serious consideration. Tilak, through his writings, was building up a national movement and was certainly a fountain of inspiration to younger persons. He provided the stimulus. The response differed from individual to individual.
With the trial and sentence of Chaphekar, questions were naturally asked about the detention of the Natus, to which vague replies were given both in the Provincial and Imperial Councils as also in Parliament. To the question asking the government to state the law or authority under which the movable property of the Natus was attached, the reply was that the property was inadvertently included in the attachment of the immovable property and subsequently orders were given to release it from attachment as soon as the mistake was discovered. Questions in Parliament about the charges on which the Natus were arrested elicited vague and elusive replies. It was said first that there was a vague suspicion of a conspiracy but as there was no evidence to justify their being criminaly charged, recourse was taken to a forgotten regulation. Later the charges were said to be interference with the sanitary work of the Plague Committee and trying to corrupt a policeman or a village headman. Both these charges were clear afterthoughts and even if true, were not so serious as to warrant the stern measures taken by the government. There were continued protests in the Indian press, memorials and petitions were sent to Parliament and ultimately the Natu brothers were released, first on parole and later unconditionally, in May 1898.
The Memorial
With the execution of Damodar Hari Chaphekar and the release of the Natu brothers, questions were raised about the release of Tilak also. After a few days’ imprisonment in the House of Correction at Bombay, Tilak was removed to the Yeravda Central Prison. The category of political prisoners had not yet been thought of and Tilak was treated as an ordinary criminal. The jail food, which was of a very coarse type, did not agree with him and as a result within less than two months he lost about 30 pounds in weight. Grave anxiety was felt in India and in England about the health of Tilak and whether Tilak would survive his sentence was believed to be doubtful. Tilak’s scholarly researches in the prehistory of India had gathered for him a host of admirers among the scholars of Europe and America. In March 1898 Professor Max Müller, the noted Indologist and scholar, sent a copy of the Rigveda, edited by himself, to Tilak in prison. At Yeravda, Tilak seems to have been treated a little more leniendy. He was given milk and buttermilk and the work that he had to do (in the colours and pigments department) being of a lighter and technical nature, was relished more by him. It was again mainly through the efforts of Prof. Max Müller that a memorial was addressed to die Secretary of State for India, which was signed, besides Professor Max Müller, by Sir William Hunter, Sk Richard Garth, Mr. W. C. Caine, Mr. Ramesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E., and many others. The memorial did not question the justice of the sentence passed on Tilak but asked for mercy, and a mitigation of the severe punishments dealt out to him and the other Deccan editors. One of the paragraphs of the memorial said,
“That Mr. Tilak has served his country well as a scholar and Sanskritist and his services have been recognised by the best scholars of Europe. It is clear from his paper on Orion and similar topics diat his real interests lie in the ancient literature of his country, and that he cares more for events that happened 3,000 or 4,000 years ago than for questions of the day.
He is unused to manual labour and has suffered much in health from prison discipline.”
The comparatively improved diet and better treatment that Tikk received at Yeravda prison was due to the intercession of the Howard Association of London. William Tallack, the Secretary, was good enough at once to interview Sir George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for India. Immediately by cable he arranged for Mr. Tilak’s examination by a committee consisting of the Surgeon General, the Inspector General of Prisons and one more person. They found that he required a change of diet and nursing.
The efforts of the memorialists headed by Professor Max Müller did not immediately bear fruit; but the policy of the government after the execution of Chaphekar showed a welcome return to normality. The Natu brothers were released unconditionally. The punitive police force in Poona was withdrawn. At last on Tuesday die 6th September 1898, after 11 months of incarceration, Tilak was released after he had agreed to certain conditions imposed on him by the government. One of these conditions, proposed by Tilak himself in lieu of the government’s condition that he should not take part in politics henceforth, was that the six months’ term of imprisonment, which he was to escape by his early release, would be gone through by him once again if he happened to be sentenced again for sedition. The news of Tilak’s release was met with joyous enthusiasm by leaders of all sections and he received messages of congratulation from friends and admirers from India and abroad.
1 R. G. Pradhan : India’s Struggle for Sivaraj, P. 69
2
3 Kesari, 15th December 1896.
4 Kesari, 23rd March 1897. 5
5
6 “These two famines of 1896 amd 1899-1900.”says Professor D.R.Gadgil,“weretruly very great calamities. Their effects were manifold, weakening the health of the people and undermining their morale. They made the masses easy victims of epidemicsof cholera and plague...” Industrial Evolution of India, P. 104.
7 By the end of 1898 the recorded number of deaths reached a total of 1,73,000which was probably below the real mortality.
8 Kesari, 9th March 1897.
9 Translation by the Bombay High Court’s Translator.
10
11 Kesari, 8thJune 1897.
12 Kesari, 15th June 1897.
13 Kesarí, 22nd June 1897.
14
15
16 Ibid., p. 9.
17 Champion, 20th September 1897.
18
WIDENING ORIZONS
7
After his release from jail in September 1898, Tilak was interviewed by a correspondent of the Sudharak. In this interview he gave a detailed account of his life in jail. He explained that originally his idea was to prosecute the editor of the Times of India but that he abandoned it at a later stage. Asked about the identity of the writer who signed himself ‘Justice’ and whose letters were largely responsible for involving Tilak in the sedition case, Tilak denied that the
writer could be either Dr. Bhandarkar or Kirtane. In prison, he said, he was given the work of spinning coir, and later in Yeravda to colour wool and yarn for making carpets. He used to get the Kesari and the Mahratta in prison; but many times certain news items and articles were cut out from these and other papers that he received. His weight, which was formerly 135 Ibs, was reduced to 105 Ibs. He was medically examined after the Howard Association of London had applied to Parliament and half a pound of milk and two and a half tolas of ghee were thereafter included in his daily diet.
In prison he was kept in the European ward. His room was a small one. There was a raised portion covered with wooden boards to sleep upon. The bed consisted of two blankets only. He wore the prison uniform. He was permitted to use a lamp at night for three hours and he was also allowed to get books from home. He spent most of his time in studying the Rigveda with the help of commentaries. From these he arrived at the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Aryans lived at a place where the night used to be of two months’ duration. This was the North Polar region. Gradually they migrated towards the South. This discovery of his was supported by geology. It was true that out of the three copies of the Gita that he had he gave one to Chaphekar and also helped him to write an application.
Life in jail was naturally very difficult. Though the cell, walls and everything inside were kept extremely clean, no attention was given to the personal hygiene of the prisoners. They were not given sufficient water for a bath. Their clothes were not washed for up to four months and there were often lice in them. According to the rule clothes were to be washed not more than once a week but this too was often not done. Asked about his defence fund, Tilak said that it had swelled to Rs. 53,000 out of which there was as yet a balance of Rs. 9,000 and he had not decided how to spend it.
Thanks to the improved diet after his release from Yeravda his weight had increased to 112 Ibs., but he was still extremely weak. He had become thin and emaciated with eyes sunken and cheekbones standing out prominently. His legs tottered as he walked and he felt tired after talking for some time. It was decided therefore that he should spend a few days at Sinhgad to recoup his health. Here he took rest for two months and this did him a lot of good. He attended the Congress Session at Madras in December 1898, but did not make a speech. He was given a tremendous ovation at Madras and was given receptions at several places. From Madras he travelled to Rameshwar and Ceylon. He was naturally impressed by the Hindu temples in the Madras Presidency and remarked that it was a clear proof of the unity and glory of Hinduism. At Tanjore he was particularly impressed by the Mahratta families that had migrated there three centuries ago with Shivaji’s half-brother Vyankoji. In spite of such a long stay in a different province, these families had still kept up the Marathi language and Maharashtrian customs. In Ceylon, he noticed that in spite of the fact that it had almost all the reforms such as an absence of caste differences, prevalence of widow remarriage, etc., for which reformers in India were clamouring, the Ceylonese were still a backward people. They were under too much western influence and Tilak felt that a revival of the old traditions and customs in dress and manners was necessary for their national regeneration. In 1899 Tilak attended the Lucknow Congress and tried to bring in a resolution condemning Lord Sandhurst, the Governor of Bombay, for his reactionary regime. All the elders of the Congress were opposed to it and consequently the resolution could not be moved. This was a clear indication that Tilak was as yet in a minority in the Congress, though outside in the popular mind his supremacy was almost unquestioned.
From Lucknow, Tilak went to Burma, travelling with a circus company, the proprietor of which was a friend of his. He was impressed by the fact that the Hindu merchants there followed rigorously all the Hindu religious customs and practices. This, he saw, was clear proof that under Hinduism there were no restrictions to travel abroad if only we still kept to the old traditions.
Revolutionary Associates
Tilak was travelling not for relaxation but to acquaint himself with the forces which he sensed but about which he had no personal knowledge. He was the first to realise the process of resurgence in Asia and thought of the possibility of preparing for a revolution in these politically unexplored regions. When Tilak accompanied by Vasukaka Joshi went to Calcutta to attend the Congress in 1901 he met ‘Mataji’, a lady, who hailed originally from Tanjore. She could speak Marathi and Kannada fluently and was conducting a Marathi girls’ school in Calcutta. She invited Tilak to pay a visit to the school. She was an extraordinary woman in many respects. After early widowhood, she went on a pilgrimage to northern India. She then stayed with the Maharaja of Nepal as his paramour for some years and after he was assassinated, returned to India with her valuables. Even when she was staying in Calcutta, she had not severed connections with Nepal and had friendly relations with oil engineer, Kumar Narsinha. She wanted to utilise these contacts to help India. She particularly wanted to help Tilak and when he paid a visit to her school she explained to him how the conditions in Nepal were favourable for securing some kind of aid. She offered to introduce Tilak and Vasukaka Joshi to the then Maharaja of Nepal. Tilak and Joshi went upto the Nepal border but could not proceed further because they were not allowed to enter Nepal owing to the epidemic of plague. After Tilak’s return to Poona, Khadilkar who was working in the Kesari, in consultation with Vasukaka Joshi, planned to work in Nepal. He went to Nepal, stayed there under the pretext of starting a factory for manufacturing tiles and established contacts with the agent of a German company in Calcutta for securing a machine for the manufacture of rifles. Owing to Mataji’s influence, Kumar Narsinha, helped Khadilkar, who gave his name as Krishnarao Hanmantrao Kulkarni. The founder of the Shivaji Club at Kolhapur worked as Khadilkar’s assistant in conducting the tiles factory. Damu Joshi of Kolhapur also went to Nepal. Vasukaka, in the meanwhile, went to Japan and Khadilkar also persuaded the Maharaja of Nepal to send some students to Japan. Khadilkar hoped that these students would get the necessary military training in Japan. The whole pkn of Khadilkar fizzled out after the arrest of Damu Joshi, who had returned to Kolhapur, and he could not pursue the effort for preparing for the revolution.
A similar attempt was made by Vasukaka Joshi on the northwestern front. There were many monasteries of the Mahanubhav sect in Afghanistan and Joshi wanted to establish contacts with the Amir of Afghanistan through some Mahanubhavs. The plan, however, did not materialise.
Tilak was in the know of these revolutionary activities of his close associates and as Acharya Javadekar puts it: “He approved of the revolutionary activities of a preparatory nature, for he visualised that although the peaceful struggle may lead the country to the very precincts of Swarajya, at the last moment this method may not be sufficient and the violent revolutionaries would be required to play some part.”
In Burma as in Ceylon, Tilak noted that in spite all reforms such as women’s emancipation, freedom to follow any faith, widow remarriage and divorce, the Burmese were still a divided and dependent people, with little or no self-respect. “If we compare this society with ours, the question that arises in our mind is how far these social reforms are important from the national point of view.” The conclusion to which he came was that social reform and national regeneration did not go hand in hand. From his articles and speeches of this period, it is clear that Tilak’s views on Hinduism were now crystallised, the comparative study of which he had spoken earlier had now progressed and it had reinforced his faith in Hinduism. At this time he again appears to have accepted Theism as a faith. He is said to have remarked to Mahadeo Dhondo Vidwans that by 1900 his views were completely crystallised and after this he constantly speaks of a belief in God and the necessity of divine guidance.
The first article he wrote in the Kesari after his release11 began with the customary salutation of a Vedic priest He thanks all his supporters and co-workers who had seen him through all his difficulties. He takes a review of the situation in the city
of Poona and notes that there was some improvement and devotes the greater part of his article to the venomous and treacherous propaganda carried on by certain people in the Times, which led to his prosecution. “No educated person,” he says, “can be capable of taking part in, much less in inciting, an overthrow of the English power, or have direct connection with bloodshed. Anyone who suspects the contrary must regard his belief as an outcome of his own ignorance or prejudice.”