by A K Bhagwat
Dharma or Religion means the principle which holds together and protects the world. When today we speak of holding together and protecting the world, we also include efforts for the gradual betterment of our present condition, through higher and higher stages, till it reaches perfection. These efforts may be made by ourselves or we may cause them to be made by others. That our life on earth is for the achievement of some higher ideal is a principle accepted both by religion and the writers of scriptures. The extent to which one can attain is so great that a person, pursuing this path, can ultimately reach oneness with God, the Protector and Preserver of this world. In short, he becomes a God himself. Even though, however, Religion and the Scriptures are very clear on this point regarding the duty of man, very few pay heed to these ideals.
There is no particular time-limit for the efforts to be put in for one’s country. Nor again can they be left undone because they were so left by those who came first. There is no reason why future generations should not start doing tomorrow what the past generations had not done today. Ceaseless effort and sacrifice, without minding the difficulties to which a person or his family might be subjected, trust in God and putting in one’s best without any desire attached to the effort — this in essence is the moral of it all and this precisely is the thing to be learnt from Mahatma Gandhi’s life.
Turning next to Gandhi’s political activity, Tilak felt that it was a vindication of the stand that without political power individual talents, wisdom or ability would be meaningless. To improve the condition of a country one must bring about an improvement in the political condition which is at the root of all other qualities. Had Gandhi not subscribed to this view, he would not have carried on his political activity. Turning, therefore, to Gandhi’s work in the political field, Tilak goes on to say that to strive for bettering a system of administration which appears unjust is no sedition, speaking from the point of view of justice. To call it sedition amounts to saying that the rulers do not want their subjects to be inculcated with principles of justice, morality and the ability to fight against injustice and they are not prepared, further, to confer on them the right of equality. We hold that welfare of the people is the real ideal and strength of the State. Once this is accepted, it follows that wherever we oppose injustice and work for its removal we are strengthening the hands of the State. There are, however, certain individuals, castes or classes that cannot appreciate these principles of justice and they begin to tyrannise others. At this time, if the government suddenly intervenes and tries to put a stop to this tyranny of the traditionally privileged classes, they have to incur the wrath of these classes and thus the traditionally peaceful pattern of society is disturbed. Government, therefore, generally keeps aloof from any such attempts of curbing and restraining these people. In this state of things, unless those who are tyrannised rise up and put in their best for the eradication of injustice, the rulers do not pay any heed to the injustices, and so long as there are no obstacles in their way of carrying on the government there is no reason why they should. It is the duty of every patriot to bring the state of the people’s grievances to this stage and thus compel the rulers to bring about speedy reform. This duty Gandhi has discharged in the best possible way.
In any code of law, there are certain punishments to be imposed on those who break these laws. The object is that the people should be law-abiding. This punishment is imposed with a view to making the people act according to the principles of morality, for the path of morality and peace. If there is a tendency to deviate from this natural path, punishment inflicted by law helps to strengthen the naturally law-abiding tendencies. At times, however, the laws are based not on principles of religion or morality and have no further sanction except the force behind those who make them. The question then that the enlightened and the wise have to decide is whether they should test their faith in the principles of religion, morality and justice even by submitting to the punishment imposed by law or whether they should, out of fear of such punishment imposed by men, break the God-given laws of truth, morality and justice. Those who believe in truth and justice say that in such moments it is not proper to abide by the artificial and unnatural limits of the law. But to say this requires that a person’s faith in the principles of justice and morality should be so firm and unshaking that he must be prepared to do his duty, unmindful of the difficulties, the pain and pleasure, the abilities or disabilities of himself or his wife or children. What is described as mental fortitude, true love of truth or character is nothing but this. This quality is not acquired by the acquisition of knowledge nor is it an intellectual quality. It is a truly spiritual quality possessed by a happy few. Gandhi possesses this to an eminent degree.
There are laws made in a nation to ensure peace. To break them or rebel against them albeit with the noblest of motives is naturally considered unconstitutional. At this time devotees of the nation who wish to bring about a proposed reform by constitutional methods, find their path beset with numerous difficulties. Their minds are inflamed; the wish to bring about reform is intense; they are aware that to go beyond the limits of the law is improper; but there is no way out. The way found out by Mahatma Gandhi is thus a way out of this difficulty — it is a way of passive resistance, of obstruction or, to put it in his own words, a way of Satyagraha. He has used it and has undergone sufferings for it. It has thus acquired sacerdotal sanctity.
On one occasion, speaking to Kaka Kalelkar3 about the high ideal that Gandhi had placed before him, Tilak described it thus: “A ship voyaging over the high seas has to steer its course with an eye on the Polar Star; but then, it does not, for that, go to the Polar Star. It has to reach a material haven like Dabhol, Vengurla or Ratnagiri.4 That is why a religious ideal may be as high as you please, the worldly ideal should be within the reach of all. You cannot get on in this world merely with a religious ideal. By all means look to the Pole Star, but also remember you cannot reach it.” That therefore is the difference between a realist and a prophet, between a Tilak and an Agarkar or between a Lokmanya and a Mahatma.
Awakening of the Untouchables
The pace of social reform was now on the advance. First the Marathas and other “intermediate” classes and now the most backward untouchables began to sit up and the advanced classes had to take notice. Vithal Ramji Shinde organised at Bombay a conference for the removal of untouchability under the Presidentship of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwar of Baroda. On the persistent requests of Shinde, Tilak agreed to attend the conference but he did not forget to remind Shinde that he was doing this in his individual capacity as Tilak and not as the editor of the Kesari.
In the conference Tilak moved a resolution that the Congress should enlist the support of the untouchables by taking the representatives of the community. In a forceful speech Tilak made a strong plea for the removal of untouchability.5 He admitted that it was the tyranny of the Brahmins in the ancient times that started the evil system, but it was high time now for its eradication. He said that in the past there were no dissensions between the Brahmins and other castes, even the Peshwas accepted water out of leather water-carriers carried by untouchables. Finally amid deafening cheers he declared, “If a God were to tolerate untouchability, I would not recognise him as God at all.”
Afterwards Shinde brought out a memorandum for the removal of untouchability and collected signatures of members of all castes and communities. He narrates:6 “I went to get his (Tilak’s) signature. He was in the Sardar Griha. Around him sat his satellites. Ketkar, and even Dadasaheb Khaparde, put aside the hookah and signed. The Lokmanya, however, began to hesitate. Once he appeared to be ready but Dadasaheb Karandikar came in the way. Then the Lokmanya demurred and at last declined to sign!” This is a clear proof that though in theory he had come to see the necessity of going beyond the narrow, orthodox stand in social matters, his past and his environment still clung to him and he had to think twice before he took any stand which could be constr
ued as reformist and progressive.
Deputations to England
In May 1918 a session of the All-India Congress Committee was held at Bombay. Tilak was present at the session. Here the personnel of the delegation to be sent to England was discussed and it was found that the moderates were still opposed to the inclusion of Tilak’s name in the deputation. It was ultimately decided that both the Home Rule Leagues should send their independent delegations. The Muslim League also sent its delegation and so ultimately there were four different delegations working at the same time in England. Tilak tried to insist on having a united deputation of the Congress but his efforts failed.
Before this session, the Maharashtra Home Rule League deputation headed by Tilak had proceeded to Colombo en route to England but it was turned back by a telegram from the Viceroy. On the way to Colombo Tilak halted at Tanjore, Trichinopalli, Madura and Madras and the reception given to him was tremendous. At Colombo too an enthusiastic welcome was given to Tilak; but there was a delay of 20 days in the arrival of the Japanese steamer and the deputation had nothing to do but to wait and watch. It was decided to start by another steamer; but on the day they were to embark, dramatically enough, two telegrams were handed over refusing permission to the delegation to proceed to England, under instruction from the War Office. Meetings of protests were held everywhere. In England too the Labour Party joined in the protests and George Lansbury, M.P. asked questions in Parliament. Attempts were made to send Tilak alone but no passage was available nor was the government ready to relent.
At the A.I.C.C. session at Bombay on the 3rd May, resolutions to protest against the government repression were passed. A fraternal delegate from the Labour Party, Major Graham Pole, attended the session and Mrs. Besant announced that Joseph Baptista would attend the conference of the Labour Party as a fraternal delegate of the Home Rule League. The need of foreign propaganda was increasingly felt and Tilak made a dramatic and generous gesture which showed that, though preoccupied by politics he was keenly alive to the need of a wider cultural activity. This was an offer by him of Rs. 50,000 to the poet Rabindranath Tagore proposing a lecture tour of England and America. The Poet writes:7 “Lokmanya Tilak surprised me with a request through a messenger that I should proceed to Europe with the help of Rs. 50,000 which he was ready to offer me. My surprise was still greater when I was assured that Tilak did not want my help for any propaganda which was his own, that he would be sorry if I followed the path which he himself was pursuing at that moment for the benefit of his country. He wanted me to be true to myself and, through my effort to serve humanity, in my own way to serve India. I felt that this proposal from Tilak carried with it the highest honour that I had ever received from my countrymen. I do not know if I was worthy of it, but it revealed to me the greatness of Tilak’s personality which deeply impressed my mind. He had more faith in truth than in method. His ideal of the fulfilment of India’s destiny was vast, and therefore it had ample room even for a dreamer of dreams, even for a ‘music-maker.’ He knew that freedom had its diverse aspects, and therefore it could be truly reached, if individuals had their full scope to use their special gifts for opening out paths that were diverse in their directions.”
The Montagu-Chelmsford report, long awaited, was published in July 1918. On the 7th July 1918 three copies suddenly arrived at the Kesari’s office. It was a 170-page volume in foolscap. On the Sunday morning Tilak took up the book and set it down only in the evening after he had read the last page. He did not get up even once either to bathe or to take his meals! In the night and the next morning, he immediately jotted down his notes and dictated on Monday afternoon the leading article of the next day’s Kesari, “It has dawned, but where is the sun?”
“The Montagu-Chelmsford Report,” says Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya,8 “was a masterpiece of literature and like other political documents produced by British statesmen, it contained a dispassionate statement of India’s case for self-government. Only, the obstacles to reform are described with equal lucidity, and in the end the latter triumph. In the case of the report in question, there was an additional circumstance. The Congress scheme prepared by the two great bodies representing India had provided for fixed Executives responsible to the Legislature. Here was a more fascinating scheme of responsible government with replaceable Cabinets, possessing corporate responsibility and subject to the vote of the Legislatures, the very reproduction of the British type of self-government. What else should the people of India want?”
It was condemned by a majority of Indians. “Mr. Tilak characterised it as a ‘sunless dawn.’ Mrs. Besant held that the political reforms indicated in the report were unworthy of England to give and of India to take. The Hon’ble Mr. Patel showed how in certain details the report had made retrograde proposals. Mr. N. C. Kelkar pronounced the proposals as cruelly disappointing and ‘almost a wicked attempt to let Indian leaders be stewed in their own juice.’ The Hon’ble Mr. B. Chakrabarty said that throughout the report, the fetish of peace, order and good government was worshipped. Prof. Jitendralal Banerjea declared that the reforms were grudging, half-hearted, meagre, inadequate and hence disappointing and abortive; while the veteran Dr. Subrahmanyam Ayer advised his countrymen not to touch the narcotic that was offered to them.”9
In the first of his articles, Tilak congratulated the framers of the report for accepting India’s right to govern herself but it was unfortunate, he said, that the basic ideas underlying the Congress-League demand, namely authority over the budget, the right to form our administrative policy and the right to make the bureaucracy act according to our wishes were not to be found in the report. He also objected to the words “step by step” and wanted a definite time-limit to be imposed.
In the second article, “Janab, Delhi to bahot door hai” (Sir, Delhi is still far off), he pointed out that the government in England constituted the head of our administration. It was at this centre of our power that we demand power and authority over the bureaucracy. The only principle accepted by the report, said Tilak, was that a part of the salary of the Secretary of State and his office should be paid by the Home Government but they have not agreed to make the Secretary of State an agent of the Government of India by giving to the latter all his rights. When this was not there the reforms were as meaningless as the Morley-Minto reforms.
The reforms seemed to precipitate the crisis which was developing in the Congress. Surendranath Banerjee sensed that once again Tilak and Das would adopt obstructionist tactics. The alarm spread among the moderates, and once again there was a chain of secret circulars urging Congress members to give their whole-hearted support to the scheme of reforms. Surendranath and Shastri and others seemed bent on seceding. A few months before the publication of the report, a National Liberal Federation was started at Calcutta, with Surendranath Banerjee as the President. Pt. Malaviya and Motilal Nehru, who had now realised the potentialities of the party headed by Tilak, decided to remain with the Congress. The unity forged at Lucknow appeared to be short-lived. Warning the moderates in an article in the Kesari,10 Tilak said that seceding from the Congress because the majority was not with them would do more harm than good to them. “It may be on account of the Home Rule or because of some other reason, but the majority is with the Nationalist party. Why grumble now? The conditions imposed on the extremists then (in 1908) have not to be observed by the moderates now!”
Bombay Special Convention
A special convention of the Congress was held at Bombay in August and September 1918 and Tilak, who was offered the presidentship, declined in order that doors might be kept open for the seceders. His greatness was an accepted fact and it needed no halo of the honour of presidentship. In the Subjects Committee, when there was a heated discussion on Swaraj, a moderate leader made a disparaging remark about Tilak. At this, Br. Hasan Imam, the president-elect, flared up and said, “Let me say, and it is with great pride, that Lokmanya Tilak is my fat
her in point of politics.” The resolution on the reform scheme was moved by Pt. Malaviya, who made a reasoned and statesmanlike speech. Pt. Motilal Nehru remarked that the Congress was able to perform the impossible feat of uniting its appreciation, recognition and, in plain English, its condemnation of the report. Tilak said in his speech supporting the resolution: “What we have tried to do in the Subjects Committee is to distil our different opinions, and it was very difficult to distil ‘the gourds and the cucumbers’ together. It was no easy task; even our enemies had considered it to be difficult. They believed that we were engaged in an impossible business and that by the beginning of September the Congress would be nowhere. Unfortunately for them, their predictions have not proved true. So long as the spirit of forbearance and the spirit of give-and-take pervades in the councils of the Congress, such a fatal contingency is never likely to arise.”
“We were told that the Congress was going to reject the whole scheme. I could never understand and have never understood what it meant. We are in the midst of our negotiations. If you reject the scheme you have done with it. What are you then going to tell the British people? ‘That we reject the scheme?’ I think that we have learnt enough of politics to know that it is absurd to take such a position. Fortunately for all, we have been able to place before you a reasoned document, a resolution, which combines the wisdom of one party, I may say, the temperament of another party, and if you like to call it — I do not like to call it myself — the rashness of a third party.”
“The Montagu Report is a beautiful, very skilful and statesman-like document. We asked for eight annas of self-government; that report gives us one anna of responsible government and says that it is better than the eight annas of self-government. The whole literary skill of the report lies in making us believe that one morsel of responsible government is more than sufficient to satisfy our hunger for self-government. We now plainly say to the government, We thank you for the one anna of responsible government, but in the scheme we want to embody, not all that is embodied in the Congress-League scheme, the rails might be different but the carriages that carry passengers might be transferred from one rail to another.’ This is what we have tried to do and we have tried to satisfy all parties concerned and a very difficult task has been accomplished. The future way is clear and I hope that what we have done will be of material help in carrying on this fight to the end.”