Madame Cama became an active member of Abhinav Bharat. She justified her deep faith in armed struggle towards liberating India in these words:
I want to speak on the methods, as I cannot keep quiet. Since such tyranny is going on in our country, so many deportations are cabled everyday, and all peaceful methods are denied to us. Some of you may feel that as a woman I should object to violence. The price of liberty must be paid. Which nation has got it without paying for it? Hindustanis! Our Revolution is holy. May our country be emancipated speedily. My only hope in life is to see our country free and united. I beg of you young men to march on to the goal of swaraj in its right sense. Let the motto be: We are all for ‘India for Indians’. 37
Others in Vinayak’s group in London included W.P. Phadke of Bombay who abandoned his plans to write the ICS examinations to join Abhinav Bharat, K.V.R. Swami, Niranjan Pal, Hemchandra Das, Sukhsagar Dutt, Bapu Joshi, M.C. Sinha, Harishchandra Krishnarao Koregaonkar, Hotilal Varma, Mirza Abbas, R.M. Khan of Nabha, Abdullah Suhrawardy who was vice-president of the Home Rule Society, and Sikandar Hayat Khan who later became the prime minister of Punjab.
As is evident from the descriptions of the various characters within and closely associated with India House, and their backgrounds, it was indeed a microcosm of India itself. They were young people from different parts of the country, all highly educated and intelligent, with bright prospective futures; yet they willingly gave up their careers, families and their very lives for the cause of liberating their motherland. And with Vinayak as the group’s leader, they were bracing themselves for creating a huge impact in the very heart of the mighty British Empire.
Although there were a few Muslim young men who were part of this group, there are indications that Shyamji and India House were viewed with suspicion in certain Islamic quarters. One of the inmates of India House, Abdullah Suhrawardy, repeatedly received letters from someone called Ziauddin, who was also studying in London, and who later went on to become the vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University:
I understand that Mr Krishnavarma has founded a society called ‘India Home Rule Society’ and you are also one of its vice presidents. Do you really believe that the Mohammedans will be profited if Home Rule be granted to India? . . . There is no doubt that this Home Rule is decidedly against the Aligarh Policy . . . what I call the Aligarh policy is really the policy of all the Mohammedans generally—of the Mohammedans of Upper India particularly. 38
Despite these apprehensions from various quarters, Vinayak decided to create a version of Abhinav Bharat in England as well in order to organize these young men from different parts of India into a cogent force. The ‘Free India Society’ was thus formed within India House towards the end of 1906. It held regular meetings, celebrated Indian festivals such as Dussehra, birth and death anniversaries of great Indian leaders and spiritual masters such as Shivaji, Guru Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh and others, and held debates and discussions on the political situation in India and possible solutions. The society’s weekly Sunday meetings drew large crowds and were conducted openly. In these meetings, Vinayak delivered masterly speeches on the history of Italy, France and America and their revolutionary movements. He would often point out that ‘peaceful evolution had a meaning and a sense, peaceful revolution had neither’. 39 With forceful and erudite arguments he managed to convince even those who disagreed with him.
Many young men were influenced and would soon enrol into the society. Vinayak would carefully assess them and only those whom he found suitable were included in Abhinav Bharat’s core group. Several Indian students from ‘Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburg, Manchester and other centres of education were rapidly brought under the influence of the revolutionary tenets’. 40 Gyanchand Verma, a law student who came from a poor family background in India, became the secretary of the Free India Society. On 29 December 1908, Guru Gobind Singh’s anniversary celebration at Caxton Hall was a spectacular performance with numerous stalwarts such as Vinayak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal attending and delivering passionate speeches.
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Right from childhood, the life and struggles of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) had influenced Vinayak. Instead of positing his revolutionary thoughts within Marxist ideology, Vinayak made Mazzini his role model. It was Mazzini’s efforts that had created a unified Italy in 1861 from a conglomerate of disparate states ruled by the Austrian Empire. Mazzini’s interactions with fellow revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82) were significant for Vinayak in his understanding of warfare. Returning from exile in Brazil and Uruguay, Garibaldi formed an alliance with Mazzini to fight with the kingdom of Sardinia against the Austrian Empire. Despite these efforts, the imperial rule did not end in Italy, till later wars finally led to its liberation and unification.
Vinayak’s Mitra Mela and Abhinav Bharat were modelled on Mazzini’s idea of ‘Young Italy’ and his modus operandi as perfect templates for the Indian struggle for liberation. Several Indian nationalists were influenced by Mazzini, including Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, S.M. Paranjpe, Surendranath Banerjea and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. 41 They had written critiques or given lectures on the Italian’s political philosophy. But many stopped short of incorporating his revolutionary or violent zeal. As Banerjea points out in his autobiography:
I lectured upon Mazzini but took care to tell the young men to abjure his revolutionary ideas and to adopt his spirit of sacrifice and devotion to the path of constitutional development . . . Mazzini’s tactics will be disastrous in our country. Our efforts must be legal, constitutional and absolutely peaceful. 42
But Vinayak had no such qualms. Mazzini and his revolutionary ideas formed a regular feature of the Free India Society lectures. The details of how Mazzini ‘induced Italian soldiers employed by Austrian rulers to join in the freedom struggle, how he took help from various princely states in Italy to liberate his country’ 43 seemed the perfect prescription for Indians yearning for freedom. There were undoubtedly sceptics who wondered how a prototype of an advanced European country like Italy, whose people and princely states craved for freedom and who had ample supply of arms, could be replicated in India. They felt that suggestions of a similar armed struggle in India were impractical, laughable and even suicidal. To these, Vinayak would respond:
The arms being borne by Indian soldiers under the British command are our arms. True, our Indian soldiers are illiterate, but they too must have some desire to make our country independent. Spread the fire of movement for freedom among them and see how the same soldiers turn against the English with the same arms and ammunitions! 44
Within barely a week of his arrival at India House, a restless Vinayak approached the manager, Mr Mukherjee, with a query of whether the library had Mazzini’s autobiography (Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini ) and articles. 45 After finding just one volume, he managed to procure three of the six volumes. Vinayak felt as though some secret treasure had been unearthed. In just a week, he read the three volumes. Impressed by his dedication, Mukherjee managed to get him the missing volumes from elsewhere. Towards the end of the study, Vinayak realized the remarkable similarity in the thought and approach proposed by Mazzini and his own efforts in India. This bolstered his confidence that his method was right after all. He writes:
Secret societies must work on two fronts: Propaganda and Action. Some work has to be done in secret and some in the open. It is impossible to regain independence without resorting to force of arms. However, it is also essential to carry out propaganda by peaceful means to prepare the masses for their part in the revolution. It is essential to join forces with the enemies of Britain in Asia and Europe and sympathetic elements in America. Guerrilla tactics must be used to attack British sources of power, its centres, its officers; individually and in groups, to induce Indians employed by British such as soldiers to rise in revolt, to rise whenever there was a war between Britain and other foreign power, to carry out revolutionary activities one after the other�
��that was my plan of action. And I used to argue my case in open but still keeping within the legal limits. I was surprised to find that Mazzini had followed the same path for liberation of his country . . . I realized that if my friends and followers were to read Mazzini’s articles that will increase their faith in our methods enormously. In 1906, I and my colleagues in Abhinav Bharat were hardly twenty to twenty-two years of age. Our leaders, both Moderates and Militants dismissed our activities as ‘childish’. They were the leaders of our society at that time. But then Mazzini and his fellow revolutionaries were similarly ridiculed as ‘childish’ and ‘absurd’ by contemporary elders in Italian society in 1830s. Mazzini had replied to such ridicule in his articles. The funny thing was that in 1906 persons like Mazzini and Garibaldi were regarded as ‘great patriots’ by Indian leaders without realizing that in their days Mazzini and Garibaldi too were being branded as ‘foolhardy’ and ‘childish’. Mazzini’s articles were going to make firm our plans of action and induce faith among people of India in our methods. 46
It was with this intention that Vinayak resolved to translate Mazzini’s autobiography into Marathi. His idea was not to merely write a widely read historical account but to inspire fellow Indians to emulate Mazzini’s path. He therefore decided to add a preface to demonstrate the parallels between India and Italy, and how Mazzini’s strategy could be customized and followed by Indian revolutionaries. Fired with this zeal, in a record two-and-half months since his arrival in London, by 28 September 1906, Vinayak managed to complete the translation titled Joseph Mazzini yanche Atmacharitra va Rajkaran (Politics and Autobiography of Joseph Mazzini). It had nine selected essays that ran into nearly 300 pages. The preface itself was about twenty-five pages long. In the introduction, Vinayak emphasized the importance of kartavya (duty) to Mazzini’s political philosophy. The sense of duty remained an important aspect of Vinayak’s political philosophy all his life.
Referring to the uprising of 1848 in Italy, Vinayak implored Indians to consider their own experiences in the 1857 uprising. He opines that although the Italian revolution led by Mazzini was unsuccessful in reaching its objectives it must not be construed as a failure; Indians must learn from their mistakes and carry on a relentless war in India against the British Empire. He refers to the resolve of the Italians that freedom was not to be got through begging. Hence, looking at the examples of other European nations, they decided to take recourse to secret societies where men were trained for revolution. The lack of arms did not deter Italy, wrote Vinayak. Instead, young Italians went to Spain, America, Germany, Poland and other countries to smuggle arms and also learn the art of war. In his preface, Vinayak mentions how arms managed to cross borders and enter the country as a result of widespread disaffection in the army and by administering the oath of Young Italy to many soldiers. A lot of what he wrote in the preface had less to do with Mazzini or Italy but was a clear strategy of action for India and her revolutionaries. It was masked in such coded language that no one could point a finger at him for inciting sedition against the British government. The readers too were smart enough to catch the author’s message.
Publishing the book was no easy task. Vinayak turned to his elder brother Babarao back home for support. He sent him the manuscript in October 1906. By then, Babarao and his activities in Abhinav Bharat in Nashik had already caught the attention of the local police. He had been detained during a Dussehra procession for his loud slogans of Vande Mataram , and for roughing up policemen who objected to such ‘calls of sedition’. He was questioned till late in the night and the following day nearly 200 people, including Babarao and the youngest brother Narayan, were arrested. Ironically, many of them were not even present in Nashik during the said incident; this was a clear pretext to intimidate the members of Abhinav Bharat. A year-long trial before the first class magistrate of Malegaon division, W. Plunkett, was held in different parts of Nashik district. This soon became famous as the ‘Vande Mataram Trial case’. While Narayan and a few others were acquitted in the judgment delivered on 8 May 1907, the rest were convicted under Section 332 of the IPC. Abhinav Bharat and Babarao were clearly on the radar of the intelligence agencies.
Despite this, Babarao got the manuscript that Vinayak sent him from London printed. Vinayak had dedicated the book to his two mentors—Tilak and S.M. Paranjpe. Babarao thought it prudent to show a copy of the manuscript to Tilak for his suggestions. Tilak was alarmed by its explosive content and warned Babarao that while he had no objection to what he wished to do with it, he would advise caution since it was dangerous to publish such a book. But Babarao was undaunted. It was a difficult task to find a printer. But with the help of some Abhinav Bharat members who had influence with the printing press of the newspaper Jagadahitechchhu , by June 1907, 2000 copies of the book were printed.
In order to avoid police scrutiny, Babarao had already published a series of other books under the name of Laghu Abhinav Bharat Mala (small books and pamphlets), Vinayak’s ballads Singhadacha Powada and Baji Prabhucha Powada and Govind Kavi’s ballad on the assassination of Afzal Khan by Shivaji. A new publication series titled Thorali Abhinav Bharat Mala (books and biography series) was started and the first book to be released was the Mazzini biography, priced at Rs 1.50. Within a month, the entire first print was sold out, and many asked for advance pre-orders even before the second edition could be printed. This was an indication of the public sentiment and its inclination to read both Vinayak’s writings, as well as the biography of a distant, largely unknown European revolutionary. People read the book in groups and at Abhinav Bharat meetings in different cities and towns. The Kal gave the book a rousing review:
Patriot Savarkar is well known to Marathi readers. His enthusiasm, fierce patriotism, superb articles and oratory have made him well known. Having passed his BA examination from Bombay University he had recently left for England to study to become a Barrister. Though he has gone abroad, he has not forgotten his country, his people and his language for one moment. It is persons like him who should be going abroad. The large buildings, big factories and enormous wealth of England, did not impress him; but he has been all the time thinking of uplifting our country from slavery and to progress it to the level of advanced countries . . . Savarkar has written this book in Marathi, while staying in London, the heart of the English language. This is probably the first literary work, which was written in London for the benefit of our people. There is a wonderful confluence of three—Mazzini’s articles devoted to the goddess of freedom, its translation by Savarkar in the free atmosphere of England, and the anxious readers in Maharashtra. This is bound to relieve us from all the pain. These articles by Mazzini are streams of nectar. Like the Mantras of Vedas, they have tremendous power . . . One cannot thank Savarkar enough for making these articles available. Those who can read must study such works of literature. Those who cannot read can still benefit, if someone reads it out for them. 47
With advertisements of the second edition of the book coming out, the authorities were alerted. The government had an option of confiscating the book and also prosecuting the author and publisher for sedition. But Vinayak had taken extreme care to ensure that no law of the land was broken. He had simply translated Mazzini’s thoughts and nowhere had he propagated rebellion against the British Empire in India. In a confidential note regarding the book, E.B. Raikes, the advocate general for the judicial department, Government of Bombay, wrote:
On the summary before me I have no doubt that the Preface [introduction] was written with a directly seditious intention and that almost every native of this country who reads it will know this, but at the same time it is very difficult to point to a single line of it which can be said to be directed against the British Government . . . A regular attempt is being made to preach sedition under the guise of teaching historical lessons in this and many other articles . . . I cannot, however, advise that such a prosecution is certain of success . . . I incline to think that if the accused person were skilfully defended
, he would have a good chance of getting off. 48
Thus, knowing that the case would fail in a court of law, the government decided to proscribe the book in July 1907. Extensive searches were conducted in homes and shops to confiscate copies. People hid their copies in compartments and recesses of old walls that were later bricked and plastered over. Any person found possessing a copy of the book was presumed a revolutionary and automatically came under surveillance. It was only forty years later, in 1946, that the ban on the book was lifted, and Vinayak presided over an official release of the second edition.
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Meanwhile, in October 1906, there was an interesting encounter between two individuals in London. They were to be political rivals for several decades thereafter, and their respective ideologies were to divide Indian polity irrevocably. This was when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came calling to India House and met Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
In 1893, Gandhi had gone to South Africa as a young twenty-four-year-old lawyer. He was there on a temporary assignment, to settle a commercial dispute for an Indian trader. A year after his arrival, the court ruled in favour of his client. Just when he was preparing to return to India, a group of Indian merchants requested him to stay on and fight a bill before the Natal Assembly, a British colony, seeking to remove Indians from the voters’ list. Within a month, more than 10,000 signatures had been gathered and presented to the colonial secretary, Lord Ripon. The bill was temporarily set aside, but eventually passed as law in 1896, disqualifying voters of non-European origin. These events serendipitously catapulted Gandhi into the role of an unofficial campaigner for the rights of the disenfranchised.
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