Like a parrot in a cage, like a deer in a trap—
Oh so duped am I
Parting from my mother for ever—
Besieged by darkness am I!
Flowers of virtue gather did I
That blessed by their fragrance she be.
Bereft from service for her deliverance
My learning a futile burden it be,
The love of her mango trees, oh!
The beauty of her blossoming vines, oh! Her tender budding rose, oh!
Oh forever lost is her garden to me,
Oh Ocean, my soul in so much torment be! (2)
Stars abound in the heavens above, but
Only the star of Bharat-land love I
Here are found plush palaces, but
Only my mother’s humble hut love I
What care I for a kingdom without Her?
Ever exile in her forests choose I.
Deception is futile now, say I
Let you not be spared, vow I
Suffer the same pangs, cry I
Of parting with the dearest of your rivers!
Oh Ocean, my soul in so much torment be! (3)
Oh Ye of Foaming Surf, pitilessly you mock!
Why go back on your word, oh!
Why deceive my helpless mother,
Oh why condemn me to exile so!
Was it in fear of England
Who flaunts her mastery over you so?
Fearsome though England may be,
O My Mother is not feeble so
Tell all about Sage Agastya she will, lo
Who in one gulp your waters drank!
Oh Ocean, my soul in so much torment be! (4) 160
The poem is one of the masterpieces of modern Marathi literature. Later, it was set to music by musician and composer Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Vinayak’s close associate, and rendered in the melodious voices of singers Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Meena Mangeshkar and Hridyanath Mangeshkar. The song tugs at one’s heart strings. It fails to leave anyone who hears it unmoved.
The emotional trauma and strain that Vinayak suffered manifested itself as physical illness. Around December 1909, Vinayak went down with pneumonia and acute bronchitis. The condition worsened to the extent that he was advised to move to a sanatorium in Wales and was put under the care of an Indian doctor, C. Muthu. The cost of treatment was borne by Shyamji.
But even as he was beginning to convalesce, there was more stormy news from back home coming his way.
6
Endgame London
Nashik, December 1909
It was planned as an evening of festive celebrations. On 21 December 1909, several eminent members of Nashik had congregated to bid farewell to the district collector, Arthur Mason Tippetts Jackson. The district collector, who had been in India since 1888, had managed to beguile several people in Nashik with fanciful tales that in his past life he was a learned Brahmin and hence felt connected to them all. He had even learnt Marathi and Sanskrit to endear himself to the natives. So much so that he was called ‘Pandit Jackson’ by many. 1
Jackson was being promoted and transferred to Bombay as commissioner and hence a public felicitation was being organized at the Vijayanand Theatre in Nashik. The Kirloskar Theatre Group was staging a Marathi play, Sharada , on this occasion and speeches and Jackson’s felicitation was planned during the intermission. Jackson arrived at the stipulated time, accompanied by two ladies and an assistant collector, Mr Jolly. Excitement peaked among the welcome party that had gathered at the theatre’s door to lead him inside.
Even as Jackson was exchanging pleasantries with the gathering, a young man, barely eighteen, leapt from amid the welcome party, took out a Browning pistol from his coat pocket and shot at Jackson. The bullet missed him, flying past his hand. Before Jackson and the others could comprehend what had transpired, the young man swiftly came forward and fired four bullets straight at Jackson’s chest. Jackson fell to the ground and succumbed to his injuries. Police officer Todarmal grabbed the young assailant. Among the welcoming party of the city’s dignitaries, one Khopkar snatched the pistol from his hand and another agitated gentleman, one Panashikar, hit the young man hard on his head with his stick, causing him to bleed. Inside the theatre, in the front gallery meant for important persons, where seat tickets cost 12 annas each, two other young men were seated much before Jackson arrived. They were on stand-by, just in case the young assailant failed in his attempts. 2 After they heard the shots, they made a quick escape in the ensuing commotion.
The young assailant was Anantrao Laxman Kanhere, and his two comrades in the crime seated inside the theatre were twenty-three-year-old Krishnaji Gopal Karve and twenty-one-year-old Vinayak Narayan Deshpande—all members of Abhinav Bharat. 3
While several people in Nashik were charmed by Pandit Jackson, there were few who knew that this was a trick he employed to gain the people’s confidence and elicit secrets from them. He was staunchly opposed to any movements that sought freedom. Stories abounded about how when one of his officers beat an Indian peasant to death for merely touching his golf ball, instead of having him convicted, Jackson whitewashed the case and got the officer transferred. Fake documents were manufactured to prove that the peasant had died of diarrhoea. On another occasion, young men returning from a fair chanting slogans of ‘Vande Mataram’ were rounded up for anti-national activity. A conscientious lawyer, Babasaheb Khare, who fought cases for the young revolutionaries put to trouble by Jackson, was hounded, barred from court practice, his property confiscated and he was imprisoned in Dharwar prison. The shock was too much for Khare to bear and he lost his mental balance. The last straw was Jackson’s enthusiasm in getting Babarao Savarkar arrested and tried. The visual of him being handcuffed and paraded in the streets of Nashik at Jackson’s behest angered many young men. They were itching to take revenge. And Kanhere executed this plan on that fateful evening.
Born in 1891 in the Ayani Mete village of Khed district, Ratnagiri, Kanhere had two brothers and a sister. After completing his primary education in Nizamabad, he moved to Aurangabad for his secondary English studies. He had even written a novel, Mitra Prem , about the friendships he had developed during this time. Significant among them were Gangaram Rupchand, a Marwari businessman, and Gopal Govind Dharap, both members of the Aurangabad branch of Abhinav Bharat. Their association exposed him to revolutionary ideas, and he was stirred by the fire of liberating his country. He became a member and took the oath as well. Kanhere was enraged about the treatment meted out to Babarao Savarkar and expressed his determination to avenge this. Providentially, Ganesh Balwant Vaidya (Ganu, as he was affectionately called)—an acquirer and keeper of Abhinav Bharat arms in Nashik—visited Aurangabad around this time. Being in the Nizam’s domain, acquiring arms was easier in Aurangabad. Ganu stayed at Gangaram’s house where the latter showed him daggers, swords, guns and other kinds of weapons. They discussed plans related to Abhinav Bharat. Kanhere happened to eavesdrop on their conversation and at night woke Ganu up and conveyed his resolve to avenge Babarao’s sentence. Ganu did not commit to anything and said he needed to consult his associates in Nashik. On his return, he spoke to his Abhinav Bharat associates and they decided to invite Kanhere over to Nashik for a preliminary discussion. 4
In this meeting on 19 September 1909, Kanhere was acquainted with leading members of Abhinav Bharat in Nashik: Vinayak Narayan Deshpande, Wamanrao Narayan Joshi and also Shankar Ramachandra Soman who had a secret organization similar to Abhinav Bharat. Twenty-one-year-old Vinayak Deshpande was an assistant teacher at Panchavati School at Nashik and also ran a small handloom business. On the third floor of the building where the handloom operated, in a dark old room, Abhinav Bharat meetings were conducted. Deshpande had gathered explosives and stored them in a box here. At Deshpande’s house in Deolali, Ganu and Deshpande manufactured the explosive chemical picric acid from sulphuric acid, nitric acid and carbolic acid. These were all buried in the ground to safeguard them. A year younger than Deshp
ande, Joshi was his colleague at Panchavati School, while eighteen-year-old Soman was still a student at Nasik High School. Soman taught the members how to manufacture explosives from his chemistry manuals.
Kanhere was thoroughly questioned several times about why he felt this strong urge to murder Jackson, and after ascertaining his genuineness the group embraced him. He was taken to the District Office a few times by Waman so that he saw Jackson and had no doubts about his identity. He was thereafter given a pistol by Vinayak Deshpande, taken to a desolate place on the outskirts of Nashik and made to practise shooting at short and long ranges. Kanhere, who knew he would not live after committing this act, went to a local studio on 22 September dressed in his best attire. He wanted to get himself photographed so that his family could have something of him as a memory.
For some reason though the execution kept getting postponed. Kanhere had to return to Aurangabad as his family wanted him to stay with them. He took a small automatic Browning pistol along to practise shooting back home. His comrades in Nashik got him back based on a false telegram from his brother stating that he was ill in Nashik and wanted his support. At the Nashik Road Station, he was met by Deshpande, Soman, Waman Joshi and Ganu, in addition to a new young man, Krishnaji Gopal Karve who was the head of the Nashik branch of Abhinav Bharat. Twenty-three-year-old Karve was a BA (Hons) graduate and was studying law in Bombay. He knew the art of making bombs and had taught the same to Soman and Damodar Mahadev Chandratre. Around May–June 1909, he had procured seven Browning pistols, one revolver, and a country-made pistol from Gopalrao Patankar, the same man who had received the consignment of Browning pistols sent by Vinayak from London through the cook Chaturbhuj Jhaverbhai Amin Patidar in March 1909. Till then, Karve was not aware of the plot to murder Jackson, and he wanted to meet Kanhere. In the dark hours of the evening, the young men discussed their plans. Kanhere’s demands to have a helper in the task was scoffed at by the rest of the group and somehow the differences led to them departing. Also, Karve and the other members of the Nashik branch said they were not prepared yet to commit the murder.
It was towards the end of November 1909 when it became known that Jackson would soon be gone for good from Nashik that the group got reactivated. On 21 December, Deshpande went to Aurangabad and fetched Kanhere. Some other young men from Aurangabad such as Kashinath Hari Ankushkar and Dattatraya Panduranga Joshi (Dattoo) also came to Nashik around this time and stayed with Ganu.
Karve got two Browning pistols and was also given a packet of poison to consume after the murder or try shooting himself with the spare pistol. It was decided that Karve and Deshpande—both fully armed—would lurk around Vijayanand Theatre and in case Kanhere failed in his attempt, they would step up and fire at Jackson.
Kanhere was arrested on the spot after the act, and he made a statement before the magistrate admitting that he had murdered Jackson and that he had no accomplices. A paper was found in his possession that confirmed the apprehensions of the police that the murder was committed for political reasons. The same night, Ganu and his accomplice, Dandekar, tried to hurriedly conceal the explosives and chemicals they had in their possession at Deolali. But within the next three to four days, the police rounded up Karve, Deshpande, Soman, Waman Joshi, Ganu and Dattoo Joshi. Narayan Damodar Savarkar was arrested in the midnight of 23 December on suspicions of his possible association with the Nashik branch of Abhinav Bharat and he was tortured in prison. A sowkar (banker) of Yeola, Kashinath Daji Tonpe, was also arrested on charges of financing the conspirators. By the first week of January 1910 all of them had made their statements in front of Mr Palsikar, a first-class magistrate. 5 A search of Kanhere’s residence in Aurangabad was conducted and torn pieces of letters with covers carrying the postal address of Nashik were found, ascertaining that the men were in regular contact. The letters when pieced together were couched in studiously obscure language and post facto it could be deduced that they alluded to the murder of some important person.
The judgment in the case was delivered on 29 March 1910 by the chief justice of Bombay. Kanhere, Karve and Deshpande were to be hanged; Soman, Waman Joshi and Ganu were transported for life; and Dattoo Joshi was sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment. Narayan Savarkar was sentenced to six months of rigorous imprisonment. However, Ganu and Dattoo turned approvers and were pardoned. 6
On 19 April 1910, Kanhere, Karve and Deshpande were sent to the gallows at 7 a.m. at Thane jail. They were both surprisingly confident and calm. The government did not even allow their families to collect their bodies. The police cremated their bodies at the Thane creek and threw the ashes into the sea themselves, depriving their families of this last symbolism.
The Jackson murder and the subsequent trial of Kanhere and others created a stir in the London press. ‘It is impossible to describe the grief and indignation created by the crime,’ wrote The Times . 7 The press linked the murder to the life sentence meted out to Babarao Savarkar and also added that he ‘has a brother, who has made himself notorious in London’. 8 Narrating the entire litany of revolutionary events in 1909, the Telegraph carried an extremely condescending and offensive article:
Obviously, the conspiracy against British officials is not to be trifled with, and will not be eradicated by the passing of resolutions, which may be less or more sincere, at meetings of the natives, against the perpetration of such outrages. We have ourselves largely to blame for these crimes. We have educated these Hindus in Western ideas before they were able to appropriate them, with the result as often happens amongst ourselves, in the case of the children of self-made men who come into the possession of wealth of which they do not know the value, and which they do not make, they frequently become intoxicated with their possessions which too often prove their ruin; wherein, had they had some share in the acquiring of this wealth, or had they been carefully taught how to use, but not abuse it, their patrimony might have been a blessing to themselves and to their friends. In like manner, Indian students dazzled by the wealth of London, and unbalanced by the arguments of English text books on Constitutional history, which they have been unable to digest, are some of them ready for any enterprise, no matter how hare-brained, provided it is undertaken in the sacred name of patriotism, of which they have no real or true conception; whereas if they could only see the question from an unprejudiced standpoint, or look at it in a sober, disinterested manner, they would view it very differently . . . if instead of putting these Hindu students through a course of English constitutional history, they were required to make a special study of their own country, political and economic and compare its condition a century ago with its present state, they would see more cause for gratitude in our rule than they now appear to imagine . . . the only argument which these fanatics seem to respect is that of force, which apparently must be used with an ungloved hand before the evils referred to have been suppressed. Peaceful methods do not appeal to the Oriental mind as they do to ours. 9
Commending the job done by the revolutionaries in London to arm their compatriots with Browning pistols, Lala Har Dayal wrote:
We know that the hero possessed Browning pistols. Now these pistols are not manufactured in India, but in Europe. How have they been imported by the revolutionaries? It is clear that this fact is a testimony to the efficiency of our organization and the secrecy of our activity. Besides, the imported arms are not the only weapons on which we have to rely. Daggers can be manufactured in India out of sharp nails to stab all vile agents of the British Government, English or Indian. 10
In the months to come, the trial was to become the means for the British government to build a case against Vinayak and extradite him from London back to India.
Paris, 1910
Given the massive outrage and hostility in London against Indian students in general, and him in particular, and because of his precarious health, Vinayak decided to move to Paris. Shyamji and Madame Cama had been prevailing upon him for a long time to relocate to Paris. Finally, he decided
to make the move some time around 5 January 1910. On his last day in London as a free man, he expressed a desire to Gyanchand Verma to ‘eat rice and gram (curry-chawal )’. 11 Seeing his weak condition, Verma went to the Nizamuddin restaurant and got these dishes made for him, which he ate heartily. Verma and others saw Vinayak off at Victoria Station.
Vinayak was received enthusiastically by Shyamji, Madame Cama and Sardar Singh Rana. He stayed at Madame Cama’s house at Rue Montaigne.
Commenting on the political situation in India after the political assassinations, Shyamji wrote in the Indian Sociologist :
On the 21st of December last at about 5 PM we wrote a letter to a near relation of Mr Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, stating that we had learnt with great sorrow that on appeal the sentence of transportation for life passed in his case for attempting ‘to wage war’ against the Mleccha king 12 had been confirmed by the Bombay High Court, one of the two judges of which was an Indian traitor and whose order about the forfeiture of all his property was simply barbarous. As a token of our sympathy and commiseration with the members of his family and as a mark of our appreciation of the services rendered by this brave young man to our country, we respectfully enclosed a cheque for their kind acceptance. The next day, i.e., on December 22 we were surprised to see a telegram in an English newspaper to the effect that Mr A.M.T. Jackson, collector of Nasik, had been shot dead at a quarter to 10 o’clock on the previous evening by Anant Laxman Kanare [sic] who stated that he had resolved to avenge the sentence of transportation for life passed in June last on Ganesh Damodar Savarkar for sedition. It will thus be seen that allowing for the difference in the longitudes of Paris and Nasik the time of our writing to sympathize with the members of the family of Mr Savarkar synchronized almost to a minute with that of the assassination avenging the sentence of transportation passed on him. There is a sort of ‘poetic justice’ in all this, which will, we doubt not, strike the imagination of our readers. 13
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