Kesari now also started carrying articles on the traditional arts and crafts, the disinterest of the government in encouraging traditional businesses, free trade and many such issues. Every time there were public meetings regarding swadeshi, there would be extensive reports on the happenings and the issues discussed. Column after column was filled with topics like contributions towards swadeshi, new shops, picketing, people who vowed to support swadeshi, new kinds of investments for the new businesses etc. Kesari soon became an encyclopedia of the swadeshi movement in Maharashtra.9
During this time of boycott the readers of Kesari also wanted to know where Tilak got the paper to print the Kesari. Tilak assured them that the paper was not imported from England and the boycott was only of British goods not those coming from other countries.
In 1907 the 23rd National Congress met at Surat. The session was to be originally held at Nagpur but due to local differences the All India Congress Committee changed the venue. The differences between the Moderate leaders like Gokhale, Surendra Nath Banerjee, Pherozeshah Mehta and Rash Behari Ghosh, and the extremists/nationalists like Tilak, Khare and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai mainly revolved around the emphasis to be given to the 1906 Calcutta resolutions of Boycott, swadeshi, National Education and Self-government. There were rumours that the Surat Congress would not deliberate on the Calcutta Congress resolutions on the above topics so as to delay or postpone the agitation programs. The policy of moderation, loyalty to the Crown, and firmness and unity of the moderates, were not acceptable to the nationalists any more. There was also a difference of opinion as to who should be elected the president of the Congress that year. The stage was thus set for a confrontation that ultimately led to a split.
The events of that day have been described by many: by the moderates, by the nationalists and also through “official” versions along with those of several newspapers.
One of them describes how on that day, the Congress assembled and the president-elect, Rash Bihari Ghosh, was escorted in procession through the hall to the platform. As this procession was entering the pandal, Tilak sent a small slip of paper to T. N. Malvi, the chairman of the Reception Committee. It read: “Sir, I wish to address the delegates on the proposal of the election of the President after it is seconded. I wish to move an adjournment with a constructive proposal. Please announce me.”
Tilak was expecting a reply to his note but did not receive any and so sent in a reminder, which too was ignored. Tilak, who, though he was allotted a seat on the platform, was sitting in the front row of the delegates’ seats near the platform-steps, rose to go up to the platform immediately after Surendranath Banerjee finished his speech. He was held back by a volunteer. Tilak asserted his right to go up and pushing aside the volunteer succeeded in getting to the platform just when Ghosh was moving to take the president’s chair. According to the usual procedure Malvi was obliged to announce Tilak, or if he considered the amendment out of order, declare it so publicly and ask for a show of hands in favour of or against the motion. But Malvi had considered a notice adjournment at that stage to be irregular and out of order; the President having been duly installed in the chair no amendment about his election could be then moved. He had decided to ignore Tilak. As Tilak reached the platform he was greeted with shouts of disapproval from the members of the Reception Committee on the platform, and the other moderates joined in. Tilak repeatedly insisted upon his right of addressing the delegates. Malvi said that he had ruled Tilak’s amendment out of order. Tilak argued that the ruling, if any, was wrong and he had a right to appeal to the delegates. By this time there was a general uproar in the pandal, the moderates shouting and asking Tilak to sit down and the nationalists demanding that he should be heard. At this stage Ghosh and Malvi asked for Tilak to be removed from the platform. Tilak again asserted his right to be heard, declaring that he would not leave the platform unless bodily removed. There was tremendous shouting and chaos but Tilak stood on the platform facing the delegates with his arms folded over his chest.
It was during this confusion that a shoe hurled on to the platform hit Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee, both of whom were sitting within a yard of Tilak. Chairs were now lifted to be thrown at Tilak by people below the platform, and some of the nationalists rushed to his rescue. The confusion became still worse. There was a scuffle. In the midst of the pandemonium Congress officials retired to a tent behind the pandal. The police, entered and eventually cleared the pandal; the nationalist delegates who had gone to the platform safely escorted Tilak to an adjoining tent.
The magistrate of Surat on the afternoon of the 27th telegraphed to the government of India: “Indian National Congress meeting today became disorderly, blows being exchanged. The President called on the police to clear the house and the grounds which was done. Order now restored. No arrests. No one reported seriously hurt. No further hurt anticipated.” As a matter of fact some arrests were made, but the Reception Committee declining to proceed, the prisoners were at once released by the police.10
The happenings in Surat saddened Tilak. He believed that the Congress was the true meeting place of the leaders of all hues. He never wished for a breakdown in his association with the Congress. Wrote Aurobindo Ghose in 1918: “He always set a high value on the Congress. He saw in it a centralising body, an instrument and a first, though yet shapeless, essay at a popular assembly. Many after Surat spoke of him as the deliberate breaker of the Congress, but to no one was the catastrophe so great a blow as to Mr. Tilak. He did not love the do-nothingness of that assembly, but he valued it both as a great national fact and for its unrealised possibilities and hoped to make it a central organisation for practical work. To destroy an existing and useful institution was alien to his way of seeing and would not have entered into his ideas or his wishes.”11
Tilak returned to Poona on 30 December. For the first few weeks after the dismaying episode at Surat, the government watched him. On 30 April 1908, a bomb at Muzzafurpore killed two British women. It shook up the fragile peace of the country again. The district magistrate of Dacca was shot at only a couple of days before the Congress session at Surat. An attempt was made on the life of the lieutenant-governor of Bengal, and the life of the mayor of Chandernagore. All these and other events offered the government the opportunity for inaugurating an era of arrests, searches, prosecutions and persecutions. There was a vigorous policy of repression. The government never concealed its belief that whatever might or might not happen in Bengal or elsewhere, Tilak was the source of all political activity and that no campaign of repressive prosecutions could ever be complete unless it involved him.
Since his return from Surat Tilak on his part had been busy. He had organised the district and the provincial conferences and brought the Temperance agitation in Poona to a head. The government saw organised picketing at liquor shops by his followers as the first lesson in the training of national volunteers. Tilak began to extend his lecturing tours to places outside Poona, and the government came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe to keep him free. By the time the Bombay Legislative Council met at Poona on 20 June, the government had decided to strike a blow. George Clarke, the governor of Bombay, remarked that certain persons who possessed influence over society were in the habit of exciting feelings of hatred and contempt against government that these persons were only playing with fire and that government would not be deterred by anything to put the law in motion against them. The real objective of those remarks was clear.
By this time four newspapers were already on trial for sedition. A week earlier, S. M. Paranjape, the editor of the Kal and a friend of Tilak, was accused of seditious writing in his paper, and Tilak left Poona for Bombay to give necessary help in the course of the trial. On 23 June, the official sanction for Tilak’s prosecution was given and he was arrested at Sardar Graha by 6 in the evening on 24 June under a warrant issued by the chief presidency magistrate. His house and press at Poona were locked by the police and a search was conducted un
der a warrant issued by the chief presidency magistrate of Bombay. By an extension of the warrant authorised by the district magistrate of Poona, the police also searched, on the same day, Tilak’s residence at Sinhagad. The procedure that they followed was unusual. They broke open the windows and went through everything without a single representative of the owner being present. The search at both the places yielded nothing except a postcard with the names of two books on explosives written on them. That piece of evidence was considered to be a significant indication of his involvement in the bomb outrage. The facts that were not taken into consideration were that Tilak, for a few weeks prior, had been writing articles in the Kesari and Mahratta to the effect that these actions were not going to yield any lasting results. He also expressed his deep dismay at what the country had come to and also warned the government that these acts were the result of the incessant repression of public opinion. In his articles he wrote: “This, no doubt, will inspire many with hatred against the people belonging to the party of rebels. It is not possible to cause British rule to disappear from this country by such monstrous deeds. But rulers who exercise unrestricted power must always remember that there is also a limit to the patience of humanity.” He then alluded to “Russian methods”, and said that “many newspapers had warned the government that if they resorted to Russian methods, then Indians too will be compelled to imitate the Russian methods.” Proceeding further, he said, “True statesmanship consists in not allowing things to reach such an extreme stage. Where government neglect their duties towards their subjects, the occurrence of calamities like that at Muzzafferpore is inevitable.”
Another article started with the Indian proverb “Vinashakale vipareeta buddhi” which means, an aberration of the intellect always precedes the impending destruction. The article then explained the causes at the root of the “cult of the bomb” in Bengal. Wrote Tilak: “The authorities have falsely spread the report that the bombs of the Bengalis are subversive of society. There is an excess of patriotism at the root of the bomb in Bengal.” Tilak described the bomb as a form of knowledge, a kind of witchcraft, a charm, and an amulet. “If bombs are to be stopped, government should act in such a way that no unstable (not quite in his senses) man should feel any necessity at all for throwing bombs,” he wrote. “When do people who are engaged in political agitation do it? It is when young political agitators feel keen disappointment that their faculty, their strength, and self-sacrifice cannot be of any use in bringing about the welfare of their country in any other way than by such acts. The real and lasting means of stopping the bombs consists in making a beginning to grant the important rights of Swarajya to the people.” The government decided that one of those articles could be used against him for the charges of sedition. There were four other articles which were not the subject matter of the charges, but were exhibited for the purpose of proving the intention of the accused.
On 25 June Tilak was brought before the chief presidency magistrate, A. H. S. Aston, who rejected an application for bail and remanded him to jail. While he was in jail the government probably felt that it was risky to prosecute him on the basis of one article alone and sanctioned his prosecution on the basis of another article in the Kesari. Aston issued a fresh warrant against Tilak in jail. On 29 June Tilak was arrested on two sets of charges under section 124A and 153A.
The day after his arrest, Tilak was lodged in the Dongri jail in Bombay. As an under-trial prisoner he was allowed the use of food and clothes supplied to him from home. But he could not prepare for his defence. Jinnah, Bar-at-Law, made an application to Justice Davar, who presided at the third Criminal Sessions, for Tilak’s release on bail. Davar rejected it. Tilak’s solicitor was now served a notice that the government had made an application to the court for directing that a special jury should be empanelled to try Tilak. The hearing of the application for a special jury on 3 July resulted in its being granted.
Tilak had about a week to prepare his defence. The jail authorities had given him some facilities but very few friends could see him. Tilak prepared the defence despite the restrictions imposed upon him. The speech which he made in his defence has references to many legal and literary works and shows Tilak’s resourcefulness and his amazing memory.
The trial opened on 13 July. Branson, acting advocate-general, appeared for the Crown with D. B. Binning. People’s attention was focussed on whether on the first day the judge would rule on the question of the amalgamation of the two cases in one trial and on the constitution of the jury. Regarding the first matter, Tilak’s objection was over-ruled; the two cases were amalgamated and as many charges were put together as the judge then thought he might combine within the law. Tilak objected to the amalgamation both on the grounds of law as also the prejudice which might be caused to him by the confusion in his own mind as well as in the minds of the jury regarding the different charges. He believed that they deserved to be tried separately for justice to be done. One single article was made the ground for three convictions and sentences on three different charges. Regarding the constitution of the jury, the judge in granting the application for a special jury had expressed an expectation that the panel summoned would be such that “making allowance for the challenges, there would be a fair representation of the different Indian communities on the Jury as actually empanelled in the box”. But seven out of the nine jurors were Europeans.
Tilak began his defence on the third day of the trial at 4 p.m. and ended on the eighth day. He spoke for 21 hours and 10 minutes, a sober, dignified, and stately defence of liberty of the press in the country. He also pointed out to the jury that the alleged insinuations, inferences, and innuendoes were drawn, not from the original words used by him, but from translations. The jurors did not know the Marathi language. They knew little about the people who read the Kesari and yet they were asked to consider the effect on the minds of the readers of the paper. The views contained in the first article were written by him to give advice at a time of unrest. The object of the second article was to reform; this was not sedition. “The jury,” he added, “may not approve of my views; but the question is of good or bad intention.” As the bomb outrage was the question of the day, it was his duty as a journalist to press upon the attention of the government the causes of the bomb. Reporting an existing feeling was not the same as inflaming feelings.
On the last day, Tilak concluded his address to the jury by 12.30 p.m. Branson, the advocate-general, responded in a language that bordered on the offensive. His address lasted for about four hours, but was hurried up to a close. At about 5 p.m. the judge declared his intention of finishing the case that very day even if it meant sitting late at night. Tilak was taken by surprise; he would not be able to hold the consultation with his friends and relations that he had intended to hold that evening, in view of the eventuality of his conviction. However, he seemed to have half-expected it because he said to his last visitor, Vijapurkar, “Today seems a bit different. This might prove to be my last cup of tea with you.”12
Advocate-General Branson completed his speech and the judge delivered a strongly adverse charge. He said, “A journalist can criticise the government as strongly as he likes, but he has no right to attribute dishonest or immoral motives to it. It is the bounden duty of the subject to obey the law implicitly and no motives, no amount of honest intention, nothing could justify the breach of the law. The true test is to look at the various articles and judge them as a whole; and judge the effect they produce on your minds in the first instance; judge whether they are calculated to produce feelings of hatred, contempt, disloyalty and enmity towards the government in the minds of the readers of these articles. Mere protestations of disapproval of crimes or violence may be a veil for the purpose of emphasizing the real object of the articles. Do these articles convey to you the meaning that bomb throwing is the legitimate means of political agitation?” The judge then referred to one of the articles which had been put in as an exhibit, to show Tilak’s intentions, and pointed out tha
t in one of them Tilak had referred to Irish unrest and the outrages committed by Irish extremists. Commenting on this, the judge said, “Mark the words, gentlemen, ‘such usefulness of one sort’, ‘murders are useful sometimes in order to rivet the attention of the authorities to the grievances’.” Davar also referred to another article where Tilak had accused the government of using members of another community to attack Hindus during the partition of Bengal. He asked, “Could anybody after reading this entertain feelings of respect for government?”
The jury retired at 8.30 p.m. and returned at 9.20 p.m. They found Tilak guilty on all the three charges by a majority of seven to two, and the judge, accepting the verdict, sentenced Tilak to six years’ transportation and a fine of one thousand rupees. Adding insult to injury were Justice Davar’s extremely harsh words. He threw off the judicial restraint which, to some extent, was observable in his charge to the jury. He condemned the articles as “seething with sedition”, and as “preaching violence, speaking of murders with approval”. “You hail the advent of the bomb in India as if something had come to India for its good. I say, such journalism is a curse to the country,” he said. Davar’s final observations addressed to Tilak were ill-timed and intemperate as also entirely lacking in judicial restraint and dignity.
Lokmanya Tilak- the First National Leader Page 4