Lokmanya Tilak- the First National Leader

by Gayatri Pagdi

  When the people demonstrated against Lala Lajpat Rai’s arrest, the government issued prohibitory orders and banned public meetings. Tilak then declared: “We shall oppose the ban through word and later on, we shall defy it through deed.” The moderates attributed the government’s repressive measures to what they described as “rash and reckless actions” of the radicals. On 11 November 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai was released from detention. Tilak and other radical leaders then proposed his name for presidentship of the ensuing session of the Congress. Tilak felt that the only way to counter the government’s unjust act of detaining Lala Lajpat Rai was to elect him as the president.

  Tilak’s suggestion was welcomed and supported enthusiastically by people from all parts of the country. But the moderates disagreed. The radicals were upset and walked out of the meeting. The moderates then passed a resolution to the effect that Rash Behari Ghosh would be the next president of the Congress. On 10 December, Tilak wrote in his editorial:

  If there is no unanimous decision on this issue, I have a feeling that people would move amendments to the resolution passed at the AICC. There may be counter suggestions to the present decision as a result of which confusion might prevail . . . Even if resolutions in the ensuing session are drafted by Gokhale or Pherozeshah Mehta, members of the new party should be present at Surat in large numbers and should make an earnest effort to give a radical slant to the Congress. It is true that the present Congress does not act according to the wishes and demands of the new party. However, it would not be advisable to break the Congress because the moderate leaders dominate it. The members attending the Surat session should not get provoked by what Pherozeshah Mehta is doing and should not act in an unruly manner.

  The Surat split came soon after. Lala Lajpat Rai, like Tilak was a man driven by passion for his country. He had a transparent honesty of character and an abounding enthusiasm for service. During the disturbances in Rawalpindi and Lahore he worked very hard to convince the authorities that the best method of dealing with people’s unrest was to find solutions to their grievances. Drastic suppression was going to prove totally futile. During the famines of 1897-1898, and 1899-1900, Lala Lajpat Rai, at considerable personal risk, organised a famine relief party and administered relief to at least 1,700 distressed Hindu orphans in Rajputana, Kathiawar, parts of Bombay and the Central Provinces. The first orphanage at Ferozepur, opened under the auspices of the Arya Samaj, was established at the suggestion of Lala Lajpat Rai. All sects and castes of Hindus responded to the appeals issued on behalf of the Hindu orphan relief movement. As a direct result of these philanthropic activities, many more orphanages were established in various parts of the Punjab, new ventures providing occupation and a living were started for the benefit of the famine-stricken, and young college graduates offered their services generously without accepting any compensation. The monumental work that Lala Lajpat Rai did for the weaker sections of the society, alongside his fight for independence, makes his life a tremendous source of inspiration. Said Annie Besant about him, “It is difficult to satisfy him with illusory schemes of mere tinkering reforms, since he is a shrewd, hard-headed thinker, not easily carried away by sentiment, unless it be love for the motherland.”

  Along with his keen patriotism and his work in the social and religious sphere, Lala Lajpat Rai was also known for his extensive study of English philosophical literature, his grasp of fundamental issues, and his able, ingenious exposition of Vedic texts. The introduction to his book Young India: An Interpretation and a History of the Nationalist Movement From Within by J. T. Sunderland says,

  From the beginning of the New National Movement in India, Mr. Rai has been one of its most prominent leaders. He is an ardent patriot, is proud of his country, her civilization, her literature and her great place in the world’s history, and he believes she is destined to have a great future, commensurate with her great past. In 1907 he was seized by the Government and, without trial or even being told what was his offence, was secretly sent away to prison in Burma, and kept there six months. He was suspected of disloyalty and sedition, but not the slightest evidence was found against him. His only crime was that he was a Nationalist, and was working in perfectly open and legal ways to secure greater liberty for his country. After his release from prison, he brought legal suits against two newspapers, one in India and one in London that had published charges of sedition against him; and, notwithstanding the fact that the powerful influence of the Government was on the side of the papers, he won both suits, so clear was his case.

  Rai says in Young India, about the Congress session of 1905, ‘In the Congress camp, the younger generation had met in open conference to discuss their future programme. It was then that Mr. Tilak gave out the idea of passive resistance. No formal resolutions were passed, but the better mind of the people present decided to inaugurate an era of self-help and self-reliance based on an active boycott of government.’

  He quotes Bipin Chandra Pal in Young India, with the exception of boycott and volunteering, every other item in the above propaganda had been more or less tried and with varying success in all parts of the country, but more particularly in the Punjab and Maharashtra before this. The Deccan Education Society and the Poona Fergusson College were the offshoots of the desire to further the cause of education by self-imposed sacrifices, with the underlying motives of quickening the patriotic impulse and the Nationalist spirit. Similarly swadeshi, co-operative organisations, and private arbitration courts had been thought of and tried. The motives underlying these attempts were absolutely patriotic, combining an element of philanthropy in them.

  Along with Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab and Bal Gangadhar Tilak of Deccan, was Bipin Chandra Pal of Bengal. Valentine Chirol had described Pal in his book The Indian Unrest. He wrote, “Now if Swaraj, or colonial self-government, represents the minimum that will satisfy Indian nationalists, it is important to know exactly what in their view it really means . . . Some data of indisputable authority . . . are furnished in the speeches of an ‘advanced’ leader who does not rank among the revolutionary extremists though his refusal to give evidence in the trial of a seditious newspaper brought him in 1907 within the scope of the Indian Criminal Code. Mr Bipin Chandra Pal (is) a man of great intellectual force and high character.”

  D. N. Bannerjea, in his book India’s Nation-builders published in 1919, wrote: “In our opinion, it would be much nearer the truth to call him an Indian nationalist whose political idealism leads him to accept no compromise with the pressing emergencies of the Indian transition. But it is to his credit that he has made possible the first beginnings of an Indian Theory of the State. He is one of the foremost political thinkers in India . . . He has made young India think furiously on nationality, self-determination and self-help.”

  The book quotes Pal as saying, “There is a creed in India to-day which calls itself Nationalism. It is not a mere political programme, but a religion, it is a creed in which all who follow it will have to live and suffer. Let no man call himself a nationalist today with a sort of intellectual conceit. To be a nationalist in India means to be an instrument of God, and to live in the Spirit. For the force that is awakening the nation is not of man, it is divine. We need not be a people who are politically strong; we need not be a people sound in physique; we need not be a people of the highest intellectual standing, but we must be a people who believe. . . . Nationalism is a divinely appointed power of the eternal, and must do its God-given work before it returns to the universal energy from whence it came.”

  Bannerjea further writes: “Pal’s most effective weapon—which he has seldom employed—would be passive resistance. In a country of teeming millions like India, a revolution based on physical force is unnecessary. For the achievement of political liberty, according to him, passive resistance is enough. Boycott Manchester dhotis that drape your bodies and western institutions that drug your souls—and you are free. To the writer’s best knowledge, Pal has always repudiated physical force as a solven
t of political difficulties and has insisted on the need for moral regeneration and the development of self-respect.”

  He adds another quote by Pal: “If the Government were to come and tell me to-day ‘Take Swaraj’, I would say thank you for the gift, but I will not have that which I cannot acquire by my own hand. Our programme is that we shall so work in the country, so combine the resources of the people, so organise the forces of the nation, so develop the instincts of freedom in the community, that by this means we shall in the imperative, compel the submission to our will of any power that may set itself against us.”

  Pal was described as a visionary with a hatred of shams and deep instinctive love for reality, a philosopher of the political renaissance, and Mazzini of the Indian stage of transition. His ideals, according to Bannerjea, had spread their influence through the ranks of moderates and extremists alike, and much of the virility of the Indian National Congress propaganda was due to its permeation with the teachings that he vigorously delivered during the period of severe tension in India of the times, both in Bengal and in Madras, even though later he studiously abstained from attending meetings of the Congress.

  Pal, like Tilak, was a powerful orator. His love for his motherland was his dharma. About the tool of passive resistance he said,

  We can make the Government impossible without entirely making it impossible for them to find people to serve them. The administration may be made impossible in a variety of ways. It is not actually that every Deputy Magistrate should say “I won’t serve in it.” But if you create this spirit in the country the Government service will gradually imbibe this spirit, and a whole office may go on strike. This does not put an end to the Administration, but it creates endless complications in the work of Administration, and if these complications are created in every part of the country, the Administration will have been brought to a deadlock, and as also the prestige of the government and the boycott strikes at the root of that prestige . . . We can reduce every Indian in Government service to the position of a man who has fallen from the dignity of Indian citizenship . . . Passive resistance is recognised as legitimate in England. It is legitimate in theory even in India, and if it is made illegal by new legislation, these laws will infringe on the primary rights of personal freedom . . . Without positive training no self-government will come to the boycotter. It will come through the organization of our village life; of our Talukas and districts. Let our programme include the setting up of machinery for popular administration, and running parallel to, but independent of, the existing administration of the Government.

  It was after the Calcutta Congress, in a public meeting presided over by Bipin Chandra Pal, that Tilak delivered the famous speech on “The Tenets of the New Party”. He said, “Self-government is our goal. What the new party wants you to do is to realise the fact that your future rests entirely in your own hands. If you mean to be free, you can be free; if you do not wish to be free, you will fall and remain forever fallen . . . You need not use arms; but have you not the power of active resistance, have you not the power of self-denial and self-abstinence so as to prevent this foreign government to rule over you? This is boycott, and this is what is meant when we say, ‘Boycott is a political weapon.’ We shall not give them assistance to collect revenue and sit peacefully. We shall not fight wars outside India with Indian blood and money. We shall have our own courts, and when the time comes, we shall refuse to pay taxes. Can you not do this with your combined efforts? If you can, then you are free from tomorrow.”

  Aurobindo Ghosh was another radical from Bengal whom Tilak was particularly fond of. Ghosh, on his part, described Tilak as one of India’s “incarnations of the national endeavour and God-given captains of the national aspiration”. In his introduction to The Speeches and Writings of Tilak, Ghosh says,

  His speeches are, like the featureless Brahman, self-luminous. Straightforward, lucid, never turning aside from the point which they mean to hammer in or wrapping it up in ornamental verbiage, they read like a series of self-evident propositions. And Mr Tilak himself, his career, his place in Indian politics are also a self-evident proposition . . . His life, his character, his work and endurance, his acceptance by the heart and the mind of the people are a stronger argument than all the reasonings in his speeches, powerful as these are, for Swaraj, Self-government, Home Rule, by whatever name we may call the sole possible present aim of our effort, the freedom of the life of India, its self-determination by the people of India . . . indomitable will and unwavering devotion have been the whole meaning of Mr Tilak’s life; they are the reason of his immense hold on the people. For he does not owe his pre-eminent position to any of the causes which have usually made for political leading in India, wealth and great social position, professional success, recognition by Government . . . He owes it to himself alone and to the thing his life has meant and because he has meant it with his whole mind and his whole soul. He has kept back nothing for himself or for other aims, but has given all himself to his country . . . He is in no sense what his enemies have called him, a demagogue: he has not the . . . facile appeal to the passions which demagogy requires; his speeches are too much made up of hard and straight thinking, he is too much a man of serious and practical action . . . he is entirely a democratic politician, of a type not very common among our leaders, one who can both awaken the spirit of the mass and respond to their spirit, able to lead them, but also able to see where he must follow the lead of their predominant sense and will and feelings.

  He moves among his followers as one of them in a perfect equality, simple and familiar in his dealings with them by the very force of his temperament and character, open, plain and direct and, though capable of great reserve in his speech, yet, wherever necessary, admitting them into his plans and ideas as one taking counsel of them, taking their sense even while enforcing as much as possible his own view of policy and action with all the great strength of quiet will at his command. He has that closeness of spirit to the mass of men, that unpretentious openness of intercourse with them, that faculty of plain and direct speech which interprets their feelings and shows them how to think out what they feel, which are pre-eminently the democratic qualities. For this reason he has always been able to unite all classes of men behind him, to be the leader not only of the educated, but also of the people, the merchant, the trader, the villager, the peasant . . .

  Mr Tilak, though a strong-willed man and a fighter by nature . . . with a large mind open to progressive ideas he unites a conservative temperament strongly in touch with the sense of his people . . . He is besides, a born Parliamentarian, a leader for the assembly, though always in touch with the people outside as the constant source of the mandate and the final referee in differences. He loves a clear and fixed procedure, which he can abide by and use, even while making the most of its details, of which the theory and practice would be always at his finger-ends, to secure a practical advantage in the struggle of parties. Moreover, though he has ideals, he is not an idealist by character. Once the ideal fixed, all the rest is for him practical work, the facing of hard facts, though also the overcoming of them when they stand in the way of the goal, the use of strong and effective means with the utmost care and prudence consistent with the primary need of as rapid an effectivity as will and earnest action can bring about. Though he can be obstinate and iron-willed when his mind is made up as to the necessity of a course of action or the indispensable recognition of a principle, he is always ready for a compromise which will allow of getting real work done, and will take willingly half a loaf rather than no bread, though always with a full intention of getting the whole loaf in good time. But he will not accept chaff or plaster in place of good bread. Nor does he like to go too far ahead of possibilities, and indeed has often shown in this respect a caution highly disconcerting to the more impatient of his followers.

  Ghosh had correctly noted Tilak’s willingness to compromise. At the Surat session the troubles showed up in an ugly form. In his book, Aurobi
ndo on Himself, Ghosh has described the disturbances. He writes: “It was I who, without the knowledge of Tilak, had incited the disturbance.” Ghosh and his radical followers were insulted by Surendra Nath Bannerjee at a political conference held at Midnapur. A young man heckled Bannerjee by shouting, “Midnapur traitor, sit down.” Some young men from Poona joined the shouting group from Bengal. Bannerjee’s supporters were upset. Efforts to settle the dispute backstage proved futile.

  Tilak was rather unhappy at the turn of events during the Congress session. He did not want a split in the Congress and therefore took a lead in arriving at some compromise. Gopalrao Ogle, the editor of Maharashtra published from Nagpur, in his reminiscences on Tilak wrote that when he told Tilak that young men from Nagpur did not favour a settlement with the moderates, Tilak became angry and shouted, “Then do you want to break heads?” After some time, Tilak’s anger cooled and he said to Ogle, “Settlement or no settlement, we must work for it. I don’t care if I am insulted. I am working for our country and it does not matter even if I am insulted a thousand times for doing it.”

  Though Tilak wanted to avoid a split, Ghosh and his followers, as also many of Tilak’s supporters, did not approve of Tilak’s efforts for reconciliation with the moderates. When the moderates announced their decision to hold a convention, Ghosh proposed that no radical should be allowed to attend the proposed convention. He felt that the moderates were engaged only in politics of petitions and prayers, which were harmful for the growth of the freedom movement. The moderates wanted to keep away from the radicals. Ghosh, as a radical, said that he would not like to touch the moderates even with a barge pole. Tilak had great affection for Ghosh. But with his realistic approach to politics, Tilak did not favour the isolationist policy advocated by Ghosh. When the announcement for holding the convention for moderates was made, Lala Lajpat Rai decided to sign the pledge and attend the convention. Tilak said, “The Indian National Congress is a platform common to all. If the Congress is to be dominated by one section, it would lose all its vitality.” Tilak was caught in a dilemma. His colleague Lala Lajpat Rai had already signed the pledge and was determined to attend the convention. Had Tilak too signed the pledge it would have led to estrangement of Ghosh and his revolutionary associates. To avoid this eventuality, Tilak decided to bear the brunt of the impending attack and not attend the convention. He did not want to desert his revolutionary associates. He was determined to stake everything in life to save the revolutionary movement. This brave decision won the hearts of the young revolutionaries. Jawdekar has said in one of his interviews,