Lokmanya Tilak- the First National Leader

by Gayatri Pagdi

  In February 1889 other members of the Chaphekar Association made two unsuccessful attempts on the life of chief constable in Poona and afterwards murdered two brothers who had been rewarded by the government for information, which led to the arrest and conviction of Damodar Chaphekar. The result of these crimes was that four members of the Chaphekar Association were hanged and one was sentenced to 10 years’ rigourous imprisonment. There can be no doubt that the Chaphekar association was a criminal conspiracy connected with the revolutionary movement in India.

  The Report also stated: “The publications of the Kesari of the 15th June 1897 led to the trial and conviction of the proprietor, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, for sedition. The position taken up by Tilak had been one of casuistical apology for political assassination. It will be seen that, afterwards, the same attitude was maintained by him at a time when younger men were openly disseminating incitements to political assassination.”

  Of course, the Chaphekars were not the only group. There were many more. The Sanmitra Samaj that was formed in Poona in 1895 was another such group. Their gatherings and the patriotic songs that they introduced were very popular. Members of Sanmitra Samaj, like Nana Agarkar (related to Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, the moderate), Sadashiv Ganesh Lavate, Shankar Ramchandra Rajwade, Narayan Balwant Tikhe, Keshav Ramchandra Kanade, were close friends of the Chaphekar brothers and their ideology was identical. Agarkar and Lavate had escaped to north India after the Chaphekar brothers were arrested and lived in Benares as per the information gathered by the police later.

  Then there was the Shivaji Club of Kolhapur, again devoted to Tilak. On 19 February, the residents of Kolhapur found a circular pasted on one of the walls of the famous temple in the city. While making a reference to the recent spate of crimes which saw three prostitutes dead, the message said, “Wake up and take to arms. Use them against those who imprisoned Tilak. It’s better to kill Europeans than prostitutes. We must free the Chaphekar brothers from prison.” 37

  The number of members that Shivaji Club had was much bigger than the Chaphekar Club. The latter had broken down completely after the brothers were hanged but the Shivaji Club was 100-members strong till 1900. The police had kept a watch on about 73 of them. Later the Club had around 300 members, who were active for more than ten to twelve years.

  In 1899, Beed district, which was then under the Nizam rule, witnessed an uprising. Some members of the Shivaji Club were responsible for it. Till 1899, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj stood solidly behind this organisation. Later however, the pressure from the government forced him to withdraw. The Maratha king was in touch with Tilak and had at times sent arms and ammunition as also monetary help to Poona-based armed agitators as per Tilak’s wishes.

  Maharaja Sayajirao Gaikwad of Gwalior was another member of the royalty who was with a friend of Tilak and hence was almost always out of favour with the British and regarded with suspicion.

  The Shivaji Club was made of several small associations. One of them was the Bal Sabha which was later converted into Gorakshan Sabha for the protection of cows during a communal riot. Later it was renamed as Mitra Samaj. The founder of this organisation, Hanmantrao Kulkarni, trained the youth in Indian martial arts. The Shivaji Club remained loyal to Tilak even after 1902 when Shahu Maharaj withdrew his support.

  The Beed mutiny was led by a man called Sadashiv Nilkanth Joshi. Joshi was an enterprising activist, a colourful character, who travelled all over the country, especially to Rajasthan and Punjab, to garner support. He was in touch with one of Tilak’s close friends, Balwantrao Sathe. Tilak knew exactly what was happening in the Shivaji Club. Joshi, who was adept at changing names and identities, spoke several languages and often changed appearance. He was said to have finally starved himself to death in an attempt to persuade Goddess Bhawani to pick up the sword placed in front of her idol and to hand it over to him to fight the British even more bitterly. However, the fact of his death, like his life, is wrapped in secrecy. There are those who believe that he died four hours after being captured by the British. Others say he did not die; instead, he went to America and married an American woman, making secret trips to India later. An active member of Shivaji Club, he was devoted to Tilak and sought inspiration from his writings in the Kesari.

  When the Beed mutiny did not work out as effectively as expected, and when Colonel Ray, the British officer who was tracking down the armed agitators, turned his attention to the Shivaji Club, some of the leaders of the club escaped to Ahmednagar. One of them, Kashinath Vishnu Khanvilkar, joined a circus and went to Burma. He returned when it was safe enough and became a pearl merchant. Hanmantrao Kulkarni went to Nepal and set up an ammunition factory there to be able to help his associates in India. His sister’s husband was a priest in the Pashupatinath temple. Tilak, along with an associate called Vasukaka Joshi, had decided to visit him in Nepal but had to return to Poona after being refused a permit to go to Nepal. However, one of Tilak’s students, Bhalchandra Ketkar, who at one time had also worked with Agarkar and lived in his house, got in touch with the prime minister of Nepal, Chandrashamsher Maharaj. Ketkar wanted to become a mechanical engineer but ended up being an excellent mechanic who helped repair printing machines for Agarkar and Tilak. His skills attracted the attention of Tilak, who himself was adept at fixing things. Chandrashamsher Maharaj took Ketkar around his ammunition factory and asked him to handle the production. Ketkar had the manuals and diagrams to make rifles and bullets; Tilak and his associates decided that the arms could be manufactured in Nepal with Ketkar’s help.

  In the meanwhile Vasukaka also managed to reach Nepal. Tilak’s men, while in Nepal, got in touch with Krupp, an ammunition manufacturing company in Germany. They had tried to procure a rifles manufacturing machine but the deal was shaky because the company wanted them to buy the machines on a larger scale. Meanwhile, Tilak’s friend, Dadasaheb Khaparde, paid for the diagrams to make rifles and bullets that were acquired from Ketkar. Tilak obviously knew all that was going on and the men had his blessings.

  Some of Tilak’s senior associates also suggested that the young members of the revolutionary clubs should go to Japan. Despite being a small country, Japan was getting increasingly powerful and had became a source of inspiration to Indian nationalists. An organisation called Shina-Ronin was sympathetic towards the Indian struggle and Toyama Mitsura, its leader, supported India. The organisation kept in touch with the Indian revolutionaries through a body called Indo-Ronin. There was a growing estrangement between Japan and England, America and France. Indian leaders like Tilak, Rash Behari Bose and later Subhash Chandra Bose knew that an enemy’s enemy was their friend. Japan in the east, and Germany in the west challenged England openly and the Indian revolutionaries decided to find their footing with these two possible allies in their struggle. However, they were aware that the equation with these nations could change any time due to a changing international political situation and so they also focussed on networking within the country. Many revolutionary leaders like Barkatullah and Bhagwan Singh of the Ghadar Party, and Bengali revolutionaries like Heramblal Gupta and Rash Behari Bose stayed in Japan for some time.

  In 1902, Lord Curzon organised the Delhi Durbar to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII. It was supposed to be the grandest pageant in history. A massive amount of money was to be spent on this function and this rubbed salt in the wounds of the Indians who had struggled with famine, and terrible exploitation and misery not so long ago. Extremely resentful and angry, Ramchandra Yashwant alias Bhausaheb Gokhale of Poona, along with a government clerk, Pandurangshastri Kauzalgikar, decided to kill Curzon. Kauzalgikar got in touch with the members of the Shivaji Club to plan it out. According to Gokhale’s memoirs, both Tilak and Shivram Paranjpe wanted Curzon dead. Tilak also provided financial help. However, the plan did not succeed.38

  From 1898 to 1906 the Kesari grew steadily in popularity and influence. By 1907 its circulation had risen to 20,000 copies a week. At that time a favourite topic in its columns was the
‘russianisation’ of the administration, which would lead to Russian methods of agitation by people.

  The Russian revolutionary radicalism was the main originating point of several radical activities and groups around the world. The Russians inspired the adoption of new organisational forms and new methodologies. The exploits of Bakunin, the People’s Will, and their socialist revolutionary successors after 1902 were made known globally by means of Russian exiles, newspaper accounts, and popular books. Firsthand knowledge of the Russian revolutionary movement spread with the thousands of people leaving Russia for other countries. Amongst them were active revolutionaries fleeing from the law, members of the intelligentsia seeking political refuge, Jewish emigrants, and aristocrats on tour. All of them spread the word of Russian developments to the United States, the European continent and England, from where it reached India. The British press was anti-Russian because of the rivalry between England and Russia for control of Central Asia. In India there was endless treatment in the English press, semi-official Anglo-Indian newspapers, and Indian nationalist publications, each with a different reason for justifying Russian terrorism. But the English journalists in India did not know that they were helping to teach lessons to the nationalist press, which called it the “Russian method”. It gave this method extensive attention and began to urge its application against the tyranny of the British rule. Beyond this, the newspaper accounts prepared the ground for widespread sympathy on the part of Indians toward anti-Western ideas emanating from Russia.

  Books were the main medium for the spread of knowledge about Russian method. The violence of the Russian populists spawned a whole subgenre of literature, which expressed the fascination and fear of the public and also publicised terrorist techniques and organizational configurations. The revolutionaries themselves wrote some of the books. Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed the world in dramatic ways. Russia became an early modernising nation whose troubles stimulated intellectuals to develop radical and utopian alternatives to Western models of modernity. These provocative ideas gave rise to cultural and political innovations that were exported and adopted worldwide. Wherever there was discontent with modern existence or traditional societies were undergoing transformation, anti-Western sentiments arose. Many people perceived the Russian soul as the antithesis of the capitalist, imperialist West and turned to Russian ideas for inspiration and even salvation. 39

  Meanwhile, the Irish were finding ways and means of freeing themselves of the British too. India began contemplating along the same lines. Russia’s example had transcended borders and soon the Russians were helping a section of India’s revolutionaries to build bombs. The emerging Indian nationalism was a mix of Western ideology and the native cultural and religious traditions of the subcontinent. One of the prominent figures in this context was Babu Arabindo Ghosh who was to form a close bond with Tilak. To Ghosh, at the beginning of the twentieth century, India was, “A mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity.” He wrote: “I worship her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother’s breast and started sucking her blood? Would he quietly sit down to his dinner, amuse himself . . . or would he rush out to deliver his mother?”

  Ghosh’s father, who did not want his sons to be influenced by any Indian thought, had sent him to England. Ghosh lived with a clergyman in Manchester. He developed an interest in the history of revolutions and rebellions. He studied the history of medieval France and then revolts in America and Italy. Those movements and their leaders, especially Joan of Arc and Mazzini, inspired him.

  Ghosh’s father, at a later stage of his life, became disgusted with the British government and started sending his son newspapers like the Bengalee, carrying information about the ill treatment of Indians by the British. Ghosh began participating in the activities of the Indian Majlis at Cambridge and became its secretary for some time. He delivered revolutionary speeches there. He also joined another secret society of a rather intriguing name, Lotus and Dagger, towards the end of his stay there.

  Back in India he took up a job with the Baroda government. A great scholar in European history and culture, expert at a couple of foreign languages, he now devoted himself to studying Indian languages, philosophy, and culture. On the political front he started writing articles attacking the policies of the Congress. He asked, “If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into a ditch?”

  Like Tilak, Ghosh’s goal was mass awakening. He believed that “our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism”. He called upon the common man to shake off the stupor and arise to liberate the country. The depth and strength of his writings invariably attracted attention and after a few articles, moderate Congress leader, M. G. Ranade, warned the proprietor of the paper that he would be prosecuted for sedition if the articles continued in the same tone. Ghosh did tone down his writing but soon lost interest in the series.

  He now started helping Jatindra Nath Banerjee to establish secret societies in Bengal. He ultimately wanted to organise secret societies throughout the country. The aim was to organise an armed revolt in a few years and overthrow the British. Ghosh visited Calcutta in 1900 to meet the revolutionary leaders for the same purpose. In touch with Tilak, he contacted the council of secret societies in Maharashtra.

  In 1904, Ghosh started networking for his Bhawani Mandir project. Inspired by Bankim Chandra’s novel Anand Math, it was to be a temple where revolutionaries would live the life of ascetics and dedicate themselves entirely to the cause of freedom. Ghosh wrote a booklet called Bhawani Mandir explaining all the guiding principles. The project was gradually abandoned. One of the leaders of the secret societies, Thakur Ram Singh, had won over two-three regiments in the army. Ghosh visited central India to garner more support from other regiments. The all-India council of secret societies whose aim was to organise an armed insurrection in the country against the British included leaders like Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Barrister P. Mitra, Aurobindo Ghose, Thakur Ram Singh, and others. By the end of 1906 these men had also plotted to free Goa with the passive support of the Portuguese government in consideration for money. The plan was to be executed with the support of the Russians. But the Russians were defeated by the Japanese and the plan could not be executed.

  When the government announced the partition of Bengal, Ghosh wrote a scathing pamphlet titled “No Compromise”. No press in Calcutta was ready to print it. It was finally composed by one Kulkarni, a Maharashtrian revolutionary, printed in thousands, and distributed. Ghosh believed, that “a nation is entitled to attain its freedom by violence, if it can do so or if there is no other way; whether it should do so or not, depends on what is the best policy, not on ethical considerations.” 40

  The book Intelligence and Imperial Defence by Richard J. Popplewell gives us a perspective from the other side. Popplewell, of course, uses the word “terrorists” for the armed revolutionaries. He writes: “From the British point of view one of the most troubling features of the Indian revolutionary movement was the speed of its growth. In 1907, Bengali terrorists had had to import basic knowledge of bomb making. In 1914, terrorism was still primarily a Bengali problem within the sub continent but this was not saying much, considering that Bengal accounted for about a quarter of the population of British India. But the most disturbing feature of the spread of political violence was the emergence of revolutionary centres abroad. In 1907 Indian revolutionary groups were to be found in London and Paris. Even worse, by the eve of the First World War, Indian immigrants to the United States and Canada had formed a revolutionary party, the Ghadar (revolt) movement, which could draw on the support of other members of the Indian diaspora in china and elsewhere in the Far East. Before the First World War, the num
ber of Indian terrorist acts remained small in comparison with the wave of anarchist terror in Europe in the 1890s or with the activities of the Russian terrorists in the last two decades of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th.”

  The Indian situation had direct parallels with Russia and this dismayed the British. Though in Russia, the number of armed militants was small, they did manage to make an impact and lower the morale of the regime. The situation in Bengal by the year 1907 was not very different. It did not help that they were very small in number as compared with the population that they ruled here. Even a few acts of violence against the British officers would be enough to shake their confidence.

  Lord Curzon ensured that the government would have a central intelligence agency, which would have a regular flow of information on the Indian activists. Weekly reports were sent to the central and local governments and were grouped under various subheads like Afghanistan and trans-border; native states and foreign possessions in India; persons of note; foreigners; politico-religious and racial movements; religious and social excitement and propagandaism; the native press; and miscellaneous subjects. The agency noted that the problem of arms trade on the northwest frontier was getting serious. Modern arms and ammunition made its way from the Gulf to the frontier and from there spread to the other parts of the country. 41

  Popplewell describes how when it came to gathering intelligence against the armed agitators, both the British and the Indian officers found it unpleasant and tried to keep away from it. While ordinary grassroots level informers were available, the administration found it impossible to recruit the kind of informers who would mingle with the political activists and secure information. The Indian agitators had, in the meanwhile, built a powerful organisation modelled on that of the Russian revolutionary cells. This meant that the discovery of a single branch did not undermine the whole. The leader concealed their identity from all but their immediate subordinates, and the organisation spread with a minimum of communication amongst the members. In fact, in 1909, the police could not say if the terrorist campaign had a centre or whether it was made up of independent groups.