The Mahratta described the situation and the government’s actions as having burnt “the candle of popular goodwill at both ends”. The strike attracted international attention after which Lenin said, “The Indian proletariat has already matured sufficiently to wage a class-conscious political mass struggle.”
What gained Tilak more support after the trial began was his address to the jury. His remarks were printed and published widely and were eagerly read by the educated and explained to the masses, day by day. Tilak, not long before his imprisonment, had put the idea of organised workers unions in their minds and soon an association called The Bombay Mill Hands Defence Association was formed. It was the first step towards organisation on the part of mill hands. Said the police reports,
In the recent disturbances the mill hands were the chief instruments used for disorder. But they had no organisation, no leader, no common object and no weapons other than stones. They broke the windows of mills, it is true, but that was because some of their number stuck to their work and they wanted them to come out. Had all the mills closed down simultaneously, the probability is that the hands would have been at a loss as to what to do. They were aware they were expected to show sympathy for Tilak, but how to do so except by going or trying to go to the High Court, they knew not. If a combined movement against Government can ever be effected, then we may expect that there will be organisation, a leader, a common object, and there will be weapons, such as pickaxe, hatchets, crowbars, bludgeons, etc. The idea of the mill hands arming with such weapons was mooted during the close of the recent trouble. The object will be the destruction of Europeans, Government buildings, offices, the Railways, the tramways, the telegraph lines, etc., looting of shops, European for choice, and possibly the burning of mills belonging to Europeans. The area over which they will operate will be the 23 square miles of Bombay, and the numbers engaged will be 50 to 60 thousand able bodied mill hands plus such of the population as are inimical to British Rule.
The mill hands stood by Tilak throughout and after he returned from Mandalay, they felicitated him publicly. In response Tilak said, “Create unions. I will be able to do something for you on the basis of your strength. Brahmins, non-Brahmins, Muslims, Christians, all of us are one. We must remain united. Don’t let yourself be divided by anything. Bureaucracy is today’s Brahminism. Don’t forget that the labourers are becoming the owners in European countries.” In Perambur, he said to another gathering of the industrial workers, “The power of the workers is going to increase and some day soon, they will be the rulers. But this will depend on how hard you work today.”51
And the workers, on their part, did work harder. They made a British official, George Clark, eat his words. Clark had described the policy of boycott of foreign goods and the use of swadeshi as “idiotic”. Kesari proved with statistical data how the sale of English goods decreased dramatically through boycott of foreign goods and use of indigenous goods. It emphasised that Bombay mills worked overtime to meet the demand for swadeshi textiles in Maharashtra. In May 1908, Kesari wrote: “The statistics of export and imports of May 1908 shows a decrease of foreign trade as well as the sales of foreign cloth. In the years 1906, 1907, 1908, foreign yarn that was imported was 12 lakhs, 7.81 lakhs and 10 lakhs rattal respectively in Bombay; 12 lakhs, 8.61 lakhs and 11 lakhs rattal in Madras; 7.78 lakhs; 16 lakhs and 7.75 lakhs rattal in Bengal. The foreign cloth imported into Bombay has been 893 lakhs, 577 lakhs, 796 lakhs of yards; in Madras 122 lakhs, 116 lakhs and 193 lakhs yards and in Bengal 1218 lakhs, 1130 lakhs and 516 lakhs yards during the above mentioned three years. The lower statistics of Bombay regarding the imports of yarn and foreign cloth goods shows the stronger influence of the swadeshi Movement on the foreign trade of Maharashtra.” Apart from the exhortation for large industries, there was an encouragement for small-scale industries through paisa fund aimed to start and increase small industries. It became quite popular and had its root in Indian philosophy of contributing a part of one’s income to the society. Tilak had already helped form the Workers Guild earlier.
Tilak recognised that Indian society was based on the concept of duty as dharma, where the individual had a definite duty towards society; the society, in turn, owed the individual. As he wrote in the Geeta Rahasya, when dharma ceased to be observed, the binding ropes of society became loose and when that happened, society became like a ship without a rudder or like planets without the gravitational force to influence them. Tilak knew that without social obligation and duty there would be a gradual and total disintegration of society. Duties and obligations had to be carried out mutually, in a way that was beneficial to all, the ultimate aim being to establish an economic and social balance.
Chapter Eight
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
Was Tilak religious in the conventional sense of the term? It is rather difficult to answer this question. Son of religious parents who inculcated in him the love of Sanskrit, he started learning Sanskrit shloks and prayers at the age of two. As a student, he observed the rigid custom of sowla that involved wearing the special holy, anointed dhoti used while performing religious rituals and having a meal, and being untouched by the others who did not observe it. He did not let go of this custom even during the Congress sessions later in life when he sat down for a meal with his fellow patriots, when he knew that neither the cooks nor his colleagues observed anything of the sort.
The outer signs were all there. Tilak sported a tuft on his head all his life. He insisted on wearing the traditional gopichandan on his forehead and made special arrangements to get it even while serving his prison sentence at Mandalay. He was known to have asked his sons to chant the Gayatri mantra and perform the sandhya ritual. He undertook a prayashchitta or a purification ritual after having tea that was served by missionaries at the Panch Haud Mission. He upheld the decision of the Shankaracharya as supreme in the controversy that followed the incident. Unlike Agarkar and other reformists he made it a point to visit temples in places like Pandharpur when he happened to be there. But he never went on pilgrimages or made rounds of temples for the sake of it. He never adopted modes of religious worship in any of his activities, believing, instead, in discriminatory thinking and elastic application of the laws of conduct.
Tilak lectured to the crowds gathered to celebrate the Ganesh celebrations but when suggested by some that he install an idol of any deity and burn incense every day in order to invoke the blessings of God for his political work, Tilak said, “You cannot ensure faith amongst people simply by placing an idol and burning incense sticks in front of it every day. What exactly is the role of divinity in our lives? It is He who protects the good and the vulnerable, slays the oppressors, and keeps the dharma from being destabilised. Every place where this work takes place is nothing less than a temple. Our Home Rule League Movement is to overthrow the exploitative, oppressive regime and to protect the culture of this land. It has the blessings of the divinity.”
When someone approached Tilak and said that the reason why the nationalists found it so difficult to achieve their objective despite such tremendous struggle was because of the absence of an idol and due to a total lack of rituals performed in terms of poojas, kirtans, bhajans, and spiritual sessions, Tilak said to him, “My work is a form of my worship. It is the best way of serving Him and I experience the same happiness and peace while doing my duties towards my nation that you would experience in performing the rituals.”
Tilak had a piece of advice for the members of the Warkari sect in Maharashtra who make the pilgrimage on foot to the temple of Vithoba in Pandharpur every year. He said to them, “When you pray to Him, ask Him to enable you to obtain moksha in the form of your progress along with that of the nation.”
Tilak once got into an argument with a religious figure called Sakharebua. Sakhrebua, alias Vinayak Narayan Joshi, who wanted to work on written discourses on the Dnyaneshwari mentioned his wish to Tilak. Tilak responded, “Go ahead and do that, but along with that also write and give
discourses to people, which would bring about political enlightenment amongst them through their faith.” Sakhrebua did not agree with this viewpoint. He said, “I cannot do that. I don’t believe in the nature and direction that you have chosen for the country’s wellbeing. Dnyaneshwar Maharaj and Shanakaracharya have suggested better ways of acquiring punya, which is a hundred times more beneficial to the people than the work that you are doing. I believe that following their words is better than what you suggest.”
Tilak was upset and rebutted him. “So what is your idea of spirituality?” he asked sternly. “Walking all the way to Pandharpur with a saffron flag upon your shoulder, singing songs and playing music on the taal? Is this what your spirituality yields for you? You may give unending discourses on how illusory the world is and how transient the suffering is but is that going to bring any help to those who are actually suffering under another’s oppressive, exploitative rule? I’m surprised that something like this does not touch you at all. I do not expect you to give up what you are doing but you could certainly make use of your religious experience for the wellbeing of the people in this direction as well.”
Once, during his visit to Pandharpur, one of the better-known religious figures of the time, Dattubua Bhujang, said to Tilak, “At least one of your speeches should be on the dharma.” Tilak replied, “Didn’t I speak on my dharma yesterday? My dharma is swarajya. This is the only thought that should keep the nation throbbing in today’s circumstances.” Tilak said that those who believed that God was separate from the country were not religious or spiritual in any sense of the term. In one of his speeches he clearly stated: “I do not limit the definition of dharma as that which will only help you attain moksha.”52
However, Tilak also recognised the significance of religion in the ordinary sense of the term. He accepted symbolism and popular rituals because he felt that they helped in forging a sense of unity and social togetherness. The Ganapti and Shivaji festivals were started to ensure this very purpose. Then there was also the concept of divine intervention. The concept of God manifesting Himself as the destroyer of evil in order to restore righteousness goes back to the Vedas. The Puranas, the Mahabharata and Ramayana deal with the same theme. This theme was central to the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals. Shivaji, the warrior king, took birth to release his people from extreme misery at the hands of the oppressive rulers to establish the cause of righteousness. This was, for his people, divine intervention in the face of extreme adharma. But righteousness could be restored only with the active participation of the people. They could not simply wait for God to restore it for them. This would have gone against the doctrine of activism or karmayoga as expounded by God in the Geeta. Tilak’s own Geeta Rahasya says the same thing. The festivals served, along with a cultural and religious purpose, a political idea. By reviving Hindu culture, they mobilised Hindu minds, stirring them out of their inaction. Said Tilak in a speech delivered at Ahmednagar on 1 June 1916, “God does not become incarnate for nothing. God does not become incarnate for idle people. He becomes incarnate for industrious people. Therefore, begin work.”
Tilak did make it a point to meet spiritual figures of the time. One of them was Shri Sai Baba of Shirdi in Maharashtra. Tilak’s associate, Ganesh aka Dadasaheb Khaparde, was an ardent devotee of Sai Baba. A renowned, wealthy lawyer of Amravati in Maharashtra, he was a loyal aide to Tilak all along. At the time when Tilak was serving a six-year sentence in Burma, Khaparde retained optimism with regards to the future only with the help of his deep love and immense faith in Sai Baba. Sai Baba, in turn, kept him in Shirdi and thus protected him from being prosecuted by the British government for treason and sedition. Khaparde, who was involved in several agitations against the British, then seemed to be at a phase of life where nothing much was going well. Tilak was sent away and all the efforts that Khaparde made to get him out of prison were unsuccessful. His own practice had dwindled and his political ambitions were also at a standstill. Sai Baba insisted that Khaparde stay in Shirdi till he told him otherwise. Khaparde, a spiritual man who more than anything trusted Sai Baba’s judgement, did as he was told. Time and time again, during the ritual aarati, Baba made certain gestures and offered his chillum to Khaparde, and answers were unravelled to his devotee, bringing him peace of mind and reassurances. Wrote Khaparde later: “On January 1, 1912, during the course of worship, Baba put two flowers in his nostrils and two others between his Ears and head. I thought this was his instruction, and when I interpreted it in my mind, he offered his chillum to me and thus confirmed it.”53
After Tilak returned, Khaparde accompanied him to Shirdi to meet Sai Baba. On 12 March, a Tuesday, they reached Shirdi at about 10 in the morning. They decided to stay in a place called Dixit wada. The afternoon saw Tilak sitting with folded hands along with Khaparde in Sai Baba’s audience. “You have done much for the country. It’s time for you to rest, look after yourself,” Baba said to him gently. Tilak accepted the prasad and stayed back for a while as Baba had wished him to. Baba is said to have told him that the goal of independence would be achieved but not through violence of any sort. Baba also advised him to tone down any kind of aggression. Tilak had eight more years of his life left. Surely Sai Baba could foresee it and hence advised Tilak to get some rest during the evening of his life. For months after Tilak’s visit to him, the British government was said to have kept an eye on Sai Baba.
Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon in Maharashtra was another spiritual figure that Tilak was in touch with. Maharaj was with Tilak at the Shivjayanti meeting in Akola in Maharashtra, and also on the dais, along with Tilak’s spiritual guru, Annasaheb Patwardhan, Dadasaheb Khaparde, and other associates. He, along with Tilak and Khaparde, visited the famous Ram Mandir of Akola.
It is said that Maharaj had attended one of Tilak’s particularly volatile speeches and is said to have walked out in the middle of it, muttering under his breath, saying, “Stop! Stop. Don’t speak anything anymore. Or this will see you behind bars soon.” Before long, Tilak was incarcerated at Mandalay. Gajanan Maharaj had also sent through an associate of Tilak’s a piece of bhakri especially for him. “Give it to that dark man,” Maharaj had said. Tilak had the stale bhakri with great reverence.
Sai baba and Gajanan Maharaj knew each other. It is said that Sai baba was in mourning on the day Gajanan Maharaj left his body. Khaparde mentions in his diaries how Sai baba wept on the day Gajanan Maharaj breathed his last. “My life-breath is leaving me—a great part of my soul is giving up my body,” he said.
Then there was also another spiritual figure, Siddharudh Swami, also known as Advaita-Chakravarti, the emperor of the advaita philosopher saints. Thousands of devotees gathered for his religious discourses. Known as an ascetic of the highest order and a personification of detachment, he was a guru to several enlightened chiefs of princely states like those of Kolhapur, Akkalkot, and Sandur. Tilak had visited him and sought his blessings, too. All these spiritual gurus were engrossed in furthering the welfare of the society. They encouraged those who translated spiritual practice into the life of worldly activities working actively for the uplift of the country.
Along with the saints, Tilak also found himself in the company of religious philosophers and yogis. In July 1892, in a Pune-bound train he met Swami Vivekananda for the first time. Vivekananda stayed with Tilak for a few days before leaving for Belgaum in October. In 1900, during the last years of Vivekananda’s life when he lived at the Belur Math guiding the work of Ramakrishna Mission, Tilak visited him yet again.
Marcel Kvassay, a Slovakian writer who spent many years in the Aurobindo ashram, while analysing a book called The Lives of Sri Aurobindo written by Peter Hees, has interesting observations about the nationalism of that time. He says that it was strengthened by the notion that any great change in India had to have a religious basis and inspiration. Religious nationalists, Tilak’s contemporaries like Bipinchandra Pal and Aurobindo, believed that this religious emphasis was necessary because of the distinctive, spiritual
nature of the Indian people and nation. This idea, which was popularised by the Brahmo Samaj, was expressed many times in Vivekananda’s speeches and was also advanced by a few European Orientalists. Bipinchandra Pal defended it with reference to nineteenth-century European theories of heredity and race. He also maintained that every nation had an essential nature which was the manifestation and revelation of a divine ideal. Aurobindo spoke of this essential nature as the “nation-soul” and believed, like Bipinchandra, that India’s soul was pre-eminently spiritual.
Then there was the belief in the superiority and universality of Indian religion—the belief that it was the universal religion, or could serve as the basis of one. Speaking to Western audiences, Vivekananda stressed that Hinduism was universal, since it was based on eternal principles. Speaking to Indians, he referred to these same principles to show that “ours is the only true religion”. Aurobindo, like Tilak, favoured an eclectic, basically Vedantic, Hinduism, which he believed to be universal and the basis of the future world-religion. But he believed in a wider Hinduism that embraced science and faith, Theism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism and yet was none of those. Bipinchandra, who favoured the Hindu Vaishnavism he was born into, also emphasised that the true universal religion was beyond all sectional and sectarian designations. Both were political and spiritual contemporaries of Tilak.
At the same time, what they expressed or believed in was not the viewpoint of abstract universalism and could only be reached by following one’s proper line of development and not by cutting oneself off from a particular culture, country, history, tradition, and scripture.
Lokmanya Tilak- the First National Leader Page 20