Savarkar

by Vikram Sampath

  Harnam Singh, sporting his colourful turban, was a sight for the Europeans on the ship. Each time he went up to the deck to catch some fresh air, the white children pointed at him and laughed at what they considered a strange appearance. Their parents, instead of reprimanding their boorish behaviour, joined in the mockery. ‘Mr Etiquette’ felt embarrassed by this and told Vinayak to advise Harnam to stop wearing the turban. But Vinayak protested. He told him:

  Some of our customs are surely outdated and I am ahead of you in proposing their abandonment. I am a reformist at heart. However I consider it sheer cowardice to eschew our culture and traditions merely because some ignorant and arrogant Europeans laugh at it. I feel our turbans look colorful and aesthetic, unlike their hats that seem to me like dustbins. It is a national insult to tell a Sikh for whom it is a matter of his faith to wear a turban to stop wearing it. Why don’t we all sport turbans so that seeing us in large numbers their ridicule would stop? 3

  Vinayak argued that being a subservient nation it was natural for Indians to feel inferior and odd in comparison to British customs. One had to only spare a thought for the early East India Company traders who might also have felt equally at sea in a strange, new land and whom our forefathers might have mocked for being unaware of Indian customs. He added, ‘But these English men and women do not laugh at us merely as a matter of fun. They mock us out of arrogance and truly despise us. They thereby imply that they are the rulers and we, the ruled and hence all their customs, traditions and culture are way superior to ours. Therein lies the problem.’ 4 Thus, even on board Vinayak managed to bring in political and cultural discussions around India, her slave status and the need for liberation among his fellow Indian passengers.

  As the ship sailed on, many passengers suffered from both seasickness and homesickness. Vinayak missed his home. There were several occasions when he felt an intense longing to return home to his loving brothers, wife, son and sister-in-law. The tragedies of childhood had cemented ties among the Savarkars and they loved one another deeply. Meanwhile, Harnam fell ill, throwing up everything he ate. As Vinayak nursed him, he held Vinayak’s hand and cried that he had had enough and wanted to return to his family that very moment. He resolved to alight at Aden, buy a return ticket and go back to India. Vinayak counselled him about how sometimes we must be prepared to suffer for the sake of the very people we love for a higher purpose in life. To instil courage in Harnam, he narrated the story of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last guru of the Sikhs. Fighting against the cruelty of the Mughal onslaught, he had lost his sons Ajit Singh and Jhujhar Singh, aged seventeen and thirteen respectively, on the battlefield. His younger sons were entombed alive for refusing to accept Islam. He himself was martyred. Vinayak argued that had Guru Gobind Singh or his sons felt the way Harnam did, none of them would have gathered the courage to fight for the larger cause.

  It might take a month to receive a reply to a letter written to family members back in India. But in the earlier centuries, when the East India Company officers came to India it took them six months or more to communicate with their families as the ships travelled to England from India via a circuitous route through the Cape of Good Hope. But they persevered since their goal was to vanquish India and become its rulers. Shouldn’t young Indians similarly persevere to liberate their motherland? At the end of the discourse, Harnam was a transformed man. He cancelled the idea of alighting at Aden and instead asked Vinayak what he could do for his motherland. Such was the power of Vinayak’s logical reasoning.

  Vinayak circulated an English biography of Italian revolutionary Mazzini that he had with him among the Indians on board. He wanted to assess their inclination and opinion about revolution. While several of them were inspired, they felt it was the work of national leaders like Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai, or of the maharajas, to take up such a cause. At best, they could be mere foot soldiers. Vinayak told them that when Mazzini’s ‘Young Italy’ began, it was the work of a handful of unknown youngsters. He reminded them about Wasudev Phadke and the Chapekar brothers who were virtually unknown but had done their bit for the cause.

  One of them, whom Vinayak again cryptically describes by a pseudonym ‘Keshavanand’, was thoroughly inspired. He said that if such a secret society existed in India, he would be more than happy to join it. It was then that Vinayak revealed the details about Abhinav Bharat and its activities across the country. While he was going to England to become a barrister, that was only an excuse. The real motivation was to carry on large-scale propaganda and draw eminent citizens of England to their side. He also wanted to learn how to manufacture cheap and effective hand bombs. Finally, creating an international network of revolutionaries and collectively raising a banner of revolt in India was part of his agenda. The fellow passengers were awestruck. The very next day, both Keshavanand and the fastidious ‘Mr Etiquette’ ended up taking the oath of Abhinav Bharat right there aboard the S.S. Persia . Thus, Vinayak’s passion for the revolution did not wait till he reached London.

  These gentlemen helped Vinayak in his activities in London but requested anonymity as they feared police retribution. ‘Mr Etiquette’, for instance, helped Vinayak deliver many of his explosive writings back to India. He had a textile business and thus managed to craftily conceal the manuscripts among his cloth consignments and had them shipped to India. This attracted no attention from either the police or the spy agencies that were constantly on the watch.

  The three-week-long journey not only gave Vinayak an opportunity to induct new members into Abhinav Bharat, it also gave the poet in him some much-desired solitude. He sat in the open air, bewitched, witnessing the vast and limitless sea and the countless stars above. He had read about astronomy and oceanography and this was an occasion to see all of it up close. In his memoirs, he writes about the thoughts that crossed his mind during this time:

  What is the purpose of creation? The countless species that exist in the ocean and on land would all disappear, the stronger devouring the weaker. Are earthquakes, comets, snowstorms and other destructive phenomena an act of God or of the Devil? Where does Man fit into all of this, if everything is just a play of someone sitting up there and pulling strings? How is it that the creator never gets tired and manages to regenerate everything after destruction? 5

  He wrote several poems during this journey, including the delightful ‘Tarakans Pahun’ (After Looking at Stars). The poem begins with these evocative lines:

  Sunil nabh he, sundar nabh he, nabh he atal aha!

  Sunil sagar, sundar sagar, sagar atalachi ha!

  Nakshatrahi tarankit he, nabh tarankit bhase

  Pratibimbahi tasa sagarahi, tarankit bhase

  Numje lage kuthe nabh kuthe jalaseema hoi

  Nabhat jal he, jalat nabh te sangamuni jai

  Deep blue, beautiful, boundless sky!

  Deep blue, beautiful, deep and fathomless sea!

  Adorned with stars and constellations, the sky smiles enchantingly,

  The sea returns the same, as it is but a reflection of the sky.

  Where does the sea end, where does the sky begin

  In their vast intermingled union? 6

  The contempt and indifference that Vinayak, Harnam and others felt aboard the S.S. Persia were not unique. The knighted correspondent of the Times of London , Sir Valentine Chirol, writes about the experiences that several Indian students like them might have felt during their stay in England:

  It would be almost impossible for an Englishman who has never been in the East to realize the enormous difference between the life to which the student has been used and the life to which he has come . . . he may have been to some town to study in a Government or missionary school or college. But that has not given him an insight into English life . . . he comes to England feeling there is a gulf between the East and the West . . . he is by nature extremely sensitive. On board ship he and his brother Indians keep together. The English passengers, fatigued after a period of hard work in a hot climate, have no ene
rgy left for the effort of trying to draw out and know this batch of silent Orientals. So the gulf gapes wide . . . Some of them go to Oxford and Cambridge. They have heard in India, from some Indians who were up at these Universities from ten to fifteen years ago, how delightful the life is—how sociable the undergraduates, how hospitable the dorms . . . they go up only to find disappointment . . . colleges are reluctant to admit them. The English undergraduate accepts any man who is good at games and ready to enter into the university life, but leaves severely alone the man of any nationality who has had no opportunity of learning English games, and who is too shy and sensitive to show what he is worth. 7

  The ship sailed via Aden, crossed the Red Sea and entered the port of Suez, before reaching Marseilles in France. Marseilles had a special attraction for Vinayak as his Italian revolutionary hero, Mazzini, had sought refuge there when he was persecuted. With the help of a local travel guide, he tried to locate the place where Mazzini hid, but it was in vain as no one there had a clue about it. The narrow lanes of the old city had a striking resemblance to Nashik. But it was soon time for him to catch the train and he bid Marseilles goodbye. Little did he know that this French town was something he would revisit under dire circumstances just a few years later.

  From Marseilles, Vinayak took a train to Paris and then Calais, crossed the English Channel by boat, arrived at Dover and then took a train to London’s Charing Cross. He finally reached London on 3 July 1906. Some residents of Shyamji Krishna Varma’s India House were at the station to receive him. On Vinayak’s advice, Harnam Singh too decided to join him at India House.

  Interestingly, even as he was en route to England, the Special Crime Branch in Poona had sent a report about Vinayak’s proposed arrival to London. In a confidential letter dated 14 June 1906, S.W. Wyerley from India wrote to the R. Ritchie of the India Office Crime Branch in London. He added that while ‘he is not, of course of any personal importance but holds somewhat the same opinion as Damodar Hari Chapekar who was responsible for the murder of Mr Rand in 1897. In short, he promises to be a firebrand.’ 8 The detective agencies in India and England were keeping a keen watch on young Vinayak’s every move.

  London, July 1906

  Vinayak was admitted to The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, commonly known as Gray’s Inn, for his legal studies on 26 July 1906. It was one of the four Inns of Court, or professional associations for barristers and judges in London. By 1890, there were at least 200 Indian students in Great Britain, many of whom were studying at the Inns of Court. 9 Apart from Vinayak, Indian students, including Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru travelled to Britain for higher studies. The motivations of Indian students were varied: the prestige that came with an education in Britain, the excitement of being abroad and away from home, and the hope of engaging with ‘an English gentleman of good birth and education’ 10 at the very heart of the Empire.

  Most young men took the same route of sea to England and then trains to their respective university locations. It was most often their first experience outside their country and hence a deeply distressing and confusing one. Finding affordable accommodation and vegetarian food were other problems to grapple with, in addition to homesickness. Thrown into a culture completely alien to their own, many of them formed local associations to provide support to each other and to new incoming students. The Edinburgh Indian Association (EIA), which had nearly 200 members by 1900, and the Cambridge and Oxford Majlis were some such groups. In such a context, Shyamji’s initiative of India House as a boarding and community centre for Indian students was all the more important.

  It also appears that becoming a barrister in Britain was relatively easy and this made it an attractive proposition for Indian students. As Gandhi writes about his experience of the process through which one earned a place as a barrister:

  There were two conditions which had to be fulfilled before a student was formally called to the bar: ‘keeping terms’, twelve terms equivalent to about three years; and passing examinations. ‘Keeping terms’ meant eating one’s terms, i.e., attending at least six out of about twenty-four dinners in a term. Eating did not mean actually partaking of the dinner, it meant reporting oneself at the fixed hours and remaining present throughout the dinner. 11

  He also talks about two examinations—one on Roman law, and another on common law—that could be easily passed. The first by ‘scrambling through notes on Roman Law in a couple of weeks, and the Common Law examination by reading notes on the subject in two or three months’. 12 A leisurely schedule such as this was exactly what Vinayak would have sought to further his real intention of going to London.

  Even before being admitted to the Inn, Vinayak wrote to the Secretary of State for India on 15 July 1906 about his great curiosity to hear the budget speech in British Parliament scheduled for 20 July and requested for entry passes to the House of Commons. On 18 July, he had to meet Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, a distinguished British officer who was earlier the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State, Lord George Hamilton, to collect his passes. Wyllie recounts his meeting with Vinayak, describing him as ‘a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner . . . we agree in thinking that there is no objection to his being given the order he asks for’. Entering the heart of the British Empire and its seat of power and to see Parliament in action was a great learning experience for Vinayak.

  In the first of many newsletters, known as Londonchee Batamipatre , that he sent to India on 17 August 1906, Vinayak talked about the Indian budget being discussed in the British Parliament as merely a documentation of how much money was looted in this financial year and the targets for the following one. ‘Our leaders,’ lamented Vinayak, ‘have been begging for concessions for the last decade. And what did they get yesterday apart from Mr Morley’s 13 crafty speech? Did he not say that the leaders of the Indian National Congress are opium eaters? You misguided folks, when are you going to come to your senses?’ 14

  Through the rest of 1906, he wrote several such newsletters and articles on the need for a national Indian army, mocked the pusillanimity of Congress leaders such as Gokhale and Surendranath Banerjea with his sharp sarcasm, documented the various discussions related to India in British Parliament, and the need for revolution. Keeping himself abreast of the various political movements in London, he noted in his newsletter dated 28 September 1906:

  Many people in India are demanding independence, so Sir Henry Cotton 15 calls them extremists. But in England too there is another political movement that can be called ‘Extremist.’ They recently had a huge meeting in Hyde Park. Large numbers of English women have joined this new movement. They want political rights at par with men (the Suffragette movement). Miss Emmeline Pankhurst spoke at the meeting at Hyde Park. She said, ‘We know that pitiable condition of women in England is a result of our political slavery. We want political freedom and men folk to co-operate with us for achieving it. But if they do not give us that freedom, we are quite capable of snatching it from their hands. If we wish we can bring England to a halt within a day and seize our political freedom.’ Listen fellow countrymen! An Englishwoman is saying this and we call ourselves moderate Indian men!! Never again should any country grind under slavery. 16

  There were innumerable people of great merit whom Vinayak met during his stay at India House and in London. These known and unknown heroes of the Indian freedom struggle played an important role in Vinayak’s life. Among them were Lala Har Dayal, Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Senapati Bapat, V.V.S. Aiyar, M.P.T. Acharya, J.C. Mukherjee, Madan Lal Dhingra, Gyanchand Verma, Bhai Parmanand, Sardar Singh Rana and Madame Bhikaji Cama. They all had a story of struggles and tribulations, and had traversed different journeys before destiny had brought them together in London for a brief while. Their stories and destinies became deeply intertwined with Vinayak’s in the years to come.

  Lala Har Dayal (1884–1939) was about the same age as Vinayak. Born on 4 October 1884 to an upper-
caste Kayastha family in Delhi, he was the youngest of four brothers. He attended Christian mission schools, completed his education at Cambridge Mission School and thereafter received a bachelor’s degree in Sanskrit from St Stephen’s College, Delhi. In his youth, he was also a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). He then went on to do his master’s degree in Sanskrit from Punjab University in Lahore in 1905. 17 He topped his batch at both levels. Even British official accounts stress his several academic achievements: ‘Throughout his academic career he has been a scholar of exceptional qualifications always being first in his examinations and scholarships.’ 18 As hostile an evaluator as the lieutenant governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who called Har Dayal ‘the most sinister figure in the revolutionary movement’, made references to his ‘brilliant academic career’. 19 His disenchantment with convent education came early and he was later to become one of the loudest voices that called for a Hinduized ‘national’ education and castigated the missionary attempts of proselytization of Hindu students in Christian institutions. 20 He was deeply influenced by Swami Dayanand Saraswati and the Arya Samaj. In his Lahore days, he became closely associated with both Bhai Parmanand (1874–1948) and Lala Lajpat Rai.