Shyamji also announced two additional scholarships in the names of Hemchandra Das and Ganesh Damodar Savarkar in honour of their immense contribution to the country. The same edition of the Indian Sociologist also noted with great disappointment the manner in which the Brahmin community, especially the Chitpawans, was being hounded by the British government. It quoted a Times article that called for ‘an attack on the Chitpavan Brahmins of Bombay’ 14 and rued how more than sixty members of the community were languishing in prisons after judgments by the Secret Tribunal.
Despite convalescing from illness, Vinayak was not sitting idle in Paris. He wrote articles for Virendranath Chattopadhyay’s newsletter Talwar and created awareness among the Indian community in Paris, trying to enlist members for the Free India Society. During his research on the 1857 War of Independence, Vinayak had come across the lesser-known fact related to the armed uprising of the Kukas in Punjab. He had delivered lectures on Guru Ram Singh, the leader of the Kuka movement that was eventually crushed by the British. His fascination for Sikh history and his collection of material related to Sikh literature and stories of the various gurus have been mentioned earlier. While he was recuperating in the sanatorium in Paris, Vinayak managed to complete writing an entire book titled History of the Sikhs . The book was dedicated to the memory of his son who had died a few years ago. Three copies of the manuscript were made. One was sent to India, which was unfortunately lost in transit or was seized by the police. Another was sent to India through an Indian artist who had agreed to smuggle it back. But during the journey when he realized that strict searches were being conducted on the passengers’ baggage, he stealthily threw the manuscript into the sea to avoid getting caught. The third copy was possibly with Madame Cama. 15 Sadly, the manuscript and its copies were all lost, and the book never saw the light of day. Only references to the existence of such a manuscript exist in Vinayak’s memoirs.
From Paris, Vinayak also wrote a stirring pamphlet addressed to the rulers of the Indian princely states, many of whom had quietly accepted British suzerainty to save their privileges. This was an appeal to their conscience to stir them to make a wise choice and stand up for their country. It was aptly titled ‘Choose, O’ Indian Princes’. Among other things, the appeal said:
But, if in spite of this clear warning, failing to realize the mighty forces that are working under the ground and which have already revolutionized the modern world of Indian thought, you try to ally yourself with the enemy and array yourself to stop the eruption of this fire-emitting volcano with your thumbs, then woe upon you O! Princes of India! When the mightiest of empires is trembling at the very birth pangs of this revolution, you, weak as you are, cannot hinder its onward march or smother its birth any more than you can change the gravitation or the rotundity of the earth . . . But everyone who might have actively betrayed the trust of the people, disowned his fathers and debased his blood by allying himself against the mother, he shall be crushed to dust and ashes and shall be looked upon as a harlot, a bastard, and a renegade . . . Choose what you will, and you will reap what you sow. Choose whether you should be the first of the nation’s traitors or last of the patriots. 16
Even as he was writing these fiery articles and pamphlets, Vinayak was aware of murmurs of criticism that had started growing against him, just as they had against Shyamji. Especially after Dhingra, there was talk about how Vinayak only lectured and instigated others, how he never led from the front. His flight to Paris might have also been construed as an attempt to seek permanent asylum, like his mentor Shyamji. At the same time, Vinayak was receiving news from India and his hometown of how his family members and other young men were being rounded up and tortured in the Jackson murder trial. There was no way, he thought, that he could sit idly in Paris and write articles.
The moment of epiphany came on a bright, sunny morning in Paris when he was taking a walk in the garden as per his doctor’s advice. 17 Swans and ducks swam merrily in the ponds, water lilies had just bloomed, and the skies were a clear blue. The scene seemed straight out of a painting. Reclining on a bench there, Vinayak pulled out the newspaper and was horrified to read about death sentence awarded to Kanhere, Karve and Deshpande. He was overcome by emotion and cursed himself for enjoying walks in the park, while his compatriots were facing the worst tribulation. As someone who used to preach that one must put everything aside for the cause of freedom, he felt repulsed at his inaction. The time of reckoning and leading by example had come. He decided that he would head back to London, even if it was at the cost of his life and liberty.
There was another reason for Vinayak’s decision. He believed that ‘London would provide him scope for fighting on behalf of the accused in India’ even though he did not know Karve, Kanhere and Deshpande. ‘London,’ he thought, ‘was famous as having given asylum to many exiles and revolutionaries. Orsini, the Italian revolutionary who shot Napoleon III, Karl Marx . . . and many others had lived in London unmolested. London should be safe for him also.’ 18
He hurried back and told Shyamji, Madame Cama and Sardar Singh Rana about his decision and they tried their best to persuade him against it. They had a reason for doing so. The investigation of the arrested persons in the Jackson murder case was slowly leading back to Vinayak and his activities in London. The government had already been wary of him and after Babarao’s arrest they wanted to foist a case on Vinayak in order to extradite him. The leads that many witnesses gave were helping the government create a watertight case against Vinayak.
Lord George Sydenham Clarke, a former British army officer and the new governor of Bombay from October 1907, was determined to prosecute Vinayak whom he considered ‘one of the most dangerous men that India has produced’. 19 Official correspondence mentions that: ‘A case should be put up against Savarkar even though its [sic] not very strong. If he is convicted of being a member of a conspiracy the second conviction is by no means unprovable. If he is acquitted of course the whole petition drops.’ 20 A lot of information had been gathered about him and his writings, but it was felt that these were not enough to nail him in a court of law. The official correspondence hence also drives home a point of caution, and also the need to build a case that did not allow any room for a second trial so that he would be convicted in the first attempt itself:
It should be clearly understood there is chance of acquittal on charge of abetment of murder, whereas in all probability sentence on conspiracy charge will be transportation for life, which would be probably maximum on conviction on other charges. If such a sentence now given, effect might actually be to induce clemency at a second trial. Political effect of second trial would be most unfortunate, as vindictiveness of Government would be alleged. 21
Lord Montgomerie, a special magistrate at Nashik, was appointed to record evidence particularly to build a prima facie case against Vinayak and have him extradited. A complaint was filed against Vinayak in Montgomerie’s court on 17 January 1910, and on 8 February 1910 a warrant was issued against him, charging him with five offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC): 22
Waging of war or abetting the waging of war against the King in India. (This offence is not quite equal to the offence of treason in England, the legal definition of war being any covert act calculated to subvert the Government. The offence is punishable by death or transportation for life and the forfeiture of property .) 23
Conspiring, in contravention of Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code to deprive the King of the Sovereignty of British India or a part of it.
Procuring and distributing arms in London in 1908, thus abetting the murder of Mr A.M.T. Jackson, collector of Nasik, which occurred at a local theatre on 21st December 1909.
Procuring and distributing arms in London in 1908, and otherwise waging war against the King from London.
Delivering seditious speeches in India, at Nasik and Poona, January to May 1906; and in London, from 1908 to 1909. (This was also included in the first offence. )
The warrant was
granted against Vinayak in his absence from London on the grounds that these offences came within the Fugitive Offenders Act (FOA) of 1881. The FOA presumed that the suspect in question had been guilty of a crime and had fled to evade arrest.
There were several legal loopholes in the charges. First, Vinayak was not a fugitive when he left India for Britain, nor had he been previously charged, evaded arrest or ever been imprisoned. He had come to Britain like any other Indian student in a legal manner to pursue his law studies and with a scholarship supporting him. But the British government realized that the only way Vinayak could be extradited was by producing charges of an unresolved and unrecorded ‘crime’ in India. To execute this, all that the government could come up with were Vinayak’s speeches (of a seditious nature) made in India nearly five years ago, before his departure for Britain. However, the Indian government could have charged Vinayak and arrest him on sedition charges even back then given that he had been under constant watch. Instead, they built a case against him for sedition in India by raking up a non-existent crime based on forced testimonies of several amnesty witnesses. The reason for the same was that sedition was near obsolete in Britain, but given its prominence in India, if Vinayak got convicted for that in India the sentence could be the harshest. It was easier to secure jury convictions based on sedition in India and hence an extradition was paramount. As Janaki Bakhle puts it:
Sedition trials per se were no less politically explosive in India than in England, but the outcome could be guaranteed because the juries could be counted on to convict. The legal definition of sedition made no real separation between word and deed, intention and implementation, representation and reality. In India, sedition became the pre-emptive as well as the ex post facto legal mechanism that allowed the colonial state, in anticipation of a dangerous act, to proscribe all thought, writing or language that might produce it. At the same time, sedition also allowed for a post-event round-up and arrest of everyone even remotely connected with the actual act, on the grounds that their rhetoric had clearly been the cause of incitement of the natives to agitate against the government. At the moment of its demise in England, because of its association with illiberalism, sedition was reborn in India with colonial occupation as the midwife. 24
Based on the five charges against Vinayak, a telegram was dispatched to London with the result that on 22 February 1910, the Bow Street magistrate granted a provisional warrant of arrest. With Wallinger’s intervention, the British managed to secure some partial cooperation from the Paris police. Despite knowing all these facts, Vinayak decided to leave for London. His decision is variously described as ‘rash’ or ‘honourable’ depending on the perspective of the author. There have been other insinuations too, of him having fallen prey to a honeytrap, Lawrence Margaret, the British agencies had set up for him. The insinuation has no basis and there has been no reference or details available about the lady. These are as wild and contradictory to the other often repeated innuendos about Vinayak that ‘he had been a consumer of opium for years. He was also, although few of his followers were aware of it, a homosexual.’ 25 They seem to be made more from a pejorative view of maligning Vinayak, and using his personal life, which was his business and none other’s, to score political brownie points against him and his actions. In any case, it might be fair to state that Vinayak miscalculated the liberalism of London and also misunderstood his position as a domestic terrorist, not a foreigner. Shyamji warned him several times and also wrote about this:
We felt that he was no longer safe in England . . . after repeated appeals he was at last persuaded to come to Paris and we were delighted to know that our dear young friend was safely in our midst, free from the clutches of his relentless enemies. Alas! Our pleasure was short-lived. A few months ago, much against our earnest advice, he took it into his head to return to England. Amongst other things, we drew his attention to a special danger to which he was exposed. Inasmuch as two of his brothers had already been entrapped by the British Government, one transported for life and the other on the way to receive a like sentence, the probability was that the alien oppressors of our country would take good care to put him out of the way, fearing lest an active and capable young man of his temperament might wreck a righteous vengeance. 26
Victoria Station, London, 13 March 1910
Vinayak had promised to meet Shyamji and others one last time before leaving for London, but he unexpectedly left France on Sunday, 13 March 1910. He left behind a letter expressing sorrow at not being able to see them before leaving and thanked them profusely for their generosity.
Vinayak left Paris by train to Calais and crossed the English Channel. There he boarded another boat train from Newhaven Port for London. At 7 p.m., as the boat train steamed into Victoria Station, Vinayak knew that he was being shadowed. Interestingly, Miss Perinben Naoroji, Dadabhai Naoroji’s granddaughter, who was in Paris and helping the revolutionaries in manufacturing bombs, was travelling with him. But the police did not notice or catch her. Just as Vinayak stepped out of the train a battery of detectives and police officials pounced on him. Chief Inspector John McCarthy and Inspector E. John Parker of Scotland Yard who had pursued the case triumphantly cried: ‘Here he is . . . he is here!’ Vinayak merely smiled and said, ‘Yes, it’s me . . . I am Savarkar.’
He was taken to the waiting room where the arrest warrant of the Bombay High Court demanding his extradition was read out to him. He smiled and replied, ‘Yes, sir! Doubtless the case would prove very interesting!’ 27 Thereafter, he was formally taken into the custody of the Bow Street Police. Searching his trunk, the police discovered two copies of his book, The Indian War of Independence of 1857 , seven copies of the pamphlet ‘Choose O! Princes’, one copy of Mazzini, and several newspaper articles. Though, lack of warm clothing and the English cold woke him a few times in the night that he spent at the police station, he slept well and without a care.
The next day, Vinayak was produced at Bow Street Police Court before the chief magistrate, Sir Albert de Rutzen. The court was crowded with spectators who had come to watch the high-profile proceedings. Although it was announced that the proceedings would be formal, ‘there were many people in court, the greater portion of them being well-dressed young Indians’. 28 Vinayak’s counsel, Reginald Vaughan of Gray’s Inn, put forward an application for his client’s bail. Vaughan addressed the magistrate: ‘There is very considerable doubt whether there is any authority to send this man back to India. This, however, is a question, which your Worship will consider later. I ask in the meantime that this man shall be admitted to bail . . . The offence is of a political nature really; whether in law or not is another matter.’ 29 V.V.S. Aiyar stood solidly behind Vinayak in these trying times and even engaged Vaughan. Vinayak was refused bail after the preliminary hearings. ‘No bail at all?’ exclaimed Vaughan to which the chief magistrate said, ‘Not until I know more about the case.’ 30
On 18 March, H.B. Simpson, the undersecretary to the Secretary of State for India, sent an official correspondence regarding this:
I am directed by Secretary Mr W. [Winston] Churchill to acquaint you, for the information of the Secretary of State for India, that Vinayek Savarkar has been arrested in pursuance of a warrant issued under the Fugitive Offenders Act, 1881, on the information of the Metropolitan Police and having been brought before a Magistrate at Bow Street Police Court on the 14th instant was remanded for seven days on a charge of sedition and abetment of murder committed within the jurisdiction of the Indian government. 31
Almost immediately a telegram was wired from the viceroy’s office in Shimla to the India Office in London:
Government anxious to proceed against Savarkar. His brother Ganesh has been convicted under Section 121 I.P.C. We agree that this is desirable and propose to send to London an Indian Police Officer having intimate knowledge of Conspiracy Case here. We are advised that the best evidence against Savarkar will be obtained from Sikhs and therefore have selected Sikh Deputy Suptd. Dyal Singh G
yani. We propose that he should receive full pay of Rs 400 a month and present allowance—Rs 100 with travelling expenses and 10 shillings a day subsistence allowance in England. We request your sanction by telegraph to deputation on these terms. 32
Aiyar met Vinayak in prison on 15 March and on several occasions thereafter. He was his messenger and a window to the outside world. On the same day, he also wrote to Shyamji conveying the details of the arrest, initial hearings and his engagement of a counsel that could help them prove Vinayak’s innocence ‘beyond a shadow of doubt’. Aiyar said, almost prophetically, that the prospect of transportation for life to the Andaman jails looms large for Vinayak and they must do all that they can to prevent his extradition to India. He writes about meeting Vinayak in jail:
This morning I saw Savarkar and he was the same as ever except that we had to converse through the iron bars. But I feel it deeply—too deeply, that he should be interned in the English jail. A lion in the toil of his hunter! He said that Jail Superintendent, etc., treated him with due attention and care and that he had nothing to complain under the circumstances. I know you as well as Mrs Shyamaji would feel so much to find that but the day before yesterday he was with you safe and today! . . . there is no use crying over spilt milk. We must do our best to see that he is not sent to India. If once he is sent, we shall see no more of him and one of the dearest and most devoted sons of the Motherland would be rotting away in cells of a malarious island. It was pathetic when Savarkar said this morning, if he were to be taken to the Andamans, he would have the happiness of seeing his elder brother. I hope that melancholy sort of happiness will not be his, but that he will be released and will work out the salvation of his country according to his lights. 33
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