Aiyar also wrote about collecting funds for Vinayak’s defence and that nearly £200 might be needed for the legal process. Shyamji replied promptly and expressed his deep consternation on the misery that had befallen Vinayak and one he had brought upon himself despite their advice. He also sent a cheque for £10 to aid Vinayak in his hour of crisis. On 20 March, Vinayak was sent to Brixton prison, situated at Jebb Avenue in London. Aiyar visited him regularly. Interestingly, Vinayak himself recounts in detail this encounter with Aiyar at Brixton prison from his memoir written in 1925 from Ratnagiri to condole Aiyar’s passing away:
In 1910 . . . I stood as a prisoner, then only very recently pent up in Brixton—the formidable prison in London. The warder announces visits; anxiously I accompany the file of prisoners to the visiting yard. I stand behind the bars wondering who could have come to call on us and thus invite the unpleasant attentions of the London police. For to acknowledge our acquaintance from the visitors’ box in front of the prison bars was a sure step to eventually getting behind them. The visitors are let in. They crowdedly pass past our window. Presently one dignified figure enters the box in front of us. It was V.V.S. Aiyar. His beard was closely waving on his breast. He was unkempt. He was no longer the neatly dressed fashionable gentleman. His whole figure was transformed with some act of dedication of life. ‘O leader!’ he feelingly accosted me. ‘Why did you leave Paris at all?’ I soothingly said, ‘What is the use of discussing it here?’ Rightly or not, I am here, pent up in prison—and the best way now is to see what is to be done next, how to face the present. While fully discussing the future plans, the bell rang and the warders came running and shouting unceremoniously, ‘Time is up.’ With a heavy heart we looked into each other’s eyes. We knew it would perhaps be the last time we ever saw each other in this life. Tears rose. Suppressing them, we said: ‘No! No! We are Hindus. We have read the Gita. We must not weep in the presence of these unsympathetic crowds.’ We spoke in Hindi, curious crowds of Englishmen watched the young Indian rebel and his friend. We parted. I watched him till he disappeared and said to my mind, ‘For, one of the two fates was certain to my lot, the gallows or the Andamans, and neither could hold any prospect before me of seeing my friends again. 34
Virendranath Chattopadhyay made nearly fifteen visits to the prison even though he lived in Paris. Niranjan Pal too met Vinayak at Brixton and remonstrated with him for disregarding their objections about leaving Paris despite knowing what would befall him on reaching London. Vinayak coolly replied that ‘his shoulders were broad enough to bear the consequences. He had the courage of his conviction.’ 35 David Garnett, who had befriended many Indian revolutionaries in London and was Vinayak’s ardent admirer, visited Brixton too. He was grilled by Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard and only then allowed to meet Vinayak. Garnett describes his first meeting with Vinayak:
He was perfectly calm and at his ease. I discussed his defence and offered to collect money for it, and to do anything I could to help him. All he wanted at the moment were some clean collars, the size of his neck was only 13 ½—the size of a school boy . . . I went practically every week to Brixton Gaol to see Savarkar, taking with me some clean collars and handkerchiefs and I collected a few pounds for his legal defence. 36
From the confines of jail where the gallows or the Andamans seemed certain, Vinayak penned a long and impassioned will and testament. This was written in the form of a letter to Yesu Vahini. Vinayak poignantly referred to the happy times they spent together in childhood and youth under the open skies and moonlit nights; how lovingly she had taken care of them as a mother would; the games they played together as children, and the stories they heard and were inspired by. His initiative to begin Abhinav Bharat was not a whimsical spur-of-the-moment decision. He, and his countless young comrades, had done so with the full knowledge that ‘those who would have life must lose it’ and hence it was better to lose it for one’s motherland. He saw the silver lining in the dark clouds that hovered over them. In just a few years of its establishment, so much had happened to Abhinav Bharat and its members; his entire family was in prison. This was cause for cheer, according to Vinayak. It was their action that spurred and roused the country—it had inspired them to armed struggle; to ‘cast off the beggar’s bowl and put Her hand on the hilt of Her sword’. Now, his resolve would be put to test. All those innumerable speeches, lectures, writings, and oaths would have to pass the trial of fire. Were those empty words that fell flat in the wake of exacting times or would these hard times harden them further is what needed to be seen. Vinayak asserted that ‘it was on thy altar that I sacrificed my health and my wealth. Neither the longing looks of a young wife vainly waiting for my return nor the peals of laughter of dear children, nor the helplessness of a sister-in-law stranded and left to starve could hold me back at the call of Thy Trumpet!’ His two brothers had also sacrificed all they had and this was only because they believed the cause to be true and holy. Their family tree might terminate with them, but how would that matter when they had fulfilled their duties for their motherland? Vinayak instilled courage and faith in his Vahini, and as the wife and sister-in-law of daring patriots, she had the double duty to remain resolute despite the tough tidings. He conveyed his love to his wife and asked her to remain steadfast. 37
The British government was awaiting the papers related to Vinayak’s case to arrive from India. The documents finally arrived in mid-April 1910. Some of Vinayak’s comrades at India House who were rounded up in London and India had turned government approvers. The twenty-five-year-old Maratha and engineer from Gwalior state, Harishchandra Krishnarao Koregaonkar, testified that he had gone to London in May 1906 to study engineering and was there for about three years. He had not known Vinayak earlier and came to know of him only in November 1906. He had visited India House during the meeting held in honour of Guru Gobind Singh’s birth anniversary and went to stay there for a month in April 1907. Gyanchand Verma and Madan Lal Dhingra were also residents at the time. Koregaonkar claimed to have left India House after the Curzon Wyllie murder as he felt it was too dangerous to remain. He spoke about the discussions that Vinayak had with others on armed struggle as a means to attain independence. He recounted a talk held in early 1908 which was titled ‘Are we really disarmed?’ Vinayak gave a lecture in which he articulated that India was actually not disarmed and that there were plenty of arms in the native states that constituted nearly a third of the country. One needed to find innovative ways and means to tap into this cache and procure them for the freedom struggle movement.
Another meeting on ‘The future constitution of India’ was also headed and lectured by Vinayak. There were deliberations on whether free India would be a republic or a constitutional monarchy. Vinayak had suggested that there should be an Upper House where native princes were to be members, and a Lower House of elected members. This was quite akin to the British Parliament. In his speech, Vinayak suggested that the native prince who offered the maximum assistance in the freedom struggle would be appointed monarch. All the native states would be forced to give constitutional guarantees to their subjects. The national language of liberated India would be Hindi.
Koregaonkar also spoke about a meeting on ‘The life of Mazzini’ in which Aiyar delivered a lecture, one on Shivaji during Shivaji Jayanthi and a Caxton Hall meeting in December 1908 in honour of Guru Gobind Singh. In the last meeting, Vinayak had made a fiery speech and held a flag that said ‘Deg, Teg, Fateh’, explaining the meaning of the three words—faith combined with the sword leads to victory, independence in this case. Koregaonkar also spoke about the May 1908 gathering to felicitate the martyrs of 1857 where Vinayak and Aiyar offered rich tributes to the memories of Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, Maulvi Ahmed Shah, Kunwar Singh, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Nana Saheb and others. He himself had sung the opening song Vande Mataram at that meeting. The ‘O! Martyrs!’ pamphlet was distributed here. He admitted to donating £50–60 to the cause of the Free India Society, although he was not told in deta
il about its activity and agenda. Vinayak had spoken to him about his vision of smuggling arms into India after procuring them from Belgium, America, Switzerland and Egypt, to have military training and also learn how to manufacture arms and explosives. Govind Amin, Chaturbhuj Amin’s brother, had brought some Browning pistols and one of these was used by Dhingra in his practice sessions at Tottenham Court Shooting Range. The pamphlets were usually sent to Germany or New York from where they were sent to India to avoid suspicion. Koregaonkar testified that Vinayak’s society was widespread with branches in Egypt, Paris, Hamburg, New York, Switzerland, Vancouver and other places.
Koregaonkar and Dhingra were good friends; in fact, they had sailed to England in the same steamer. Even on the day of Curzon Wyllie’s murder, Dhingra had visited Koregaonkar’s house at Russell Square. He did not in the least appear excited or unusual. By then, Koregaonkar had received a message from Vinayak and Aiyar that he too must accompany Dhingra to shadow him and complete the task in case the latter failed. On that night when Curzon Wyllie entered the room, it was Koregaonkar who alerted Dhingra about his victim’s arrival. When Dhingra seemed to dither, Koregaonkar sternly urged him, ‘Aa jao na, kya karte ho ?’ (Well, come on! What are you doing?) 38 Koregaonkar also revealed in his testimony that he had later learnt that Dhingra had armed himself with additional revolvers and weapons to shoot indiscriminately at Englishmen and women at the party, and also murder Sir William Lee Warner if he were present. After the murder, Koregaonkar met Dhingra in jail. Vinayak wanted Koregaonkar to carry a message to be handed over in Bombay, copies of his book The Indian War of Independence of 1857 to Thatte, along with addresses of likely purchasers in Pondicherry.
Koregaonkar arrived in Bombay on 18 August 1909 by the S.S. Austria and thereafter proceeded to Gwalior. He was rounded up by the DCI in Bombay in December 1909. He identified various players at India House and also Vinayak’s handwriting as he had translated half of the 1857 book from Marathi to English. He spoke of Vinayak leaving India House in the beginning of 1909 after differences with a man called Hyder Raiza. 39
Next, it was Chanjeri Rama Rao’s turn to testify against Vinayak. The thirty-five-year-old Deshastha Brahmin had moved to England in August 1909 to study sanitary science and was earlier the plague inspector in the Rangoon Municipality. He went to England to pass his examinations that were to be held on 3 and 4 December 1909. He met Vinayak through a friend at 11 Upper Addison Gardens. Thereafter, he attended a few meetings of the Free India Society and took the oath, which he claimed Vinayak had coerced him into since he had attended one of their meetings. He left England in the first week of January for Paris, where he stayed with Tirumala Acharya and Govind Amin, the India House chef’s brother. He also carried Aiyar’s letter for Tirumala Acharya. In Paris, he met Vinayak at Madame Cama’s residence. When he demurred, Madame Cama and Vinayak asked him to carry ten copies of his book The Indian War of Independence of 1857 and one revolver. The books were packed in a box with a false bottom. Rao was asked to collect these from Sardar Rana’s house before leaving for India. Govind Amin told him then that the box contained a pistol with fifty cartridges, which he had to hand over to Vinayak or Aiyar when they came to India.
He also testified that he went around Paris with Govind Amin, looking for a house where bombs could be manufactured. Vinayak had told him that he too must know the process of making bombs and that there were people expected from London to teach them this. He had also sold him a photograph of Dhingra for 1 shilling and urged him that every member of the Free India Society must have the image of this martyr with them. On 10 January 1910, when he was about to board his train, he claimed that Vinayak came running to the station and handed over the ‘Bomb Manual’ too to be carried ‘next to my skin’. He had also carried a few pamphlets in his boots. One of them, titled ‘Bande Mataram’, was purportedly written by Vinayak. ‘Terrorize the officials, English and Indian, and the collapse of the whole machinery of oppression is not very far. The persistent execution of the policy that has been so gloriously inaugurated by Khoodiram Bose, Kanailal Dutt and other martyrs will soon cripple the British Government in India. This campaign of separate assassinations is the best conceivable method of paralyzing the bureaucracy and of arousing the people. The initial stage of the revolution is marked by the policy of separate assassinations.’ The copy of The Indian War of Independence of 1857 that Chanjeri Rama Rao carried had the publisher’s circular that was ‘so worded as to be fully intelligible only to those who knew more than the ordinary casual reader’ and seemed to ‘point to the existence of some widespread secret society of young men’. 40 As an illustration, a passage quoted was: ‘Send an international postal order to any trustworthy young friend of yours residing in or going to England or France. We are known to all young men in both countries . . . Do not by any means send this money to any old friend.’ 41
Rao was arrested on his arrival in Bombay, his belongings searched, and the false bottom discovered. He was sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment for offences under the Arms Act, and was undergoing the same while testifying against Vinayak. 42 Aiyar’s biography mentions that it was not Vinayak but Aiyar who had prevailed upon Chanjeri Rao to carry the pistol and books, and it was severe police torture that broke Rao and made him falsely testify in accordance with police guidelines. The British government wanted to somehow ‘establish that it was Savarkar who had sent the revolver that was used to shoot Jackson in Nasik. But they had no evidence. It was here that Rama Rao came in handy . . . for his atrocious lie and betrayal, Rama Rao got pardoned and got a job in the Indian Police Department.’ 43 Whatever be the truth behind this aspersion, it was certain that the Indian government had sent some irrefutable evidence as part of their documentation to the London court that was trying Vinayak.
The trial with these documents recommenced on 23 April 1910. Sir Rufus Isaacs, 44 the then solicitor general, defended the Crown on the charges slapped on Vinayak, along with Mr Bodkin and Mr Rowlatt. Mr K.C. Powell and Mr J.M. Parikh appeared for Vinayak. Depositions of several people were recorded. James Adolphus Guider, the deputy inspector general of the Criminal Investigation Department in Nashik, was in charge of the investigation into this case right from the beginning. He testified that Vinayak and Babarao were guilty of establishing a secret society, whose main aim was the subversion of British government in India. 45 Guider mentioned that between 1 January 1906 and 28 May 1906 Vinayak made five speeches—four in Nashik and one in Poona. The common theme was an inflammatory call to cast off the foreign yoke through armed struggle by invoking heroes such as Shivaji, Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, Mazzini and others. Jaffar Ali, a Nashik police inspector, testified that Vinayak, in a speech at Nashik, had said: ‘Though we were made armless, still we require arms . . . When we have determined to overthrow the Government we want weapons . . . Let us fight with weapons. It means that we must preserve our religion.’ 46 Referencing all the letters written by Vinayak to his brother that were seized from their house in Nashik, the prosecution stated that all of them began with the salutations: ‘May the Goddess of Independence be pleased’ [Swatantrya Lakshmi ki Jay ]! This, they claimed, was a clear indication that Vinayak sought independence for India from British rule.
At the next hearing on 30 April 1910, much to Vinayak’s surprise, depositions of his hitherto trusted associates—Chaturbhuj Amin and Koregaonkar—were recorded. In Vinayak’s defence and of the speeches of the Mitra Mela, his counsel Powell said:
The depositions contain a reference to the Mitra Mela, which has been described as a secret society formed for the purpose of subverting the Government. But in truth it was founded for the purpose of celebrating the festivals of four gods, and the members advocate devotion to the religion of their own country. The speeches are quite Oriental in their character and English people would regard them as sheer nonsense. There is no more harm in them than there is in the election songs, which some school children are taught to sing, and no more importance shou
ld be attached to them than to the gathering of people who loudly sing ‘Scots wha hae’ [sic] and allude to ‘Edward’s chains and slavery’. Savarkar most strenuously denies the suggestion that he had anything to do with the dispatch to India of some pistols, one of which was sold to a youth or man [Kanhere] who used it in a nefarious way. 47
The hearings continued on 7 May 1910 before de Rutzen, the Bow Street magistrate. But despite all the efforts of the revolutionaries and the counsel, Magistrate de Rutzen ruled on 12 May 1910 that Vinayak must be sent to India and stand trial there.
Meanwhile, several leaders tried to create a public opinion in Vinayak’s favour. In a letter to the editor of the London Daily News , Bipin Chandra Pal wrote:
There is no justification to bring up speeches made in times of comparative peace and quiet and make them the subject of criminal prosecutions, after three, four, or five years, when owing to the altered state of things, they might reasonably be regarded as likely to create disorder. The delay makes it practically impossible for the accused to prove the inaccuracies of the police report of his speeches, unless he had published at the time, an authorized version of it himself. 48
Vinayak’s lawyers appealed against this decision at the High Court of Justice, King’s Bench Division. Comprising three judges, the Bench Division began its proceedings at Brixton prison. The justices on the bench were the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone, Justice William Pickford and Justice Bernard John Seymour Coleridge. Quite interestingly, and perhaps ironically, Lord Alverstone too in his youth was part of a secret society—the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. Proceedings began on 25 May 1910 with the defence motioning for a writ of habeas corpus, to determine the legitimacy of Vinayak’s imprisonment. His lawyers argued that the speeches for which Vinayak had been imprisoned were poorly translated. They contained no seditious tenor and merely supported the swadeshi movement, which was no offence in the Indian penal provisions. If they had indeed been seditious, why had the Government of India not acted earlier or arrested him right there when he was in the country, they argued. Given the frivolous nature of the charges, they contended that Vinayak must be released forthwith. If the literature he wrote and disseminated whilst in England were construed as seditious, there was no case of extradition to India, and that Vinayak would have to face trial in England itself.
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