Lokmanya Tilak- the First National Leader

by Gayatri Pagdi

  Tilak felt a kinship with the Labour Party in England. In 1907, he had made the bold move of inviting Keir Hardy, leader of the British Labour Party to Poona. Keir Hardy was born in a poor family from Scotland. He had worked as a labourer in the coalmines. However, through sheer hard work, he had risen in politics before being elected to the British Parliament. Besides being president of the independent Labour Party, he was editor of the newspaper, Labour Leader. He had come to India with the intention of studying the situation. Tilak gave a warm reception to Keir Hardy and on behalf of the Sarvajanik Sabha, presented him a manpatra, the plaque of respect. The manpatra stated that the Indians had come to realise that sacrifice and self-reliance alone could enable them to shape their future and for which they could no longer depend on the British Liberal Party.

  In addition, Keir Hardy was encouraged “to understand the just aspirations of the Indian people and to convince the voters in England that these just aspirations must be fulfilled”. Hardy, in his reply to the manpatra, said, “I was already sympathetic to India. My sympathies are now hundred times more so than what they were earlier. More than ninety-nine per cent of the people in England are utterly ignorant of the reality in India. I shall, in the conference of my party, report what I have seen here, and communicate your aspirations to my colleagues.”

  Tilak carried this thread forward when he went to England in 1918 and 1919. He met a number of members of the Labour Party, apprised them of the situation in India, and through persuasive arguments managed to convince them of India’s just demand for self-government. Benspur, an influential leader of the party, had said, “Convey to the people of India that, though the political situation today looks unfavourable, it is likely to improve and there is hope for the future.” George Lansbury, editor of Daily Herald, wrote: “Your dedication is indeed unique. We, the members of the editorial board of Daily Herald, and our party would make an earnest effort to champion the cause of India.”

  Tilak was invited to give lectures at many places in England. Wherever he went, he informed the people of his ideological stand in politics. He addressed the National Liberal Club, the Positivist Club, the India Society, the Fabian Society and other institutions. His speeches were informative, his language was restrained, and his analysis of the political situation, logical. After one of his speeches, a political leader in England remarked, “How can we call him a radical? He is a liberal.”

  Tilak’s book, The Arctic Home of the Vedas, was very favourably received everwhere. Dr. F. W. Warren, the president of Boston University and the author of Paradise Found, writes in the Open Court Magazine, Chicago, for September 1905:

  In the judgment of the present writer the array of the evidences set forth is far more conclusive than any ever attempted by an Indo-Iranian Scholar in the interest of any earlier hypothesis. Absolute candor and respect for the strictest methods of historical and scientific investigation characterise the discussion throughout. This results in part no doubt from the fact that the author’s own attitude of mind was at the outset highly skeptical. He says, “I did not start with any preconceived notion in favour of the Arctic theory; nay, I regarded it as highly improbable at first; but the accumulating evidence in its support eventually forced me to accept it.” It is hard to see how any other candid mind can master the proof produced without being mastered by it in turn. Twenty years ago, in preparing my work on the broader problem of the cradle land of the whole human race, I went through all the Vedic and Avestic texts so far as existing translations would then permit, reaching at the end the same conclusion that Mr. Tilak has now reached. Incidentally, in my argument a new light was thrown upon various points in the mythical geography and cosmography of the ancient Iranians—light which the foremost Iranist of his time, Professor Spiegel, generously acknowledged. Incidentally, I also arrived at a new interpretation of the Vedic myth of the captive waters, and of other Vedic myths. Especially gratifying, therefore, is it to me to find in Mr. Tilak a man in no degree dependent on translations, yet arriving not only at my main conclusion, but also at a number of minor ones of which I had never made public mention. I desire publicly to thank this far-off fellow-worker for the generosity of his frequent references to my pioneer work in the common field, and for the solidity and charm of his own, in certain respects, most authoritative contribution. Whoever will master this new work, and that of the late Mr. John O’ Neill on The Night of the Gods (author who enquired into cosmic and cosmogonic mythology and symbolism), will not be likely ever again to ask, “Where was the earliest home of the Aryans?”

  The English Citizen’s Series by Macmillan in 1883 writes on Tilak: “The British community has been compelled to accept the change . . . Men who speak better English than most Englishmen, who read Mill and Comte, Max Muller and Maine, who . . . edit newspapers in English and correspond on equal terms with the scholars of Europe, these can no longer be treated as an inferior breed.” Hilda Howsin, a Red Cross nurse born in Yorkshire, and an admirer of Tilak, owes her book The significance of Indian Nationalism to Tilak whose blessings she had received before writing it. “An Englishman” who refused to give his real name, wrote in the book Indian Nationalism that he penned with K. M. Panniker in 1919 about Tilak’s idea of the Shivaji celebrations:

  Not with bated breath do the peoples of India now speak to their compatriots in the Empire. They are no longer petitioners to a Government, they are applicants to their peers. The Hindu peoples of the south under their heroic leader, Shivaji, threw off the alien yoke, and established the great Mahratta dominion. Shivaji, often described as little better than a bandit, was the first to recognise that India and Hinduism are related organically as body and soul. This makes him the forerunner of Tilak’s new Nationalism—a fact which is commemorated and made perennially potent by the all-India celebration of Shivaji Day. Even the most biased and superficial student of the Mahratta achievement can scarcely fail to recognise that the unity of India was its very soul, its light and innermost conservatism in religion, however, does not always connote conservatism in politics.

  The writer also refers to the writings of Anatole France, the French poet, novelist and philosopher in the book. France had said, “In all that concerns this world I am a revolutionary. But where the next world is concerned I am a conservative, nay, a reactionary.”

  The writer says that he has seen the same thing in India where some of India’s most revolutionary politicians have been the most conservative in religion. The fact, he feels, would surprise English observers but it has a simple explanation. There are four things that inspire it—a foreign government, the absence of political freedom, potent foreign agencies that denationalise and a conservative revival of a national religious tradition. In such a situation, the more intense the conservatism of a patriot’s revived religion, the stronger will be his reaction against foreign things in politics.

  The writer also has a word of praise for the nationalists. “Their marked intellectual power,” he writes, “their wholehearted devotion to the Indian Motherland, soon made them the most potent party from the point of view of the Government, the most formidable party in Indian public life.” The leader of this new party, the father of this new nationalism, was none other than Tilak. The writer describes him as a man whose orthodoxy was unimpeachable and whose patriotism was beyond question. Tilak’s personality, according to him, was a symbol of his movement and his public career an epitome of it.

  The New Party had become a menace to the British government. The reforms of 1909 were a direct result of aggressive Nationalism. Tilak differed with the moderates who believed that India could become politically adult slowly and needed the British rule for it. To them Tilak said, “We differ, and cannot co-operate. Let us part as friends.”

  Tilak himself believed that India was fit for immediate self-government. He and his likeminded friends asked for Swa-Raj, complete self-government and they wanted it at once. Their nationalism was an integral nationalism.

  The book, full
of admiration for Tilak, explains his idea of swaraj as against the demand of the moderates to have a greater share in the administration. The writer says, “Swaraj at once, is (Tilak’s) policy. After all, what did a greater share in the administration of the country mean? If it meant nothing but a High Court Judge here, a Member of the Council there, or even if it meant more elected members in the Legislature or a Civil Service entirely Indian, then, from Tilak’s point of view, the achieving or granting of it would not alter, largely or in any vital way, the existing situation. As long as the Government of India was not entirely responsible to the people of India, and to them alone, as long as it was not uniquely and wholly determined by the mind of India to the needs of India, the essentials of the harmful status quo, the essentials that made it harmful, would continue.”

  The nationalists did not suppose that the government of India would spontaneously transfer to them its powers, rights, and duties. They foresaw that some kind of compulsion would be necessary. The book acknowledges that the nationalists were fighters, not petitioners. Their weapons were swadeshi and the boycott of everything from the courts to the British goods. This sort of passive resistance would make administration impossible for the government. Boycott would strike at the very roots of the government’s prestige.

  Tilak had supported A. O. Hume’s propaganda methods right from the beginning and the commissioner of the central division, Mr. Logan, in 1897 had admitted that “Tilak had flooded the country with proclamations against the land revenue and urging resistance to any attempt to collect it” and that there was a partial mutiny amongst the police and the village officers supported Tilak’s stand wholeheartedly. The pen-portrait also shows how Tilak trained his lieutenants to organise the masses. Through his writings and speeches he has propagated that the Congress was intended to serve the interests of the masses and not only of the classes. After the Bengal partition he became the leader of the popular will. Tilak knew best the minds of the rulers. He knew well that they could fight under the congress leadership alone, which was well acknowledged by the government as an instrument of constitutional agitation. Logan’s writings reflect this clearly.

  The British police in India knew that they would, on certain grounds regarding Tilak, fail completely. Like his uprightness, for instance. The reports of Mr. Harry Brewer, Asst. IGP, CID, Poona, which were submitted to the government on 31 July 1902, and which later appear in the government of Maharashtra files post-independence, are an evidence of this. Brewer gave his opinion regarding the charges against Tilak in the Tai Maharaj case. He clearly states that the charge of forgery against Tilak would not stand and the “Government should assume an attitude of neutrality”.

  Jabez T. Sunderland, an American who was aware of the work that Tilak had done during the horrifying famine, was critical of the British who, in the West, tried hard to play down the horrific situation. Sunterland in the Atlantic Monthly of October 1908 wrote on the new nationalist movement in India that was spearheaded by Tilak. He described the “real India” that he saw. He said,

  It is not the India which the traveler sees, following the usual routes of travel, stopping at the leading hotels conducted after the manner of London or Paris, and mingling with the English lords of the country. It is not the India, which the British “point to with pride”, and tell us about in their books of description and their official reports. This is India from the inside, the India of the people, of the men, women, and children, who were born there and die there, who bear the burdens and pay the taxes, and support the costly government carried on by foreigners, and do the starving when the famines come. What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian people? Said John Bright, “If a country be found possessing a most fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production, and, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme destitution and suffering, the chances are there is some fundamental error in the government of that country.” It is not strange that many Englishmen are waking up to the fact that such treatment of such a people, of any people, is tyranny; it is a violation of those ideals of freedom and justice which have been England’s greatest glory. It is also shortsighted as regards Britain’s own interests. It is the kind of policy, which cost her, her American Colonies, and later came near costing her Canada. If persisted in, it may cost her India.

  Sunderland further said,

  Perhaps there is nothing so dangerous, or so evil in its effects, as irresponsible power. That is what Great Britain exercises in connection with India—absolute power, with no one to call her to account. I do not think any nation is able to endure such an ordeal better than Britain, but it is an ordeal to which neither rulers of nations nor private men should ever be subjected; the risks are too great. England avoids it in connection with her own rulers by making them strictly responsible to the English people. Canada avoids it in connection with hers by making them responsible to the Canadian people. Every free nation safeguards alike its people and its rulers by making its rulers in everything answerable to those whom they govern. Here is the anomaly of the British rule of India. Britain through her Indian government rules India, but she does not acknowledge responsibility in any degree whatever to the Indian people . . . What is the result? Are the interests and the rights of India protected? Is it possible for the rights of any people to be protected without self-rule? I invite my readers to go with me to India and see. What we find will go far toward furnishing us a key to the meaning of the present Indian Nationalist Movement.

  Supporting the sentiment of the nationalists, Sunderland said, “It would not be difficult to form an Indian Parliament to-day, composed of men as able and of as high character as those that constitute the fine Parliament of Japan, or as those that will be certain to constitute the not less able national Parliament of China when the new constitutional government of that nation comes into operation. This is only another way of saying that among the leaders in the various states and provinces of India there is abundance of material to form an Indian National Parliament not inferior in intellectual ability or in moral worth to the parliaments of the Western world.”

  Wrote M. H. Hyndman in his book, The Emancipation of India, in 1911:

  The demand for Swaraj is more persistent than before. It is just the same in the Mahratta country. There, though serious economic and social causes are at work to account for permanent unrest, it was the arrest and condemnation of Bal Gungader Tilak, for an article dealing with the history of the Mahratta race and drawing encouragement for the future from the records of their past, which stirred agitation throughout the province of Bombay, and led to the extraordinary action of the Bombay Municipality in actually closing the markets of that great city for eight days in order to show disapproval on the part of the commercial classes the chief supporters of our rule with the policy of the Government. Here, again, not only in Bombay and in Poona, but throughout the whole of the villages, the same view was taken of the trial and judgment. Tilak today in his prison is still a leader, not only of the Mahrattas, but of the whole of Western India. The agricultural population may be poor and ignorant and superstitious; but if we have failed, after 150 years of victory in the field and “successful” administration in the bureau, to convince them that our presence and leadership are preferable to the counsels of men of their own race and faith, then what probability is there that we shall be able to deal any better with this growing dissatisfaction in the near future? If also Tilak was compelled to go to the expense of an appeal to the Privy Council in London, in order to argue out his plea of mistranslation and misdirection with reference to an article written in a language wholly unknown to the Court called upon to adjudicate, it can scarcely be regarded as democratic justice that Savarkar should have been packed off to India for trial, though his alleged offence was committed, and he himself was arrested, in Great Britain. Faith in British equity has been completely shaken by these proceedings.

  J. S. Mill, in his History of India condemned what he termed
as “English despotism” which he believed to be the cause of Indian crimes. He said, “The Penal Law set up by the English in India is defective to a degree that never was surpassed, and very rarely has ever been equalled.”

  The British Committee for the Congress asked in support of Tilak’s demands, “How long will it be before the quickened conscience of England’s Christian people will heed the petition that swells up from fettered India and apply to Briton’s greatest Colony the doctrines of human brotherhood that have given to the Anglo-Saxon race the prestige that it enjoys?”

  Tilak was impressed by the Russian Revolution, and expressed his admiration for Lenin.31 He hailed the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, led by Lenin, and commended the goals of socialism. Lenin had condemned Tilak’s arrest in 1908. “There is no end to the violence and plunder which goes under the name of the British system of the government in India,” Lenin said. Commenting on Tilak’s conviction, Lenin said, “But the popular India is beginning to stand up in defence of her writers and political leaders. The infamous sentence pronounced by the British jackals on the Indian democrat Tilak—he was sentenced to a long term of exile. A question in the British House of Commons the other day revealed that the Indian jurors had declared for the acquittal and that the verdict had been passed by the vote of British jurors! This reprisal against the democrat by the lackeys of the moneybags evoked street demonstrations and a strike in Bombay.” When Indian revolutionaries sent a congratulatory message to Lenin on the occasion of the establishment of the socialist state Lenin reciprocated their feelings by saying that the “toiling masses of Russia follow the awakening of the Indian worker and peasant with unabating attention”. In one of the halls of Central Lenin Museum in Moscow lies a wooden stick whose handle and tip are made of ivory. It is said that it was presented to him on 23 November 1918 by guests from India. What is important is that Lenin preserved it. Lenin’s writings are found in a government publication, V. I. Lenin on Britain, and in it appear names of Tilak and M. N. Roy.32 During the swadeshi and Boycott movement Tilak is reported to have interviewed the Russian consul ostensibly to obtain letters of introduction to firms in Russia with a view to purchasing goods, machinery, etc., in furtherance of the swadeshi movement. The Bulletin of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldier’s Delegates at Petrograd was supportive of Tilak’s struggle too, asking the British government, “What about the historic injustices committed by yourselves, and your violent oppression of Ireland, India, Egypt, and the innumerable peoples inhabiting all the continents of the world? If you are so anxious for justice that you are prepared in its name to send millions of people to the grave, then, gentlemen, begin with yourselves.”