Lokmanya Tilak Read online

  Tilak was also fond of science and scientific experiments and it is said that he had actually brought the heart and brain of an ox to his room in the town and dissected them. This appears remarkable in view of the orthodoxy in which he had been brought up. He passed his B.A. in 1876 in the first class with mathematics, pure and applied, as his optional subjects. Besides these, he had also to study English, Sanskrit, Euclid and Statics as compulsory subjects. After taking his B.A. he studied for his LL.B. degree, which he obtained in 1879. It was at this time that he seems to have come into very close contact and formed a very close friendship with a young man, who was of the same age but who entered the Deccan College three years later than he. This young man was Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and in many respects he was a kindred soul. Deeply interested in ideas, with a transparent sincerity, young Agarkar attracted Tilak with whom he enjoyed “many a bout of thought entangled descant.” For a number of years after he met Agarkar, Tilak’s life and activities could not be separated from those of Agarkar and a study of their common environment, their reactions to it and their discussions gives an idea of the main movement of the mind of the 19th century Maharashtra. Their different reactions to problems of their days were mainly due to different influences in childhood and also to temperamental differences.

  Agarkar was born in the same year as Tilak, but had to fight ceaselessly with poverty and its attendant misfortune. He was born in a middle-class family, which had once seen better days but had now become impoverished. His father does not seem to have exerted himself to earn a living, with the result that Agarkar was left to fend for himself at a very early age. He became a clerk at 13 and later a compounder. On one occasion, he covered most of the distance of 150 miles on foot from Karhad to Ratnagiri, hoping that a rich relative would help him in his education. With his insatiable thirst for knowledge, he went from Poona to his maternal uncle Bhagwat at Amraotì and at last succeeded in passing his matriculation and entered the Deccan College, three years after Tilak joined it. At college, too, he had to struggle constantly with financial difficulties and it is said that almost throughout his college life he had but one shirt. His sensitive and impressionable mind naturally dwelt on an unjust social order that made a person suffer for no fault of his and tried to crush him ruthlessly under the dead weight of custom and tradition. As a boy, there was no religious, or for that matter, any kind of influence on him and he grew fiercely independent and critical of the world around him.

  A part from these differences in the status of their families, there were temperamental differences between Agarkar and Tilak. Agarkar was fond of imaginative literature, Shelley and Shakespeare being his favourites. For his subjects he chose history and moral philosophy, which satisfied his speculative genius. Tilak, cast in a more matter-of-fact mould, loved mathematics, the intricacies of Sanskrit grammar and sciences like physics. Agarkar’s mind, free from any influence of traditional religion or dogma, was soon engrossed in the philosophical literature of the West and quickly absorbed the ideas of Mill and Spencer. Tilak, too, did not escape this influence but he appeared at this time to suspend his judgment with regard to philosophical questions and was inclined to trust to the judgment of Agarkar.

  Before we consider the intellectual influences on Tilak and Agarkar, it is necessary to see how their sensitive minds reacted to their surroundings. To them books, though important, were not the only source of inspiration. The atmosphere of a city like Poona, which had witnessed the fall of the Maratha power hardly half a century before, seethed with discussion about social and political problems. Poona was then a place, where side by side with the most advanced westernised classes, there also dwelt the most orthodox. There were also the relics of feudal aristocracy who looked back nostalgically to their past glory, inwardly hoping that the old times would return once more. The last half century had been a period of cataclysmic changes. The external stimuli seemed to be changing so very rapidly that the average man found it difficult to respond to them. Even minds made of sterner stuff were unhinged and looked about bewildered. The first reaction was a blind and uncritical acceptance of western standards and western ideas. There developed a spirit of latitudinarianism and a general loss of values and moral chaos to which all the writers of the day make a reference. This was not so much the result of a study of western thinkers, as the instinctive reaction of uncritical minds brought suddenly into contact with a civilisation that was entirely different and in many respects superior. It was a period of transition in which besides schools and colleges, many other agencies of education worked side by side. There were, for example, the foreign Christian missionaries. They were selfless workers. Many of them were great scholars, and whatever one might think of their proselytizing activities, their spirit of perseverance could not but evoke admiration. The social equality of Christianity and the openness with which the missionaries talked and mixed with the high and the low had a profound effect on Hindu society. Their attacks on polytheism and caste inequalities set up a social ferment and made the thinking section of the generation search their hearts.

  The second agency of education, the British government, looked at education strictly from the point of view of the administrative needs of British India. It is true that the originators of English education were sincere liberals, who had foreseen the time when an Indian generation awakened by British ideas of justice, equality and freedom would themselves ask for these rights. These ideas would have progressed unchecked but for the disaster of 1857. The mistake made by the British statesmen was to concentrate too much of their attention on the educated minority and laying too cruel an emphasis on the rule of the law. The masses were being increasingly impoverished and periodical famines were a regular feature of the British period in the 19th century. The disgruntled relics of feudal aristocracy had combined in a desperate effort in 1857 and after their defeat the British rigorously followed a policy of divide and rule. Though in the Proclamation of 1858 an assurance was given that no distinction would be made on grounds of race, caste or creed, in actual practice, Indians were excluded from all the superior posts of administration. The impoverished peasants had revolted at one or two places, in the Deccan, for instance, against the growing burden placed on them; but generally even that strength had gone out of them. “In this surrounding darkness of blight and frustration, where avenues of politics, education, the services were closed to the common man, the only ray of light, the only point of contact, the only straw to which the average Indian clung with the desperation of a drowning man were caste and communal loyalty. Here was something, that he knew and understood, something, too, which offered contact and cohesion in a disintegrating world. The caste, at least, was not suspect in the eyes of the Government. They on the contrary encouraged caste feelings. What wonder if the people, baffled and frightened, got enmeshed in a net of caste and sub-caste.”5

  Poona, with the rest of Maharashtra, was little affected by the Mutiny; but the peasantry and the educated people could not but feel its effects. The city had become a strange assortment of people, throwing up a number of eccentrics. It was at this time that some of the most enlightened and level-headed Indians brought new vitality into the life of the people. The third and the most potent agency of education in 19th century India was the influence of progressive Indians; and Poona was particularly fortunate in having the master mind of the century, Mahadev Govind Ranade. In 1871, Ranade was transferred to Poona on being appointed to a permanent post in the judicial service and for the next quarter of a century he was the guiding spirit of Maharashtra. He applied himself wholeheartedly to the numerous tasks of reconstruction. His effort was mainly educative and in a series of lectures on public finance and religious and cultural topics he created an enthusiasm for economic and industrial progress, for Indian-made goods and also for Maratha history and literature. This educational effort of Ranade must have made a profound impression on the serious-minded college students of the day.

  The fi
rst thing that impressed the “educated natives” of India about the new civilization with which they came into contact was institutional life. The very first manifestation of the Indian Renaissance of the 19th century was therefore to be seen in a number of institutions that sprang up all over the country. In 1848 the students of Elphinstone College, under the inspiration of Dadabhai Naoroji had started the “Jnanprasarak Sabha” and it was this institution and its work that is said to have inspired Ranade. In 1852 Dadabhai and Jagannath Shankarshet started the Bombay Association, which sent a petition to the Imperial Parliament and demanded an enlightened system of government for British Indian subjects. In Bengal, the British Indian Association was started in 1851 and about the same time was born The Madras Native Association. In Poona, the Sirdars, remnants of the feudal nobility, started the Deccan Association. Thus the liberal policy of the first generation of British administrators bore fruit and in almost all the provincial and important towns, constitutional agitation was started and “the era of cart-loads of petitions and prayers was inaugurated”. As could have been expected, this movement was confined to a small class of the educated elite.

  On coming to Poona, one of the first public activities of Ranade was to put life into the Sarvajanik Sabha, which was established in Poona in 1870. Its object, at first, was the modest one of setting right the administrative affairs of the temple of Parwati in Poona, built by the Peshwas. In Ranade’s hands the activities of the Sabha were expanded to such an extent that it became a political organisation par excellence and a model for other provincial associations. Tilak and Agarkar must have watched the activities of the Sabha very closely. Tilak took a very prominent part in the Sabha after his graduation and, later in 1896, became its secretary by capturing its management.

  The activities of the Sabha are of more than ordinary interest. With a man like Ranade at the helm, the Sabha did pioneering work in many fields, particularly in an investigation of agrarian problems during the Deccan riots of 1875. In 1872 Ranade delivered a lecture on Indian trade and commercial enterprise. He expatiated on the drain of Indian capital and resources under the British rule a thesis that Dadabhai Naoroji maintained with a wealth of statistics. Ranade pointed out that of the national income of India more than one-third was taken away by the British in some form or other. India exported its raw material but the imports in the form of finished goods were considerably less in value. India was not self-governing politically and there was no capital to develop industries in India. There was again the tendency shown by Indians to buy foreign goods, which was fatal to indigenous or Swadeshi goods. Ranade attributed the cause of India’s poverty to foreign exploitation; but he was no pessimist. He was equally critical of the waste of gold and silver which was “buried” in the form of ornaments. According to him the impoverishment of India was due to both foreign domination and to the ignorance of the people. Referring to the Franco-German war Ranade held up the example of France and exhorted the people to be more economical and utilize their savings for the growth of commercial enterprise.

  This lecture, it is said, inspired one of the founders of the Sarvajanik Sabha, Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi (1828-80), to take a vow to use only Indian-made cloth. He became a trusted lieutenant of Ranade and so great were his zeal and industry that he came to be known as the Uncle of the People - Sarvajanik Kaka. He started shops at different places for the propagation of Swadeshi goods and started the first company for the sale of Swadeshi goods.

  In 1872, when Henry Fawcett was elected to Parliament as a Liberal candidate, the Sarvajanik Sabha joined in congratulating him and in 1873 the Sabha undertook the work, the first of its kind in India, of surveying the economic condition of the Deccan districts.

  In 1873 Ranade made another speech in which he brought out the contrast between the growth of Indian trade after the advent of British power and the poverty of the Indian people. He pointed out that though India had abundant natural wealth, the people did little to exploit it. He referred to the double slavery of the people “first political where we are slaves of people living in a distant island and in worldly affairs we are slaves of their slaves”. He deplored the tendency of those who put forward the fallacious argument about the comparative happiness and security that the slave enjoys as he is looked after by his master.

  Ranade, therefore, was putting forward the same views as were advanced by Dadabhai,6 though the difference between him and Dadabhai was fundamental. Whereas Dadabhai emphasised the drain of wealth and blamed the English for being responsible for it, he saw no hope of capital being formed out of private savings, nor did he see much possibility of an Indian industry thriving under such circumstances. Ranade was inclined to shelve this question of the annual drain as being a political question and wished to concentrate on the growth of indigenous industry. To him Dadabhai’s views were those of an extremist who concentrated more on the political question. It was therefore a question of emphasis and the new generation led by Tilak and Agarkar were more inclined to favour Dadabhai as against Ranade.7

  In 1874, the Sabha sent a petition to Parliament demanding the right of representation to India in the British Parliament. In 1875 came the affair of the trial of the Ruler of Baroda, Mulharrao Gaekwar. The Maharaja was charged with an attempt to poison the British resident. The affair aroused very wide interest in Maharashtra. As the last vestiges of Maratha power, the people of Maharashtra looked at the State with pride. From the evidence of college contemporaries,8 all the students of the college took a keen interest in the case and vigorously discussed it. Tilak showed his vigorous and keen interest in these discussions. Everyone was particular that the Maharaja got a fair trial. The Sarvajanik Sabha, therefore, sent a petition to the government stating, “The Gaekwar kingdom, as being the oldest, richest and nearest, has always been regarded as having the greatest claim upon the affections of the people” and demanded a fair trial for him. Tilak must have followed closely the ideas of Dadabhai, who had just resigned the Dewanship of Baroda before the arrest of Mulharrao, and of Ranade who was mainly instrumental in sending the petition on behalf of the Sarvajanik Sabha. In the scheme of national renaissance envisaged by Ranade, all classes and interests had their part to play.9

  While these activities of Ranade elicited the admiration of all, there were other things which alienated him from certain sections of the public. In 1873 Ranade’s wife died and it was expected that as a champion of social reform Ranade would marry a widow when he took a second wife. When, however, in deference to the wishes of his aged father, Ranade married a girl of 13 he provoked a storm of protest from the reformist sections and was branded a coward by the orthodox sections, who cited this as one of the many instances to prove the impracticability of social reform. Another incident which drew Ranade into the welter of controversy was the arrival of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, in Poona. A section of social reformers, headed by Ranade, accorded a welcome to the Swami and decided to take him in procession through the city. The rabidly orthodox sections decided to thwart this move. Bitter recriminations followed, the police had to intervene, and the matter also went to the law court. This rabid antagonism was unfortunately a characteristic feature of Poona orthodoxy.

  In 1876, in the Deccan riots, the Sabha, under Ranade’s guidance, championed the cause of the agriculturists by collecting reliable information on which the Government was requested to act according to the requirements of the famine rules and the declared policy of the government based on these rules. This activity was looked upon by the official world as an interference in the official routine, and the agents of the Sabha, on many occasions, incurred the wrath of the government.

  “It was at this time,” says Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya,10 “that Lord Lytton inaugurated his reactionary rule which was characterised by the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, the Afghan War, the costly Indian Durbar (1877) and the sacrifice of cotton import duty (1877)”. In England too the Liberal Gladstone
was succeeded by the Imperialist Disraeli, who wanted to show the world the Imperial glory of Britain by celebrating the assumption of the tide of “Empress of India” by the Queen of England. The Sarvajanik Sabha utilised this opportunity by presenting an address to the Queen in which the demands of the Indians were put forward. The Queen was requested to start a new era by granting equal political and social status to India along with Britain. The Khaddar-clad Sarvajanik Kaka presented this address at the Durbar as the representative of the Sarvajanik Sabha and also made a speech to the august assembly. In this he stressed the importance of the representative character of the gathering and hoped that the occasion would lay the foundation of unity and signal a new age of national regeneration. “You are the great and illustrious people of this country. You are the united Parliament of India....” The idea of the Indian National Congress was thus born at this Durbar and as great minds agree, this dream of Sarvajanik Kaka was also shared by Surendranath Banerjee, who also attended the Durbar.11

  Thus while the educated and enlightened middle-class and aristocratic leaders were voicing India’s national aspirations in a typically western manner, the masses expressed themselves in riots like the Deccan riots, to which a reference has been made earlier. In these riots Vasudeo Balwant Phadke (1846-83), a clerk in the Military Accounts Department, tried to organise an armed revolt in Maharashtra. There were sporadic acts of violence and, as it usually happens in such cases, Phadke could not control the malcontents he had gathered and the effort came to an end. Phadke was arrested and tried on a charge of attempting to overthrow the British Raj. It was Sarvajanik Kaka, who showed the courage of accepting his brief, and as the result of his able advocacy Phadke escaped the death sentence and was instead sentenced to transportation for life. Four years later he died at Aden. Phadke’s attempt, though crude and untimely, created a sensation in Poona and his unflinching courage aroused admiration. Tilak, too, must have noted this insurrectionary attempt at overthrowing the government and its futility. Though of little importance in effect, it is important to remember that this was the only attempt after the mutiny of 1857 at organising an armed revolt against the British. The bureaucracy was alarmed and saw in it a plot of the Brahmins of Poona to regain what they had lost with the downfall of the Peshwas.