CHAPTER X

CHAPTER X

A MAKER OF FREE INDIA¹

LOKAMANYA TILAKA is the other great son of Maharashtra whose work for the independence of resurgent India is doubly significant in that what he made possible was vaster than what he actually did. Ranade worshipped Mother India by doing his utmost to bring about an all-round improvement of her children so that they might recover their self as a progressive nation. Tilak's whole-hearted devotion to the Mother expressed itself in his dauntless demand for her freedom. He believed that freedom was the basic condition of all progress. 'Swaraj is my birthright and I will have it' was the flaming utterance of his soul. His was among the spiritual forces that sustained the movement of liberation until its final victory.

'Tilak's achievement and personality put him among the first rank of historic and significant figures....He was one who built much rapidly out of little beginnings, a creator of great things out of an unworked material. The creations he left behind him were a new and strong and self-reliant national spirit, the reawakened political mind and life of a people, a will to freedom and action, a great national purpose. He brought to his work extraordinary qualities, a calm, silent, unflinching courage, an unwavering purpose, a flexible mind, a forward-casting vision of possibilities, an eye for the occasion, a sense of actuality, a fine capacity of democratic leadership, a diplomacy that never lost sight of its aim and pressed towards it even' in the midst of pliant turns of its movement, and guiding all, a single-minded patriotism that cared for power and influence only as a means of service to the Motherland and a lever for the work of her liberation. He sacrificed much for her and suffered for her repeatedly and made no ostentation of his suffering and sacrifices. His life was a constant offering at her altar.' This was the study of the man and the patriot by his close collaborator, Sri Aurobindo.

Tilak was thus, continues he, 'one of the two or three leaders of the Indian people who were in their eyes the incarnations of the national endeavour and the God-given captains of the national aspiration.' His life, his character, his work and endurance, his acceptance by the heart and mind of the people make a glorious chapter in the history of India's struggle for freedom. Though Tilak's immediate aim was to end

¹ Unless otherwise acknowledged, the quotations in this chapter are from Sri Aurobindo's Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda and his message on Tilak's passing, published in The lndependent, August 5, 1920.

the political subjection of his country, yet he was at the core of his heart an Indian proud of his country's great past and hopeful of its greater future. And he was as certain about it as he was of her attainment of the most-needed freedom. It was his conviction that without her liberation from foreign rule India could not hope for that future nor any progress in any field of activity.

Like his life and work, the year of Tilak's birth too has a historic significance. July 1856 in which he was born saw the last days of the old order grey with a definite decline in the life of the country including Maharashtra whose great days in her recent past were yet fresh in her memory. The 'Sepoy Revolt' with which began a new order was proof positive that India had still in her the reserves of strength and would to rise against the indignity of alien rule. Was it Tilak's to develop these potentials in his people ? Anyway, that a Chitpawan brahman of Maharashtra had been chosen for this important work carries its own meaning.

Tilak's father, Gangadharpant, was a man of strong determination and inflexible will by dint of which he rose from the position of a primary school teacher to that of an assistant inspector of schools. Mathematics was his favourite subject on which he wrote a number of popular text-books along with some on grammar and history. Tilak inherited these traits from his father. Not only his will but his love for mathematics too is well-known : he once said that he would like to be a teacher of mathematics in free India. His school days were not uneventful in that his behaviour as a young student was always extraordinary. He would invariably work out his mathematical problems not on paper but in his brain and he would surprise his teachers by ready answers almost immediately after a problem had been set. As a school student he acquired a remarkable knowledge of Sanskrit in which he could compose verses. He showed his independent spirit almost as early as when he joined school, and his teachers both at school and in college had enough experience of it. To his professors he was 'a troublesome student' having no regard for the formalities which college students were expected to observe.

In college Tilak had a thorough training in Western history, literature and thought. But he was never satisfied with reading text books only. In college also he excelled in mathematics and Sanskrit, though he and Agarkar were serious students of sociology and history. In their college life both these friends formed clear ideas about the work they planned to do for their country's liberation. Agarkar thought it would come through social reform promoting the growth of national self-consciousness. Tilak would start by trying to create that consciousness as the condition for freedom; and with freedom, he held, it would be possible for India to achieve whatever she needed for her progress, social and other, as a free nation.

Ideas such as these were uppermost in the mind of Tilak when after

finishing his, education he began to think of his country, of Maharashtra, in particular, whose degradation was a lamentable contrast to her inherent greatness. The social life had become a fen of all sorts of obscurantism persisted in by a reactionary orthodoxy, the cultural life was tending towards a decline, and the political was as good as dead. It was the same sad story as everywhere in India. Ranade had begun his work of national reconstruction against all these odds, against the blatant opposition both of the orthodox brahmanas and of the younger group which did not see eye to eye with him in social and political matters. The younger group of which Tilak was a leading member had in it an elder, Vishnusastri Chiplonkar, who was a powerful writer in Marathi and whose sole aim was to drive out all forms of servility and foster the spirit of independence among the youths of the country. He held that 'the basic reason of our present demoralisation and miseries was the existence of the foreign rule and that the foundation of national progress was full self-realisation.'

These views were also of Tilak who along with other members of his group was considerably influenced by Chiplonkar. Describing the mind of the group at that time Tilak said : 'We were men whose plans were at fever heat, whose thoughts were of the degraded condition of our country, and after long thought we came to the conclusion that the salvation of our motherland lay in the education, and only in the education of the people.' And this education should be carried out by Indians and for Indians. A concrete form of this idea was The New English School founded by the group in 1880, which soon became one of the most popular institutions of Poona and whose aim was 'the rejuvenation of the land of their birth'.

This rejuvenation could not be effected merely by lessons in the three R's in the class room. Its larger field of work—the mind of the vast masses of people—must also be brought within the ambit of such effective education as would rouse their national self-consciousness. Tilak and his co-workers now concentrated on this side of their plan of popular education. The result was the publication of the two weeklies, the Kesari in Marathi, and the Mahratta in English; the former was to cater for the needs of the mass of ignorant population giving them the knowledge of such topics as concern their everyday life by writings on literary, social, political, moral and economic subjects; the latter to serve as the authoritative organ of educated public opinion in Maharashtra. Both the papers proved an immediate success, though the importance and usefulness of the Kesari had always been much greater, and that was what Tilak himself wanted.

Apart from moulding public opinion on social, economic and political problems, a most remarkable work of the Kesari was that it enriched the Marathi language by 'developing a new terminology,' says Tilak, 'to make our writings effective. A man who feels intensely, who is burning with new ideas, finds words to express them. He becomes, indeed, capable of creating a new language.' Tilak was thus a maker of a new form of his own

tongue, which became the effective vehicle of the new thought that Tilak and his co-workers took upon themselves to propagate among the people for their rebirth into a new life of purpose and action, for the recovery of their self as a nation.

Indeed a powerful language has ever proved an indispensable factor in a nation's renaissance. Bengal owes much of her resurgence in modern times to her language for whose development almost all her great sons devoted whatever talents they had. The rise of Maharashtra likewise was greatly due to the literary gifts of her great sons like Ranade, Chiplonkar and Tilak. Tilak's were indeed the most significant in that he gave to Marathi that strength which moved the mind and the heart of his people to think and feel, to aspire and act, to endure and achieve.

While his journalistic venture brought him to the lime-light as an authentic exponent of the new thought of national idealism, it involved him in troubles inevitable in a subject country. Tilak's suffering as a devoted servant of his people started when he along with Agarkar was arrested and sentenced to four months' simple imprisonment for publishing in his papers several letters containing allegations against a high official of a native state. The letters were proved to be forgeries—a fact not known to the editors. The rights and dignities of the native states, be it mentioned, were freely discussed in the Kesari and the Mahratta, and the Government took note of the fact. These raised Tilak and Agarkar in the estimation of the people who on their release gave them a grand reception.

Tilak found that The New English School was not enough for his plan of education. It did not bear the expected fruit. His aim was to spread the new ideas of nationalism to the masses and the best way of doing it would be not only through the press and the platform as hitherto but also through a band of educated and selfless workers. The school should therefore be developed into a college for the training of such teachers for mass education. Thus came into being in 1884 the Deccan Education Society in the formation of which, besides Tilak and his group, were the great Ranade, R. G. Bhandarker, the famous Indologist, Sir William Wedderburn, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress. In 1885 the Society started the Fergusson College named after that Governor of Bombay who had already expressed by a donation his appreciation of the English School. The same year G. K. Gokhale joined the Society and took up teaching in the College the staff of which included Tilak and his friend, Tilak's subject being mathematics. Before long when his differences with Gokhale in social and political matters became acute, Tilak resigned from the Society.

Gokhale, like Ranade, stood for moderation in politics and an advanced outlook on social reform. Tilak's view is expressed succinctly by Sri Aurobindo : 'A subject nation does not prepare itself by gradual progress for liberty; it opens by liberty its way to rapid progress.' Regarding social

reform, though he believed in its necessity and had introduced it into his own family, he was against its being imposed on the masses, and least of all by legislation. His suggestion to the social reformers was that they might adopt the reforms among themselves leaving the masses to evolve their reforms according to their needs; but before they could be expected to do so they should be given proper education. But his difference with Gokhale would not permit his continuing with him in the Fergusson College. With poignant feelings Tilak left the institution in whose creation and development he had had a very important share. It may be mentioned here that the first eleven years of his public life were devoted to the spread of English education which he along with his co-workers believed was indispensable for Indians to become fit for a free life.

The British Government had all these years been watching with suspicion Tilak's public activities and his growing influence over the people. Their attitude defined itself when they called Tilak anti-Muslim because he criticised the Government policy with regard to the riots in which the Muslims destroyed Hindu temples. His writings in which he pointed out the aggressive conduct of the Muslims, then and also in the past, were considered seditious. He was therefore arrested but released on bail first refused by Justice Ranade, but granted by the high-souled Muslim, Justice Tyabji, who said that he would have quashed the case had it been in his power. What was even more notable was that a Muslim businessman of Calcutta donated Rs. 7000 to the Defence Fund opened by Tilak's friends in Calcutta.

The moral degradation of the Indians of the time, the humiliation of the Hindus at the hands of the Muslims, and the need of rousing their national consciousness through their religion, the basis of their life, were among the reasons for Tilak to organise religious festivals and universal worship of national heroes, and thereby give a new direction, a fresh meaning to Hindu observances. In 1893 he started the Ganesa Festival in which he found 'a powerful engine for imparting instruction to the masses, our ultimate court of appeal'. It was a vast community celebration lasting for ten days, held in big cities as well as in small villages, where the worship of Ganesa was carried on as a public function with all splendour and enthusiasm. Its programme included artistic displays, musical performances, discourses on the epics in which comparative references were invariably made to the social, political and economic problems of the day. It soon caught the imagination of the people and spread to every province in India. There was another reason for inaugurating this festival on a national basis Ganesa, as the name implies, is the god or Lord of the people, (gana, people, īśa, lord) who gives to his worshippers the boon of success. Tilak's idea was that the people by worshipping their god would have success in their endeavour to attain their freedom and greatness as a nation.

Tilak's plan now was to organise an annual celebration of hero-worship.

And who could this' hero be other than the great Sivaji adored by all communities of Hindus and even by wise Muslims who knew what this mighty Maratha really was ? To the Marathas and also to others in India Sivaji's name is synonymous with awakened national consciousness and a burning spirit of independence. Years later, addressing a Bengali audience in Calcutta, Tilak said : 'Our political aspirations need all the strength which the worship of a Swadeshi (national) hero is likely to inspire in our minds.' In about ten years Sivaji Festival became an all-India one and proved one of the most potent factors in the growth of intense patriotic feelings among the youths of the country. Tilak himself addressed large numbers of meetings on this occasion in various cities and towns of India. At the invitation of the Sivaji Festival Committee of Bengal Tilak delivered in Calcutta a series of lectures on the life and mission of the Maratha hero. These lectures were attended by thousands of Bengalis who were stirred into a new resolve to undo the wrong done by the Government in partitioning their country. Tilak now towered as an all-India leader.

But a back-glance at previous years is necessary to see what Tilak did when his Maharashtra was afflicted by a terrible famine and a devastating plague during the years 1896-97. The splendid work he did in organising relief, in educating the people and rousing them to their duties and responsibilities, showed how deeply he felt the distress of his people and how he took up their cause as his own. But he did not approve the harsh way in which Government wanted to enforce their relief measures through officials whose high-handedness he severely criticised; nevertheless he expressed at the same time his appreciation of whatever good Government did in the matter. Meanwhile the watch-dogs of the Government were busy trying to implicate Tilak in a case of sedition. They had already an impression that he belonged to a group of brahmanas who were fomenting disaffection against the Government. When, therefore, two officers, Rand and Ayerst, responsible for 'cruel' famine operations, were murdered, Government arrested Tilak on a charge of sedition for his supposed connection with the murders and also for his speeches at the Sivaji Festival and for some verses containing an imaginary address of Sivaji to his countrymen on their degradation. In his speech Tilak had justified Sivaji's killing of Afzal Khan by saying that such actions, like Sri Krishna's in the Gita, were beyond the jurisdiction of the Penal Code or moral laws.

This was the first sedition trial of Tilak, the first important sedition case in India and the starting-point of an unending line of other cases covering the whole country for nearly half a century. In this case also, spontaneous help came from various parts of the country. Among his admirers in Bengal were Poet Rabindranath Tagore, Motilal Ghose, a close friend of Tilak and a founder-editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, and W. C. Bonnerjee, the first President of the Indian National Congress. They sent not only money but two renowned barristers to

defend Tilak. The trial terminated with a sentence of eighteen months' hard labour.¹" Nothing else could be expected of a Government determined to punish him and get him out of the way. The case however brought home to the people of India another glaring evil of foreign rule and how it could be defied and disregarded. And with it the ugly chapter of India's pathetic resignation to foreign domination was ended or, as a modern historian has put it, consigned to the limbo for all time. Thus did the Government action bring Tilak to the limelight of all-India leadership and his later activities only added to his prominence.

Shocked at the enormity of the sentence on a high-souled patriot and a Vedic scholar of Tilak's eminence, the famous Indologist Max Mueller criticised the Government and pleaded for his release and by so doing, himself became the butt of his countrymen's criticism.

Though the rigours of jail life told upon his health, after a slight improvement in it Tilak was able to devote himself to his Vedic studies the results of which were the notes he prepared for his famous work The Arctic Home of the Vedas, published in 1903,—'a work that acquired', says Sri Aurobindo, a world-wide recognition and left as strong a mark as can be imprinted on the ever-shifting sands of oriental research'. Even before its publication Tilak's scholarship and patriotism attracted the attention of such prominent Europeans and Indians as Max Mueller, Sir William Hunter and Dadabhai Naoroji who, in view of Tilak's health, made a representation to the Government urging his release. Tilak was released in September 1898, six months before his sentence could terminate.

Tilak now threw himself again into his labours for the nation, gave a fresh impetus to the Ganapati and Sivaji Festivals as means of mass education and political preparation, resumed the editorship of the two papers, began once more to disseminate his ideas of freedom as the sole basis of national reconstruction. But an incident interrupted this work for a while and caused him extreme mental anguish. It was the Tai Maharaj case in which Tilak was unnecessarily harassed by Government officials for what he in all conscience did as a trustee of a friend's estate. He was prosecuted under a number of criminal charges, of all of which the High Court found him innocent and this after protracted legal proceedings for two years, 'which will' says D.V. Thamankar, 'remain in Indian political history as an unparalleled example of official malice and unscrupulousness'.

Great days were coming upon Tilak and with them great responsibilities as one of the acknowledged leaders of a movement of political resurgence which, born in Bengal, set aflame the whole of India. Tilak, till then mostiy a leader of Maharashtra, now became the hero of all India, taking up and giving his whole-hearted support to the cause of Bengal which he along with that 'Lion of the Panjab', Lajpat Rai, made the cause of the whole country. It was one of those hours in the history of a nation

when vast possibilities of the future, long-concealed, burs| into view. The work that the New Nationalist Party did was indeed unique in the history of the Indian renaissance. The Swadeshi movement was not a mere political movement. It was the endeavour of an awakened nation to rise and be free in the greatness of a larger life the vision of which came to the youths of Bengal when they prayed to the Mother for strength to vindicate her glory against the Government design of dividing the country in order to alienate from each other the two great communities, the Muslims and the Hindus, whose united stand for their undivided nationhood was much too strong for alien interests to bear.

But, for more than three decades before, with the start of the Jatiya Mela—the very first national assemblage—Bengal had been developing national self-consciousness. It received a definite spiritual impetus from Bankimchandra's vision of the Mother and from the lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda—Vivekananda the first spiritual leader to proclaim that every Indian from his very birth is dedicated to his motherland, Vivekananda who even with a prophetic certitude enjoined upon his countrymen that for fifty years from that day they had only one aim in life, one purpose to serve—to live and work for the motherland. The ground had thus been well prepared for the Swadeshi movement in 1905. Even the strain of the revolutionary nationalism with secret societies infusing dash and daring into the people can be traced back to 1878 when Rajnarayan Basu's Sanjivani Sabha had come into being. Sri Aurobindo threw his whole weight into both these movements—Swadeshi and revolutionary work. In 1902 he started a centre in Calcutta with the definite aim of preparing the country for armed rebellion against the British Government. In fact, Sri Aurobindo had developed this idea while in England, and shortly after his return to India in 1892 he wrote and published a series of articles criticising 'the mendicant policy' of the Indian National Congress, and advocating direct action. He also initiated some revolutionary work in western India where he was then staying. The bearing of all these efforts of Bengal on India's freedom movement will be discussed later. They are however indications that the decision had been taken by the soul of the nation to end its subjection. And it was this decision that defined itself more visibly at the time when the British Government proposed to partition Bengal. Great souls came to the front of the nation's struggle for freedom. The Indian National Congress was yet 'a begging and petitioning institution'. Sri Aurobindo had already attended several of its sessions. In its 1902 session at Ahmedabad he met Tilak who expressed 'his contempt for the tinker-work show and explained to Sri Aurobindo his own line of action in Maharashtra'.

But before proceeding farther, an attempt may be made to look into the meaning of the meeting of these two souls, one representing the virile

manhood, keen intelligence and practical mind of Maharashtra, the other representing the emotional, idealistic, intuitive and revolutionary Bengal. This significant combination seemed to have been intended by the Sakti of India for her work through her chosen sons for the liberation of this ancient land, one of whom belonged to the eastern region of the country and the other to the western, and with them joined hands the mighty 'Lion of the Panjab', Lajpat Rai, representing the northwestern region. With these three leaders from three sides, the movement was well on the way to growing into an all-India movement. The soul of Bengal, sore smitten by the Partition, spoke in accents of fire through her inspired sons almost all of whom were spiritual seekers and disciples of spiritual masters. They did more than they said. Their words and actions were expressions of their souls illumined by the vision of the Mother. Sri Aurobindo stands supreme as the revealer, 'the incarnate voice', of this new truth of spiritual nationalism, and one of his co-workers was Bipinchandra Pal, called by Sri Aurobindo 'one of the mightiest prophets of Indian nationalism'.

With this Maratha-Bengali-Panjabi collaboration for India's freedom is associated another great Maratha, Sakharam Ganesh Deushkar, a scholar and a master of Bengali, who for years lived in Bengal, edited a Bengali newspaper and won by his inspiring writings the love and admiration of the people. He was an active member of the first revolutionary centre started in Calcutta in 1902 under the guidance of Sri Aurobindo at whose instance he wrote his famous Bengali book, Desher Katha, a vivid presentation of unchallengeable facts and figures on India's economic servitude and her exploitation by England. The book was, however, honoured by the Government ban. It may be noted that Deushkar was the first to use in his book the word 'Swaraj', the Indian equivalent of independence, which Sri Aurobindo had been the first to use and reiterate constantly in the Bande Mataram as the one and immediate aim of Indian politics. Deushkar's book had an enormous influence on the youths of Bengal and helped to turn them into revolutionaries.

On the other hand, during his thirteen-year stay in Baroda Sri Aurobindo learnt Marathi which he could read and speak well. He made his studies in Marathi history from original sources. The national movement gave him an occasion to write on Maratha patriotism and he fixed upon Baji Prabhou for one of his best patriotic poems, which he published in 1909. He had a number of Marathi friends who cooperated with him in his revolutionary work, a beginning of which he made in western India. Baji Prabhou may be regarded as a fitting complement to the all-India Sivaji Festival initiated by Tilak.

Tilak had already discussed with Sri Aurobindo their line of approach to the problems facing the country before the Partition scheme was announced by the Government and they gave to it a particular form of action

when the Partition took effect in October 1905. The question arises, what form of action ? Nothing had shaken Bengal so much as this unwise act of the Government and she rose not only to protest but also to reject foreign rule from which poison she had suffered for a century and a half. Repression and persecution came down upon her and in that hour of dire distress Maharashtra and the Panjab stood by Bengal and gave her their utmost help. In the Benaras session of the Congress the Bengal Nationalists guided by Sri Aurobindo pressed for the adoption of a boycott of British goods, Swadeshi and National Education—the three of the four principal items of the Programme of the Nationalist Party which after the Benaras Congress became an all-India party with ideals and principles that soon caught the imagination of the people and had universal acceptance. Even the Moderate leaders of the Congress like Gokhale who presided over the Benaras Congress were persuaded to accept the Nationalist Party resolutions slightly toned down by Tilak who wanted to win the Congress for his party.

Tilak took up the cause of Bengal with such vigour and earnestness that the whole of Maharashtra rose to his call and in one voice denounced the Partition proposal. Within a month of its announcement in July 1905, he wrote and published in the Kesari a series of articles the first of which called 'The Hour of Destiny' began with the Sanskrit quotation : 'A day has come in the progress of public opinion in India, when our leaders have to move with a will and determination and achieve their objective or rot in a poisonous atmosphere.' It was a call to the people of India to press forward and not to linger and look behind, and stand shoulder to shoulder with their kith and kin in Bengal 'who were cruelly insulted by a British bully like Lord Curzon'. In another article on boycott he said : 'If our experience shows that mere representation is not useful, we must achieve our object by tagging on boycott. Times of moment like the present do not come often in a nation's history, and whenever they come, if we do not take the fullest advantage, there will be no greater fools than we.' These two articles were reprinted in the newspapers of almost all the important cities of India, and Tilak's fiery words stirred the whole country to its duty, with the result that there started not only a vigorous agitation but some form of direct action to implement the Nationalist programme. The movement of national liberation took on a militant form when boycott was adopted as the first practical step towards undermining the foreign rule. And Tilak's acceptance of it was clearly the first phase of the nation's struggle for independence. What he said in his speech at the Benaras Congress on the political and national significance of boycott was his first open declaration of passive resistance, the governing principle of the Nationalist programme evolved by the forward-looking sons of Bengal, Maharashtra and the Panjab.

The four items in this programme were, first, 'Swaraj, complete and early self-government in whatever form which was for Tilak the one thing

needful; second, National education which meant for him the training of young generation in the new national spirit to be the architects of liberty; third, Swadeshi, an actualising of the national self-consciousness and the national will and the readiness to sacrifice which would fix in the daily mind and daily life of the people. In Boycott, Tilak saw the means to give to the struggle between the two ideas in conflict, bureaucratic control and national control, a vigorous shape and body and to the popular side a weapon and an effective form of action.'

After the 1905 session of the Congress in Benaras Tilak concentrated on implementing the programme of the Nationalist Party, first in Maharashtra and then in other parts of the country. Poona had already made a beginning in the field of national education, Swadeshi and indigenous industries under the guidance of Ranade and later of Tilak and his coworkers. These were now developed and given their effective forms as part of the national movement. When repression in Bengal was at its worst Tilak condemned it saying : 'Repression is repression, whether legal or illegal. If it is legal repression, it must be resisted peacefully, with determination to suffer the penalty. If it is illegal, then it must be illegally met. .... It is the people's right to decide whether the action of Government is proper or oppressive.' Repression thus strengthened Tilak's vindication of boycott as the 'only means of India's salvation'. The example of Maharashtra was soon followed by the Panjab and the Central Provinces.

Meanwhile Tilak was preparing for the next (1906) session of the Congress at Calcutta, which, he felt, should pursue a bolder line of action. It must shun for ever its 'mendicant policy' and adopt the programme of the New Party, thereby giving the country a clear and definite lead. Much progress in this direction was made when the Congress met under the presidency of Dadabhai Naoroji, the 'Grand Old Man of India', whose contribution to the success of the Nationalists must be acknowledged, though it was the move of the Nationalist leaders that decided the issue.

So far as Bengal was concerned, Sri Aurobindo had on the eve of the Congress declared in a series of articles in the Bande Mataram that 'nothing short of complete freedom, absolute autonomy free from British control would satisfy the political aspirations of India'—words that the people had never before heard and by which they were inspired with a patriotic fervour that strengthened their sense of duty in the Congress. The Moderate leaders of the Congress noted this and agreed to accept the boycott but only for Bengal. The Nationalists pleaded that in order to be effective it must be for the whole of India. They had now their following all over India and with Bengal as their stronghold were a power to reckon with. The Moderates had therefore to give in and recognise the Nationalist programme in the main. Tilak's was an important share in this victory. The national movement with boycott as its principal aim grew in strength and popularity. Its negative effect was a substantial decline of British

trade in India, its positive one the growth of indigenous industries in various parts of the country.

All this made the movement an eyesore to the alien rulers, no less to the Moderate leaders who feared that they would lose their position in Indian politics as the Nationalist movement gained in power. Tilak was now the all-India leader of the New Party, and under his dynamic leadership the movement grew from more to more till it proved its strength by breaking the next session of the Congress at Surat because it again degenerated into a 'timid show' under the Moderates who managed to have control over its organisation, and to elect one among them as President against the wishes of the Nationalists who knew of the Moderates' design to go back upon the Boycott resolution passed by the two previous sessions of the Congress. So when in the open session Tilak as the spokesman of the Nationalists insisted on placing before the Congress his resolutions, an uproar broke out, some volunteers trying to assail Tilak. This was too much for the young Marathas to bear. And at Sri Aurobindo's instance they charged up and broke the session.¹

The Moderate leaders made efforts here and there to continue their work through meetings and conferences but they could get no hearing as the atmosphere was charged with severe resentment at the ruthless repression to which Government subjected the country from end to end. Processions were banned, the cry of Bande Mataram stifled, school boys flogged, newspapers prosecuted, indiscriminate arrests and detentions resorted to. The Government, as seen before, took to these measures in order to crush the upsurge of the national feeling which began to swell in volume and intensity as repression spread and the Nationalists propagated their ideals with greater vehemence.

The secret societies already started in Bengal under Sri Aurobindo's guidance were reorganised in 1906 with Maniktala Garden as one of the chief centres for carrying on revolutionary activities, such as, recruiting and training young men and making experiments in bomb-making, reference to which will be made later when Sri Aurobindo's work for India's resurgence comes under study. When some of the young revolutionaries were ready for action, they were sent to Muzaffarpore in Bihar to kill Kingsford who as Magistrate in Calcutta had been inflicting inhuman punishments on men and young boys charged with political offence. He, however, escaped his fate, because the youngmen shot at wrong persons. This incident, preceeded by several other abortive attempts, and the discovery by police of the Maniktala centre led to harsher repressive measures in Bengal and those parts of India where the activities of the Nationalists were most successful. And Maharashtra was certainly one of them, and its greatest leader was arrested in June, 1908, that is to say, within two months of the arrest of Sri Aurobindo along with about forty members

¹ Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, pp. 78-82.

of the Maniktala and other centres. A fortnight before his arrest Tilak in a speech said : 'Difficult times are ahead; work has begun in the country; the fight has just begun. Difficulties will come, many will have to lose their lives, but remember that one day we shall succeed.... The pinnacle of the temple of freedom is visible....There might be darkness immediately before us; but remember that there is light beyond.' Tilak also wrote and published in the Kesari several articles on the real meaning and secret of the bomb, in which he said that the bomb had come into the field of Indian politics as a result of the Government repression and that it should be an eye-opener to Government and make them revise their policy as in the case of Rand's murder.

Tilak had to answer charges of sedition two of which were that he had been making bombs and preaching disaffection towards the Government. His twentyone-hour address to the jury was a masterly analysis of the facts of the case pointing out that they had no bearing on sedition as it was understood in England. He concluded with the memorable words : 'All I wish to say is that in spite of the verdict of the jury I maintain that I am innocent. There were higher powers that rule the destiny of things and it may be the will of the Providence that the cause which I represent is to prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free.' The honour of suffering for his country was six years' transportation and a fine of one thousand rupees. Thus ended the historic trial of the mighty Maratha, a maker of free India. This incarceration was characterised by Sri Aurobindo as 'the second seal of the divine hand upon his work; for there can be no diviner seal than suffering for a cause.'

Not only Indian but also a number of British newspapers condemned the sentence. Lenin called it a 'despicable' one. But the philosopher and scholar had now rest from his strenuous public activities to devote himself to study and writing. This became his sole occupation in Mandalay jail where he served his term unaffected by his immediate surroundings. After about three years he received the sad news of the death of his wife, Satyabhamabai. The death, he said, 'was a very great and heavy blow.' The event however synchronised with the completion of Tilak's masterly work on the Gita in Marathi called Gita Rahasya, which he took three years to write in jail.

This 'unresting worker for his country' was also a scholar of international fame, who wrote his masterpieces in periods of 'compulsory cessation from his life-work' brought about by his imprisonments the first of which gave to the world his other great work The Artie Home of the Vedas. 'His Gita Rahasya takes the scripture which is perhaps the strongest and most comprehensive production of Indian spirituality and justifies to that spirituality, by its own authoritative ancient message, the sense of the importance of life, of action, of human existence, of man's labour for mankind which is indispensable to the idealism of modern

spirit.' Thanks to people's appreciation of his literary and philosophical genius, the first edition of the book was sold out in a few days.

In 1910 when Tilak was in jail, Valentine Chirol, a British publicist, brought out a book called Indian Unrest in which he tried to justify Government action in suppressing the movement of liberation which, he held, was an outcome of Hindu revival in which brahmanas took a prominent part. He characterised Tilak as one of the most powerful of these anti-British leaders, 'the father of Indian unrest', whose complicity in terroristic acts of murder and bomb-making Chirol tried to prove with the help of official records. Tilak found in these, as he himself said, 'nasty and baseless charges', a clear case of libel and wanted to expose them in a court of law and vindicate his honour. On his return to Poona from Mandalay he made up his mind to take legal action. In October 1915, he lodged a suit before the King's Bench in London. Chirol came to India in order again to go through the official records on which he based the thesis of his book, and these were at once made available to him, whereas every request of Tilak to have access to these so-called sources was turned down by the Government. Tilak was convinced that if he could once see these records he could prove that most of them were concocted. He had therefore to lose the case which meant a heavy drain on his purse and on his energy. But his country came to his help and made good his financial loss.

Within a month of his release from jail the First World War broke out. Tilak wished success to the Allies, and said that it was in the interest of India that Britain should win, as there was greater hope of Swarajya from the British. How true was his foresight later events showed. The most important political move of Tilak after his release was the formation of the Home Rule League, because he found the Congress not yet ready for any effective step to articulate the aspirations of the people already defined by the Nationalist Party nor to execute their fourfold programme. A powerful organised body was therefore the need of the hour. The Home Rule League came to fulfil that need. In some of his public speeches Tilak had already uttered the magic words 'Home Rule' and they reverberated through the length and breadth of the country. Among leading public men who gave their full support to Tilak's idea were Chittaranjan Das from Bengal, Motilal Nehru from the United Provinces, and a number of liberal Moderates, besides those who had worked with him.

The demand for home rule was for Tilak the demand for Swaraj, a people's government, that is to say, a government run by the people's representatives. And it would not matter if it was within the empire. He said : 'The time has come when we must concentrate on the single demand for home rule. The days of asking for piecemeal reforms are gone.' In another speech he spoke on the inner urge for this demand :

The spirit ,of liberty that animates our activities and guides our movements can never grow old. The spirit of liberty is ever fresh and young and those that have drawn inspiration from it and have begun to work for its achievement through difficulties of every sort are bound to reap the fruit of their labours. Those that earnestly strive for liberty must become free—If you admit the truth of this proposition you must admit that liberty is the birthright of every man. The privilege of being free does not need to be granted by somebody else. Every man who is born comes into the world with this elementary right. This innermost craving of the heart to be free, this intense desire to get one's liberty, is the essence of human nature... .What is called Atma (soul) in religious philosophy is known as liberty in the science of politics. Atma exists everywhere; it does not need to be reborn. Similarly the love of liberty exists in every heart and I am only awakening you to the consciousness of its existence. Some people forget that they have this Atma or love of liberty—the reason being their ignorance.'

This is the vedandic basis of Tilak's political philosophy in which he envisaged the freedom of his country as the only condition not merely for its outer advancement but also for its inner : in fact, both are one in the integral outlook of India's all-embracing spirituality which through the ages has sustained the life-line of her culture and civilisation, having for its aim a continuous progress towards perfection in the Spirit. Presumably with this vision before him Tilak insisted on his demand for the political freedom of his country to which he wanted his people to awake, as he was convinced that without a free life the soul of the nation could not have freer and larger development of its being.

When in 1916 the Home Rule movement was at its height, his countrymen celebrated his sixtyfirst birthday by presenting to him a purse of Rs. 100,000—a magnificent, indeed, a unique gift for a leader of that time to receive in recognition of his services to the country. Tilak was then the Lokamanya, the revered idol of the people who worshipped him as a god—in the words of a District Magistrate truly reported to the the Government.

With the demand for home rule by India is associated another great name, Annie Besant who brought to her work for India's freedom, says Sri Aurobindo, 'her untiring energy, her flaming enthusiasm, her magnificent and magnetic personality, and her spiritual force'. Her eminent part in the country's freedom movement must find an honoured place in the history of modern India along with her ardent efforts to further the cause of national education and promote the study and propagation of ancient Indian culture of which she herself was an enlightened exponent. She had an inner perception of India's great past and of her glorious future for which her present is a preparation, and a free life, she felt, was the indispensable condition for that preparation. This feeling

as well as her admiration for Tilak led her to start her own. Home Rule League in Madras from where she carried on a vigorous propaganda. For her devoted service to India this great English lady had to suffer internment and forfeiture of the security deposit of her paper.

Government also demanded from Tilak a surety for 'good behaviour' the charge against him being that he preached disaffection against the Government. The High Court declared that his speeches did not contain sedition. The Government action against the two leaders of the Home Rule movement indicated that the movement was gaining ground in the country, particularly in Madras and Bombay where Annie Besant and Lokamanya Tilak concentrated their activities. As a matter of fact, the whole country joined in its demand for home rule. Rabindranath lent his powerful support to this demand in a closely-reasoned treatise entitled Kartār icchāya karma (As the Master desires...) which, at the request of his countrymen, he read to more than one big public meeting in Calcutta, vigorously insisting on the imperative need of freedom not only in the political but in every sphere of the national life.

And it was largely this movement and this support of the country coupled with the difficult situation created by the First World War that were behind the move of the British Government to promise 'some measure of self-government to India'. This was mainly inspired by the liberal outlook of Montague, the then Secretary of State for India. What actually came out was characterised by Tilak as 'unsatisfactory', but as it was 'an advance in the right direction', he favoured its acceptance in spirit. Tilak's policy was, as stated to Montague : 'We shall take what the Government gives us, but it will not satisfy us unless it is at least what Congress asks.'

Tilak now planned to visit England in connection with the Chirol Libel Case already referred to, especially as this could give him an opportunity to present India's case before the British public. In fact, the Home Rule League had already decided to send a delegation to England for the same purpose, Tilak, G.S. Khaparde and R.P. Karandikar forming it. There was also another delegation from Besant's Home Rule League, and a deputation from the Congress; and these had N.C. Kelkar, V.J. Patel, Bipinchandra Pal and Satyamurti as their members. On invitation Tilak attended the Parliamentary Committee where he reiterated his stand with regard to the Government of India Bill presented by Montague. Another important work of Tilak in England was that he enlisted the support of the British Labour Party to India's case and it was with this that began the happy relationship of sympathy and understanding that has ever existed between the Labour Party of England and the Congress Party of India. A British Labour leader called Tilak 'the biggest leader of India'. Even Montague who said that Tilak was very extreme held that as a political leader he had the greatest influence in India.

While in England Tilak was in constant touch with Lajpat Rai and Hardikar who were then carrying on Home Rule propaganda in the United States. Tilak was nominated by the Delhi Session of Congress in 1918 to represent India at the Peace Conference in Paris. As the British Government refused him permission to go to Paris, he wrote and sent in an appeal to the Conference in which he pleaded for consideration of the India question both from the point of view of world peace and of the progress of the Indian people. He urged that peace in India was not possible to maintain unless and until she achieved self-government and to this end the principle of self-determination should be applied to India. Behind his reference to peace in the appeal there must have been his mental reaction to the Jalianwala Bagh tragedy that occurred in the Panjab in April 1919, proving not only to India but to the whole world how imperialistic arrogance could degenerate into the brutality of destroying hundreds of innocent human lives, and strike at all the prospects of peace in a country reawakening to its inherent right to freedom, a right of which Tilak himself was a 'God-appointed incarnation'.

Tilak was back home in November 1919. Almost on the eve of the next session of the Congress at Amritsar, a Royal Proclamation was issued appealing to the people of India to cooperate in working the new reforms. Tilak assured the King of 'responsive cooperation'. This was a significant move on his part in that it contained in essence Tilak's method of political action which was, as lucidly expressed by Sri Aurobindo, 'to take willingly half a loaf rather than no bread, though always with a full intention of getting the whole loaf in good time'. He therefore wanted his countrymen 'to accept what is offered in the Reform Bill but to continue to agitate for more.' This far-seeing patriot knew that the awakening 'spirit of liberty' in the nation had already created in it the will to freedom whose developing force was sure eventually to achieve its goal and which along with the prevailing circumstances would compel the British Government to grant complete self-government to India in God's own time. How true was this perception later events have proved.

Sri Aurobindo, a co-worker of Tilak in the political field, had similar perceptions, and when in 1910 he left politics he was certain that India would be free in the near future. He had besides a direct divine assurance to that effect during the Alipore trial. But as the high-priest of revolutionary nationalism, he, it will be seen later, never stuck to one form of political action. Chittaranjan Das, a supporter of Sri Aurobindo's revolutionary ideas, followed almost the same line of action as Tilak and this had Sri Aurobindo's approval. To these forward-looking souls, above everything else was their country's freedom and they knew which way it would come. It was a path of constant fight annexing whatever ground could be gained in the course of the march and continuing the fight unabated till complete victory was won.

After the Amritsar Congress which accepted in principle this stand of Tilak, he started the Congress Democratic Party with a view to so organise the advanced political minds of the country that they might grow in influence and persuade the Congress to adopt his policy of 'responsive cooperation' of whose effectivity he was as certain as he was of India's freedom resulting from his method of political action. The methods of later leaders were not the same but what they achieved was possible certainly because Tilak and his co-workers had prepared the ground, created the spirit of sacrifice and the will to freedom at any cost. In the acceptance by the British Government of complete self-government as the final goal in Indian administration, Tilak could see a beginning of the fruition of his life-work.

Tilak's was a life of intense activity, of headlong rush and herculean labour broken in only by his incarcerations. This naturally proved a severe tax on his energy and physical capacity which he never spared in the service of his country; but the strenuous Home Rule campaign— the last great effort of this mighty Maratha—was too much for him to bear. He left his body on 1 August 1920, saying his last words to the nation for whose freedom he lived and died : 'Unless Swaraj is achieved, India shall not prosper. It is required for our existence.'

These words of his soul reveal what he was all the time yearning for. And he knew that the great aim of his life-long labour was bound to be fulfilled at no distant date. ' Swaraj is not far off, it is near,' he once said. But was it merely for itself that he wanted the freedom of his country ? His words on this point are : 'We demand Swaraj, as it is the foundation and not the height of our future prosperity.' 'Without Swaraj there can be no industrial progress, no social reform, no right kind of education useful to the nation. All these are parts of Swaraj. Power is wanted first.'

The country must have 'a free assembly of its own', wrote Sri Aurobindo on Tilak's aim, 'which can consult the needs of and carry out the mandates of the people.... Let us have first liberty and organised control of the life of the nation, afterwards we can see how we should use it in social matters.' Therefore, 'the awaking and fixing of a self-reliant national spirit and will in India was for Tilak the one work for the hour. ...To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics.' What hastened the success of his work was, to quote Sri Aurobindo again, 'the lava-like flood of the Swadeshi movement which fertilised the soil and did for the country in six years the work of six ordinary decades; it fixed the goal of freedom in the mind

of the people.'

Love of country was with Tilak a religion, perhaps, the only religion he practised with his whole soul. He said : T regard India as my Motherland and my Goddess, the people in India my kith and kin, and loyal and steadfast work for their political and social emancipation my highest religion and duty.' 'Swaraj is our Dharma', said Tilak, by which he meant that India could not grow into the fullness of her national being unless she was free. And he meant the same thing when he said : 'Without Swaraj;, our life and Dharma are in vain.'

It is significant that the four greatest prophets of Indian Nationalism —Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Lajpat Rai and Bipinchandra—were upholders of the ancient Indian ideal of Dharma, the ideal line of self-development alike for the individual and the collectivity; and this line at that stage of Indian history was love of country and work for her freedom. The prophets therefore impressed upon their countrymen their first duty—to recover the truth of their national self which freedom alone could give, and follow its law, the eternal law of the Spirit, and then proclaim the truth to the world. This was the ultimate significance of Indian freedom. 'From the point of view of the peace of Asia and the world,' said Tilak, 'it is absolutely necessary that India should be self-governed internally and made a bulwark of liberty in the East.' Not only this, free India was to be the guru of the world, for Tilak believed that the day would come when 'we shall see our preachers preaching Sanatana Dharma all over the world'.

Sri Aurobindo and Bipinchandra Pal said and repeated time and again : 'This New Movement is not a mere political movement. It is essentially a spiritual movement,' which for Tilak was the reawakening of 'the spirit of liberty' in the Indian nation. And in this resurgence his was a most dynamic contribution, one of the most powerful of those spiritual forces that worked for and brought about the liberation of this ancient land destined to do a great work of God. 'Tilak stood pre-eminently', said Chittaranjan Das, 'as a herald at the cross-currents of his people's history, and his life and work were the signposts of their future.... He laid the beginning of a greater India reborn for self-fulfilment and the service of humanity.'

Therefore does Tilak's name, says Sri Aurobindo, 'stand for history as a nation-builder, one of the half-dozen greatest political personalities, memorable figures, representative men of the nation in that most critical period of India's destinies, a name to be remembered gratefully so long as the country has pride in its past and hope for its future.'