Indian Unrest - Sir Valentine Chirol

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most enlightened and progressive Indians of our times and many have served the British Raj with unquestioned loyalty and integrity. But amongst many others—perhaps indeed amongst the great majority—there has undoubtedly been preserved for the last hundred years from the time of the downfall of the Peshwa dominion to the present day, an unbroken tradition of hatred towards British rule, an undying hope that it might some day be subverted and their own ascendency restored. Not to go back to the exploits of Nana Sahib, himself a Chitpavan, and his followers during the Mutiny, or to the Ramoshi rebellion round Poona in 1879, it was in Poona that the native Press, mainly conducted by Brahmans, first assumed that tone of virulent hostility towards British rule and British rulers which led to the Press Act of 1879, and some of the worst extracts quoted at that time by the Government of India in support of that measure were taken from Poona newspapers. It was in Poona that some years later the assassination of two English officials by a young Chitpavan Brahman was the first outcome of a fresh campaign, leading directly to political murder. It was by another Chitpavan Brahman that Mr. Jackson was murdered last December at Nasik; his accomplices were with one exception Chitpavan Brahmans, and to the same sept of Brahmans belong nearly all the defendants in the great conspiracy trial now proceeding at Bombay.

      But if there were already, more than 20 years ago, wild and irreconcilable spirits bent on fomenting disaffection, there were amongst the Deccanee Brahmans themselves a small intellectual élite who, though by no means servile apologists of British rule, fully realized that their primary duty was not to stir up popular passion against alien rulers, but to bring Hindu society into closer communion with the higher civilization which those rulers, whatever their shortcomings, undoubtedly represented. Conspicuous amongst such men was Mahadev Govind Ranade. Equally conspicuous in the opposite camp was a man of a very different stamp, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who was destined to become one of the most dangerous pioneers of disaffection. It was a Hindu gentleman and a Brahman who told me that if I wanted to study the psychology of Indian unrest I should begin by studying Tilak's career. "Tilak's onslaught in Poona upon Ranade, his alliance with the bigots of orthodoxy, his appeals to popular superstition in the new Ganpati celebrations, to racial fanaticism in the 'Anti-Cow-killing Movement,' to Mahratta sentiment in the cult which he introduced of Shivaji, his active propaganda amongst schoolboys and students, his gymnastic societies, his preaching in favour of physical training, and last but not least his control of the Press and the note of personal violence which he imparted to newspaper polemics, represent the progressive stages of a highly-organized campaign which has served as a model to the apostles of unrest all over India." This was a valuable piece of advice, for, if any one can claim to be truly the father of Indian unrest, it is Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The story of his initial campaign in the Deccan, though it dates back to the closing decades of the last century, is still well worth studying, and has, in fact, never received adequate attention, for on the one hand it pricks the shallow view that Indian unrest is merely an echo of the Japanese victories in Manchuria, and, on the other hand, it illustrates clearly the close connexion that exists between the forces of Indian political disaffection and those of social and religious reaction, whilst the methods which he employed and the results which attended his activity have been reproduced with singular fidelity in subsequent phases of the movement.

      When Tilak entered upon public life in the early eighties, the Brahmans of the Deccan were divided into two camps, one of which, headed at first by the late Mr. Justice Ranade, consisted of a small intellectual élite, who held, without forgoing their right to criticize British administrators or to promote political reforms by constitutional methods, that Indians of all creeds, including the Hindus, should begin by reforming their own social institutions, and bring them into greater harmony with Western standards. Tilak, a Chitpavan Brahman of considerable erudition, who had graduated with honours at Bombay, had, however, inherited his full share of Chitpavan hostility to British ascendency. He was also by temperament and ambition impatient of all restraint, and jealous of the commanding authority which a man like Ranade owed quite as much to the nobility of his character as to his social position and force of intellect. In opposition to Ranade, with whom he had at first co-operated as an educationist, Tilak drifted rapidly into the reactionary camp. The battle was first engaged over the control of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Education Society, two progressive associations which, though mainly composed of Brahmans, included a sprinkling of Mahomedans and of non-Brahman Hindus. Tilak had thrown himself into journalism, and after the repeal of the Indian Press Law on the return of a Liberal Administration to office at home in 1881, he had been amongst the first to revive the incendiary methods which it had temporarily and very successfully checked. His first onslaught upon Ranade's position, however, failed, and instead of supplanting him, it was he who was compelled in 1890 to sever his connexion with the Education Society.

      Tilak's defeat was short lived. The introduction of the Age of Consent Bill, in 1890, to mitigate the evils of Hindu child-marriage, gave him a fresh opening. Ranade, discouraged and alarmed by the violence of the Tilak party, had by this time retired from the forefront of the fray, but in Dr. Bhandarkar, Mr. Justice Tilang, Mr. A.K. Nulkar, Mr. (now Sir N.G.) Chandavarkar, and other courageous Hindu reformers, with whom Mr. Gokhale was always ready to co-operate against the forces of religious superstition, he had left disciples ready to carry on the good fight. Tilak raised against them a storm of passion and prejudice. In the columns of the Kesari, of which he had become sole proprietor, he denounced every Hindu who supported the measure as a renegade and a traitor to the cause of Hinduism, and thus won the support of conservative orthodoxy, which had hitherto viewed with alarm some of his literary excursions into the field of Vedantic exegesis. With the help of the brothers Natu, who were the recognized leaders of Hindu orthodoxy, he carried his propaganda into the schools and colleges in the teeth of the Moderate party, and, proclaiming that unless they learnt to employ force the Hindus must expect to be impotent witnesses of the gradual downfall of all their ancient institutions, he proceeded to organize gymnastic societies in which physical training and the use of more or less primitive weapons were taught in order to develop the martial instincts of the rising generation.

      If amongst many Brahmans of Maharashtra hatred of the British is the dominant passion, amongst the Mahratta population at large whatever there is of racial and religious jealousy is mainly directed against the Mahomedans. This is partly, no doubt, a legacy of the old days of Mahomedan supremacy. In 1893 some riots in Bombay of a more severe character than usual gave Tilak an opportunity of broadening the new movement by enlisting in its support the old anti-Mahomedan feeling of the people. He not only convoked popular meetings in which his fiery eloquence denounced the Mahomedans as the sworn foes of Hinduism, but he started an organization known as the "Anti-Cow-Killing Society," which was intended and regarded as a direct provocation to the Mahomedans, who, like ourselves, think it no sacrilege to eat beef. In vain did liberal Hindus appeal to him to desist from these inflammatory methods. Their appeals had no effect upon him, and merely served his purpose by undermining the little authority they still possessed. Government had forbidden Hindu processions to play music whilst passing in front of Mahomedan mosques, as this was a fertile cause of riotous affrays. Tilak not only himself protested against this "interference with the liberties of the people," but insisted that the Sarvajanik Sabha should identify itself with the "national" cause and memorialize Government for the removal of a prohibition so offensive to Hindu sentiment. The Moderates hesitated, but were overawed by popular clamour and the threats of the Tilak Press. The Mahomedans and a few other members repudiated the memorial and resigned. Tilak, though not yet in absolute control of the Sabha, became already practically its master. No one knew better than he how to compel submission by packed meetings and organized rowdyism.

      Tilak's propaganda had at the same time steadily assumed a more and more anti-British character, and it was always as the allies and the tools of Government, in its machinations against Hinduism, that the Hindu reformers and the Mahomedans had in turn been denounced. In order to invest it with a more definitely religious sanction, Tilak placed it under the special patronage of the most popular deity in India. Though Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is the god of learning whom Hindu writers delight to invoke on the title-page of their books, there is scarcely a village or a frequented roadside in India that does not show some rude presentment of his familiar features, usually smeared over with red ochre, Tilak could not have devised a more popular move than when he set himself to organize annual festivals in honour of Ganesh, known as Ganpati celebrations,

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