Indian Unrest - Sir Valentine Chirol

Скачать книгу

the chief centres of the Deccan Ganpati societies, each with its mela or choir recruited among his youthful bands of gymnasts. These festivals gave occasion for theatrical performances[3] and religious songs in which the legends of Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to stir up hatred of the "foreigner"—and mlenccha, the term employed for "foreigner," applied equally to Europeans and to Mahomedans—as well as for tumultuous processions only too well calculated to provoke affrays with the Mahomedans and with the police, which in turn led to judicial proceedings that served as a fresh excuse for noisy protests and inflammatory pleadings. With the Ganpati celebrations the area of Tilak's propaganda was widely increased.

      But the movement had yet to be given a form which should directly appeal to the fighting instincts of the Mahrattas and stimulate active disaffection by reviving memories of olden times when under Shivaji's leadership they had rolled back the tide of Musulman conquest and created a Mahratta Empire of their own. The legends of Shivaji's prowess still lingered in Maharashtra, where the battlemented strongholds which he built crown many a precipitous crag of the Deccan highlands. In a valley below Pratabghar the spot is still shown where Shivaji induced the Mahomedan general, Afzul Khan, to meet him in peaceful conference half-way between the contending armies, and, as he bent down to greet his guest, plunged into his bowels the famous "tiger's claw," a hooked gauntlet of steel, while the Mahratta forces sprang out of ambush and cut the Mahomedan army to pieces. But if Shivaji's memory still lived, it belonged to a past which was practically dead and gone. Only a few years, before an Englishman who had visited Shivaji's tomb had written to a local newspaper calling attention to the ruinous condition into which the people of Maharashtra had allowed the last resting-place of their national hero to fall. Some say it was this letter which first inspired Tilak with the idea of reviving Shivaji's memory and converting it into a living force. Originally it was upon the great days of the Poona Peshwas that Tilak had laid the chief stress, and he may possibly have discovered that theirs were not after all names to conjure with amongst non-Brahman Mahrattas, who had suffered heavily enough at their hands. At any rate, Tilak brought Shivaji to the forefront and set in motion a great "national" propaganda which culminated in 1895 in the celebration at all the chief centres of Brahman activity in the Deccan of Shivaji's reputed birthday, the principal commemoration being held under Tilak's own presidency at Raighar, where the Mahratta chieftain had himself been crowned. What was the purpose and significance of this movement may be gathered from a Shlok or sacred poem improvised on this occasion by one of Tilak's disciples who to acquire sinister notoriety.

      Let us be prompt like Shivaji to engage in desperate enterprises. Take up your swords and shields and we shall cut off countless heads of enemies. Listen! Though we shall have to risk our lives in a national war, we shall assuredly shed the life-blood of our enemies.

      It was on the occasion of the Shivaji "coronation festivities" that the right—nay, the duty—to commit murder for political purposes was first publicly expounded. With Tilak in the chair, a Brahman professor got up to vindicate Shivaji's bloody deed:—

      Who dares to call that man a murderer who, when only nine years old, had received Divine inspiration not to bow down before a Mahomedan Emperor? Who dares to condemn Shivaji for disregarding a minor duty in the performance of a major one? Had Shivaji committed five or fifty crimes more terrible, I would have been equally ready to prostrate myself not once but one hundred times before the image of our lord Shivaji … Every Hindu, every Mahratta must rejoice at this spectacle, for we too are all striving to regain our lost independence, and it is only by combination that we can throw off the yoke.

      Tilak himself was even more outspoken:—

      It is needless to make further researches as to the killing of Afzul Khan. Let us even assume that Shivaji deliberately planned and executed the murder. Was the act good or evil? This question cannot be answered from the standpoint of the Penal Code or of the laws of Manu or according to the principles of morality laid down in the systems of the West or of the East. The laws which bind society are for common folk like you and me. No one seeks to trace the genealogy of a Rishi or to fasten guilt upon a Maharaj. Great men are above the common principles of morality. Such principles do not reach to the pedestal of a great man. Did Shivaji commit a sin in killing Afzul Khan? The answer to this question can be found in the Mahabharata itself. The Divine Krishna teaching in the Gita tells us we may kill even our teachers and our kinsmen, and no blame attaches if we are not actuated by selfish desires. Shivaji did nothing from a desire to fill his own belly. It was in a praiseworthy object that he murdered Afzul Khan for the good of others. If thieves enter our house and we have not strength to drive them out, should we not without hesitation shut them in, and burn them alive? God has conferred on the mlencchas (foreigners) no grant of Hindustan inscribed on imperishable brass. Shivaji strove to drive them forth out of the land of his birth, but he was guiltless of the sin of covetousness. Do not circumscribe your vision like frogs in a well. Rise above the Penal Code into the rarefied atmosphere of the sacred Bhaghavad Gita and consider the action of great men.

      In the reflected blaze of this apotheosis of Shivaji, Tilak stood forth as the appointed leader of the "nation." He was the triumphant champion of Hindu orthodoxy, the high-priest of Ganesh, the inspired prophet of a new "nationalism," which in the name of Shivaji would cast out the hated mlencchas and restore the glories of Mahratta history. The Government feared him, for people could put no other construction on the official confirmation of his election when he was returned in 1895 as a member of the Bombay Legislative Council—above all, when inside the Council-room he continued with the same audacity and the same impunity his campaign of calumny and insult. His activity was unceasing. He disdained none of the arts which make for popularity. His house was always open to those who sought in the right spirit for assistance or advice. He had absolute control of the Sabha and ruled the municipality of Poona. In private and in public, through his speeches and through his newspapers, he worked upon the prejudices and passions of both the educated and the uneducated, and especially upon the crude enthusiasm of the young. Towards the end of 1896 the Deccan was threatened with famine. Hungry stomachs are prompt to violence, and Tilak started a "no-rent" campaign. Like all Tilak's schemes in those days it was carefully designed to conceal as far as possible any direct incitement to the withholding of land revenue. His missionaries went round with a story that Government had issued orders not to collect taxes where the crops had fallen below a certain yield. The rayats believed them, and when the tax-gatherer arrived they refused payment. Trouble then arose. Outrages such as the mutilation of the Queen's statue at Bombay, the attempt to fire the Church Mission Hall, the assaults upon "moderate" Hindus who refused to toe the line, became ominously frequent. Worse was to follow when the plague appeared. The measures at first adopted by Government to check the spread of this new visitation doubtless offended in many ways against the customs and prejudices of the people, especially the searching and disinfection of houses, and the forcible removal of plague-patients even when they happened to be Brahmans. What Tilak could do by secret agitation and by a rabid campaign in the Press to raise popular resentment to a white heat he did. The Kesari published incitements to violence which were put into the mouth of Shivaji himself[4]. The inevitable consequences ensued. On June 27, 1897, on their way back from an official reception in celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Mr. Rand, an Indian civilian, who was President of the Poona Plague Committee, and Lieutenant Ayerst, of the Commissariat Department, were shot down by Damodhar Chapekur, a young Chitpavan Brahman, on the Ganeshkind road. No direct connexion has been established between that crime and Tilak. But, like the murderer of Mr. Jackson at Nasik last winter, the murderer of Rand and Ayerst—the same young Brahman who had recited the Shlok, which I have quoted above, at the great Shivaji celebration—declared that it was the doctrines expounded in Tilak's newspapers that had driven him to the deed. The murderer who had merely given effect to the teachings of Tilak was sentenced to death, but Tilak himself, who was prosecuted for a seditious article published a few days before the murder, received only a short term of imprisonment, and was released before the completion of his term under certain pledges of good behaviour which he broke as soon as it suited him to break them.

      Thus ended the first campaign of Indian unrest, which, in its details, has served as an incitement and a model to all those who have conducted subsequent operations in the same field.

      The Poona murders sent a thrill of horror

Скачать книгу