Martyrs and revolutionaries of India's freedom
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| When I think of the supremely corrupt, effete, supine, and spiritless Union Cabinet Ministers in the UPA Government reporting to a Prime Minister, cast in the same disgusting mould, also bowing his head in nervous reverential supplication before a 'Woman' who has usurped transitory power without a coup d 'e tat, the only civilized option open to me today is to derive my inspiration from the lives of great martyrs and revolutionaries in the cause of India's freedom like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad, Sukhdev, Rajaguru, Jatin Das and many others. All of them heroically gave their lives so that the nation can live in freedom. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) said it for all times when he said: �Revolution is the lava of civilization�. Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) was hanged in Lahore Jail on 23 March 1931. His martyrdom shook the entire nation. �He became a symbol, the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village in Punjab and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name. Innumerable songs grew up about him and the popularity that the man achieved was amazing�. This is the centenary year of Bhagat Singh's birth. The basic facts relating to the life and times of Bhagat Singh which I am presenting below have been drawn from an inspiring book titled SAGA OF PATRIOTISM, Revolutionaries in India's Freedom Struggle by Sadhu Prof.V.Rangarajan and R.Vivekanandan. Bhagat Singh was born on September 28, 1907, in a family of patriots and freedom fighters belonging to Banga village in Layalpur District of the then undivided Punjab and now in Pakistan. At the time of his birth, his father Kishen Singh was in jail. To quote the words of Sadhu Prof.V.Rangarajan and R Vivekanandan: �Even as he was in the womb of his mother, like the great hero of Mahabharata�Veer Abhimanyu�Bhagat Singh imbibed the spirit of patriotism and revolution from the songs of freedom fighters who used to assemble at �Kranti Niketan�, the house of Kishen Singh. No wonder that the child was a born revolutionary. |  (1907-1931) |
In 1924, Bhagat Singh founded the NAUJAVAN BHARAT SABHA in Lahore, a secret revolutionary organisation and its branches soon started spreading to other parts of Punjab and even outside that Province. The Sabha organized virulent and hectic propaganda against the British Government in India, hailing the heroic martyrs who sacrificed their lives and calling upon the people to revolt against the Government. When the police laid a net to trap Bhagat Singh in Lahore, he secretly left for Kanpur in the United Provinces. He attended the Belgaum Session of the Indian National Congress in 1924. Later he returned to Punjab and started working as Editor of �Akali�, published from Amritsar.
The disillusionment caused by the suspension of the Non-Cooperation Movement by Mahatma Gandhi in 1922 following the Chauri Chaura Massacre, led to a renewal of revolutionary activities. Jogesh Chatterjee and Sachin Sanyal founded the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) in 1923. A leaflet, "REVOLUTIONARY", issued by it proclaimed its aim to establish the "FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF UNITED STATES OF INDIA" by an armed revolution. To raise funds for the HRA, there was a train hold-up, to loot Government money, near Kakori Station on the Lucknow-Saharanpur Railway line in August 1925. Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah and others organized the hold-up. Soon, many important members of the HRA were arrested and tried in the Kakori Conspiracy Case. Four of them were awarded capital punishment. Chandrasekar Azad escaped and reorganized the HRA which joined hands with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha organized by Bhagat Singh in 1925.
8 September, 1928 is indeed a red-letter day in the history of Indian Revolutionary Movement which was initiated by Khudiram Bose in Bengal. The young revolutionaries all over the country, including Bhagat Singh and Rajguru, met at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and established the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) to coordinate the violent Revolutionary Movement throughout the country. Though Chandrasekar Azad was not present at that time, he had already offered his full support to the move and he himself was elected as President of the Army whose declared aim was to bring about a revolution in the country. It was with this objective in mind that Bhagat Singh arranged to reprint and distribute copies of the proscribed book, �The Indian War of Independence (1857)� by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966).
In December 1928, Saunders, a Police Officer in Lahore City who had ordered the physical assault on Lala Lajpat Rai during the �Simon Go Back� demonstration, was assassinated. In April 1929, Bhagat Singh and B K Datt through threw bombs and 'Red Pamphlets' in the Central Legislative Assembly in protest against the repressive Trade Dispute and Public Safety Bills and the arrest of labour leaders earlier in March. They were arrested and tried in the Assembly Bomb Case and, later, along with others, in the Lahore Conspiracy Case for the murder of Saunders and an Indian Constable. In jail Bhagat Singh and others went on a historic group hunger-strike for securing better conditions for political prisoners, which ended in the martyrdom of Jatin Das on the 64th day of his hunger-strike. Of the 15 accused, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death and seven to transportation for life. Bhagat Singh and his comrades became legends in their life-time. At the time of his execution in March 1931, Bhagat Singh's popularity all over India rivaled that of Mahatma Gandhi. An attempt was made to blow up the Viceroy's train in December 1929. The 'ever elusive Azad' who had escaped arrest earlier fell in a shootout with the police in Allahabad.
When Bhagat Singh was hanged in March 1931, there was a widespread general belief that Gandhiji did not do enough to save the lives of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev while negotiating with Viceroy Irwin. When Gandhiji wrote a letter to Lord Irwin in March 1931�the day on which Bhagat Singh was hanged�under pressure, it was a very feeble plea for commutation of his sentence. Gandhiji wrote: 'Popular opinion rightly or wrongly demands commutation. When there is not a principle at stake, it is often a duty to respect it'. There were anti-Gandhi demonstrations throughout the country. When Gandhiji travelled by train to attend the Karachi Session of the Congress he got down at Malir station, fifteen miles from Karachi to avoid the angry demonstrators. Some of them had even reached Malir. In spite of Gandhiji's uncalled for warning that, 'The Bhagat Singh worship has done and is doing incalculable harm to the country', the legend of Bhagat Singh still continues and will do so for ages to come.
I have been inspired to write this story on Bhagat Singh by the disgraceful attempt being made by the anti-national and soul-destroying UPA Government in New Delhi to run down freedom fighters and martyrs who laid down their lives for the cause of our national freedom as misdirected terrorists. Of late, in many school textbooks approved by the Government of India, heroes like Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekar Azad, Sukhdev and Rajguri have been labeled as violent terrorists. No wretched Government can ever confiscate sacred public thoughts and memories. The last words uttered by Bhagat Singh to the Magistrate who sentenced him to death in March 1931 will ring across centuries: �Well, Mr Magistrate, you are fortunate to be able to see how Indian Revolutionaries can embrace death with pleasure for the sake of their Supreme Ideals�.
These great martyrs walked into death for the sake of our motherland. The words of the poet Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) are wholly applicable to such heroes:
�They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow,
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.�
| When I first read about the saga of courage and self-sacrifice of the heroic freedom fighter Chandrasekhar Azad (1906-1931), the following declaration made by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) on 13 November, 1787 in a letter to his friend Col William Smith came to my mind: 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure'. Chandrasekhar Azad was born on 23 July 1906 in village Bhavra in Jhabua district of the present Madhya Pradesh to Pandit Sitaram Tiwari and Jagarani Devi. At that time Bhavra was a Tahsil of Alirajpur State. His father, Pandit Sitaram Tiwari, had moved from Badarka village of Unnav District in Uttar Pradesh to Bahvra village in Madhya Pradesh, during the famine of 1856 and settled down as a milk vendor. Azad received his early schooling in Bhavra. He used to mix with the Bhils of his village, joining them in their hunting expeditions into the nearby forests. He had learnt the art of archery and became an expert archer. Endowed with extraordinary physical prowess and courage, he easily became the unquestioned leader of the village boys. |  (1906-1931) |
When the Non-Cooperation Movement started in 1921, Chandrasekhar plunged headlong into it. As a tender boy of less than 15 years, Azad was arrested in 1921 for participating in the Non-Cooperation Movement and offering Sathyagraha in front of the Government Sanskrit College at Benaras. Azad was produced before a Parsi Magistrate called Khareghat who was known for his cruelty and inhuman treatment of political workers and prisoners. When he asked the boy his name, pat came the reply:
�My name is 'Azad' (Free).
'Father's name?'
�Swadheen� (Independent)
'Place of residence?'
�Jail�
 KAKORI CONSPIRACY | Khareghat, who was a tyrant, considered the answers given by Chandrasekhar Azad as totally impertinent and uncalled for. He wanted to teach a lesson to the young boy. He passed an order to the effect that Azad should be given 15 whip stripes. Accordingly Azad was taken to the Central Jail where he was stripped naked and tied so fast that he could not move any part of his body. A stout sweeper wielded the whip and the jailor counted the strokes. As each stroke of the whip lashed his bare back, Azad shouted slogans like 'Vande Mataram', 'Bharat Mata Ke Jai' and 'Mahatma Gandhi ke Jai'. Like Veer Hanuman, he stood his ground even as the whip strokes came in torrents, making his entire back a mess of wounded flesh and oozing blood. Till that moment this brave and courageous boy was known as Chandrasekhar Tiwari. After this gruesome episode, he came to be known as Chandrasekhar Azad. The news of the crowd and cruel punishment meted out to a young boy of less than 15 years spread like a wild fire and when he came out of the prison he was given an ovation at a mammoth public meeting at Gnanbapi at Benaras. Thus Chandrasekhar Azad emerged as the unsurpassed hero of millions of his countrymen. 'The Maryada', a newspaper edited by Sampoornanand, published his photograph with a caption: �FEARLESS BOY AZAD� |  after Chandrasekhar Azad�s Martyrdom |
From that moment Chandrasekhar Azad resolved to answer the British in the language of pistols and bombs�a fitting reply he thought for the inhuman atrocities perpetrated by them on the innocent people of India. Babu Shiv Prasad Gupta, a patriot and a rich man in Benaras took a fancy to Chandrasekhar Azad and started helping him in a significant way with financial assistance towards his revolutionary activities. Chandrasekhar Azad became a member of the revolutionary group working under the leadership of Ramaprasad Bismil.
In January 1926, the revolutionaries which included Rajendra Lehri, Ramaprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh, Ashfaqulla and Chandrasekhar Azad stopped railway train at KAKORI VILLAGE in Lucknow District and looted the train. They succeeded in taking away the railway cash to the tune of thousands of rupees. The accused were charged under Section 121 A (Waging war against King Emperor), Section 129 (Criminal conspiracy) and Section 302 (Murder). Of the ten persons who participated in the train hold-up at Kakori, Rajendra Lehri, Ramaprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Ashfaqulla were sentenced to death. Chandrasekhar Azad had managed to escape.
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After the train hold-up at Kakori, a meeting of important revolutionaries was held at Meerut. Two special invitees were Bhagat Singh from Lahore and Jatindra Nath Das from Calcutta. Chandrasekhar Azad took up the responsibility of organizing the revolutionary forces in northern India. Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad thought that the best way to begin with was to rescue senior and tested revolutionaries like Sachindranath Sanyal, Jogesh Chatterji and Ramaprasad Bismil from Jail. They drew up a secret plan for the rescue operation. However the police got scent of the secret plan and consequently the attempt of the revolutionaries became futile.
On 8 September 1928, Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and other revolutionaries met at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and established the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) for the armed liberation of India. Though Chandrasekhar Azad was not present at that meeting, yet he was unanimously elected as the Commander-in-Chief of the HSRA. Factories for making bombs were set up at Lahore, Saharanpur, Calcutta and Agra. In Kanpur, Azad set up a bomb factory for which the raw materials were produced in another factory in Gwalior. Azad later set up a bomb factory in Delhi which functioned under the name �The Himalayan Toilets�. In the day time this factory produced toilet soaps and in the night materials for bomb manufacture.
As the Commander-in-Chief of the HSRA, Chandrasekhar Azad was actively involved in the attempt to blow up the viceroy's train (1926), the shooting of Saunders at Lahore (1928) to avenge the killing of Lala Lajpatrai and the Assembly bomb incident at Delhi (1929).
Chandrasekhar Azad was constantly on the run after 1928 and was pursued by the police. On 27 February, 1931, Azad, Yashpal and Pandey had assembled at Allahabad to chalk out the future course of action. Later Azad went to Alfred Park to meet another revolutionary leader Sukh Dev. A member of the HSRA, Birbhadra Tiwari, betrayed them and passed on the information to the police. When Azad and Sukh Dev were engaged in a conversation, a large police party under the leadership of an English police Officer called Nutt Bower, surrounded the park. Azad jumped up and whipped out his revolver, instructed Sukh Dev to escape and challenged the police to take him alive. Gun shots were exchanged. A bullet from Nutt Bower hit Azad on the thigh. However Azad was overpowered by the police and before they could arrest him, he shot himself to death.Thus he fulfilled his vow� 'Azad will ever remain Azad' (Independent).
Why do we remember great freedom fighters like Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev, Raj Guru ad others today? I can give a fitting reply in the blazing words of another great revolutionary Veer Savarkar (1883-1966): �Why, then, should the historical functions be celebrated? To pay our national gratitude we owe to those heroic souls. They should be celebrated as a mark of reverence and remembrance of the immense good those benevolent men have done to the world, because they have sacred sanction of ancient traditions. They are the clouds which shower the nectar of instruction. They are the monuments of virtues. They are the chemicals that act as an incentive to human thoughts and feelings. They are the preceptors who impart virtuous instruction to the youths. They are the living history of the deeds of noble heroes. Functions in their honour should be celebrated because of this. There are so many advantages and definitely no disadvantages. Especially we, Hindus, should take to these functions for emerging out of the present degraded state which was the result of want of self- respect and dutifulness. For, that is the only easy and sure path to the prosperity of the nation.�
I have just finished reading 'Bhagat Singh - The Jail Notebook and other Writings', compiled with an introduction by Chaman Lal, Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Editor of Bhagat Singh Aur Unke Sathiyon ke Dastavez, the collected works of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. The Jail Notebook has been annotated by Bhupinder Hooja (1922-2006) who was a student activist in the Revolutionary Movement in the 1940s and who later had a distinguished career as a journalist, broadcaster and administrator. The other writings of Bhagat Singh included in this book are from 'Selected Writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh', edited with an introduction by Shiv Verma and published in 1986.
Bhagat Singh was executed in Lahore Jail on 23 March, 1931. Bhagat Singh was in jail for nearly two years from 8 April, 1929 to 23 March, 1931. During this period, Bhagat Singh and his comrades fought one of the most celebrated court battles in the annals of struggles for national liberation and freedom. What is most inspiring to note is that they very ingeniously converted the court into a convenient vehicle for the propagation of their revolutionary message. They also launched a strike against the inhuman conditions in the Colonial Jail in Lahore and were subjected to torture and pain by the Police in British India. The saga of their heroism and fearless self-sacrifice have made them icons and idols of inspiration for all time to come.
 | Let us celebrate Bhagat Singh�s centenary |
While all this is known, what is not so well-known is that in a very short life span of less than 24 years, Bhagat Singh wrote four books and they were all written in Lahore Jail in the last two years of his life. Unfortunately for posterity, though those books were smuggled out, yet they were subsequently destroyed and thus lost for ever. What has survived is a JAIL NOTEBOOK that Bhagat Singh kept as a young martyr which is full of notes and occasional jottings from what he was reading in jail. The Congress Party has considered only the jail writings of Nehru and Gandhi as relevant or sacred to the nation. Thus sixty years after August 15 1947, on the eve of Independence Day tomorrow, we are a nation�a mere notion�without an identity, a nation without a soul. We have political scoundrels holding the highest public offices in the land having the audacity to describe great freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Raja Guru and Chandrashekar Azad as terrorists.
The anecdotes and stories associated with Bhagat Singh's childhood have become a part of song, legend and popular story in Punjab and several other parts of India. As a child of four, he told the well-known freedom fighter Mehta Anand Kishore that 'he would sow riffles in the fields, so that trees would yield weapons with which the British could be driven away'. As a boy of 12, he visited the Jallianwalabagh a few days later after the massacre in April 1919 and brought back as sacred souvenir a pack of blood soaked earth. His grandfather S. Arjun Singh was a staunch Arya Samajist and under his inspiration Bhagat Singh learnt Sanskrit, in addition to Urdu, English and Hindi.
 | (See Bhagat Singh�s Signature And The Facsimile Of His Handwriting) |
It is amazing to note that even as a young boy of 15, Bhagat Singh was hotly debating with his father Mahatma Gandhi's knee-jerk decision to withdraw the Non-Cooperation Movement following the Chauri Chaura massacre in the United Provinces (UP) in 1922. The withdrawal of Non-Cooperation Movement had the immediate effect of radicalizing the youth of India. There is no doubt that great revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Chadrashekar Azad, Sukhdev, Rajaguru and many others chose the path of armed revolution only because of Mahatma Gandhi's tepid decision to call off the Non-Cooperation Movement. Thus many sections of the youth were attracted to the revolutionary groups of Anushilan and Yugantar in Bengal or the Hindustan Republican Association in the United Provinces (UP). Bhagat Singh went to Kanpur in 1923 after writing to his father that he would not marry since he was determined to dedicate his whole life to the cause of the nation. In Kanpur he joined Pratap, a newspaper whose Editor at that time was Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, one of the front rank Congress leaders in UP. Bhagat Singh started writing in the Pratap under the pen name Balwant. When six Babbar Akali Revolutionaries were executed in 1926, Bhagat Singh wrote a fiery article �Blood Drops on Holi Day� ('Holi ke Din Rakt ke Chhinte') was published in the Pratap with the byline 'A Punjabi Youth'. Simultaneously Bhagat Singh was also writing for a Punjabi journal run by the Ghadarite Revolutionaries of Punjab called Kirti(Punjabi). He wrote on leading contemporary issues of the time on public subjects as varied as �Communalism and its Solution�, �Problem of Untouchability�, �Religion and Our Freedom Struggle�etc. Through his seminal articles in Kirti journal, Bhagat Singh clearly demonstrated his versatile ability as a fearless journalist and freedom fighter.
Anyone can see from this Jail Notebook that Bhagat Singh was a great scholar and voracious reader. An economist, a political scientist, a historian, a sociologist, an agitator, a freedom fighter and above all a martyr in the cause of India's freedom�Bhagat Singh was all this and more. We can also see that as a student, his friends remembered him as being fond of films, especially Charlie Chaplin's Films. As a good singer and actor, he took part in college plays.
The Jail Notebook became well-known in India only after 1994. Long before that, the Soviet scholar L.V. Mitrokhin discussed the Notebook in detail in 1981 in his book 'Lenin and India', the Hindi translation of which was published in 1990. In this book, Mitrokhin devoted one full chapter to �The Last Days of Bhagat Singh�. Earlier Mitrokhin had written an article on �The Books read by Bhagat Singh� in 1971. In the same year, another Soviet Scholar, A.V. Raikov also wrote an article on �Bhagat Singh and his Ideological Legacy�. Bhagat Singh was a great admirer of Lenin and therefore it is not surprising that the Soviet scholars ideologically placed him in the Marxist tradition. There can be no doubt about the fact that without visiting Russia, Bhagat Singh showed a greater understanding of nuances of Marxism and Leninism than Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru who wrote an infantile book on Russia after visiting that country in 1927. When the executioners came to his cell on the evening of March 23, 1931 to take him to the gallows, they found Bhagat Singh reading Lenin.
 | 1929 that there are 404 pages in the Notebook kept by him in Lahore Jail |
The historic trial of Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary comrades resulted in the cry �Inquilab Zindabad� (Long Live Revolution) throughout the country. When Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutta threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly and threw the copies of the historic pamphlet �TO MAKE THE DEAF HEAR� on April 8, 1929, the Assembly erupted and dissolved in commotion and consternation. Members ran helter-skelter. Only a very few�amongst them, Pundit Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malviya and Jinnah�remained cool. On Bhagat Singh's specific directions, it had been earlier decided that after actually throwing the bombs, they would not try to escape, but would get arrested. As planned, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutta heroically surrendered to the Police. The Hindustan Times in New Delhi brought out a special evening edition on 8 April, 1929, publishing the full text of the statement of Bhagat Singh and others contained in the historic pamphlet. They proclaimed:
�IT TAKES A LOUD VOICE TO MAKE THE DEAF HEAR�, with these immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Auguste Valliant (1861 - 1894), a French anarchist martyr, do we strongly justify this action of ours. �. Inquilab Zindabad!
To come back to Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook and other writings, we should note that Bhagat Singh had three main agendas in jail from 8 April, 1929 till his execution on 23 March, 1931: a) To use the trial and the publicity he and his comrades were getting to spread the ideas of the great revolutionaries and propagate their message; b) To fully expose to the world the inhumanity and brutality of the British Colonial State by resorting to protests, including hunger strikes, inside the Jail; c) To equip and advance himself politically and ideologically by subjecting himself to the academic discipline of a rigorous and structured programme of extensive and intensive reading. While the whole of India knows that Bhagat Singh succeeded magnificently in achieving his first two agendas, yet it is unfortunate that the country as a whole is completely unaware of the fact that he was a great intellectual with extraordinary ideals and convictions who buried himself in a programme of unremitting intellectual toil and exertions during the last two years of his incarceration.
On page 37 of the Jail Notebook, Bhagat Singh has written the following famous lines of James Russel Lowell (1819-1891), American poet and editor of 'Atlantic Monthly':
�They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three�.
Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of our independence. Given the disastrous political conditions in Sonia's India (and all her slaves in the UPA), I have no doubt that even if Bhagat Singh were given the option by God of coming back to life today, he would rather vote for instantaneous death with greater fervour, passion and anger than he did in 1931.
THE JAIL NOTEBOOK of Bhagat Singh is a document of great historical significance. It was edited by Bhupinder Hooja and published for the first time in 1994. Chaman Lal, Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, has rightly observed: �BHAGAT SINGH'S JAIL NOTEBOOK, however, is quite different from the Prison Notebooks of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), or the Philosophical Notebooks of Lenin (1870-1924) or even the Diaries of Che Guevara (1928-1967). Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook is not a Diary at all in the conventional sense, in that it does not record his daily life in the Prison, nor his thoughts and emotions. Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook is a record of his study and reading in the Prison prior to his execution. It helps us to understand the roots and trajectory of his political and philosophical role and development. It also reflects his esthetic taste and sensibilities, as it contains a large number of quotations from literary classics from across the world�.
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Bhagat Singh was a keen student of world history. He firmly believed that world history is nothing but philosophy teaching by example. History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy. In the last two years of his life in Jail, unmindful of the sure prospect of death by hanging, inspired and sustained by nothing but his soaring and deathless idealism, Bhagat Singh immersed himself in books on history�political, economic, social, religious and cultural�and literature and law. His immortal message to us on every page of his Jail Notebook can be paraphrased by me in this manner: �Books are bred by men, men by life and life by books through a constant interrelation and cross-fertilization, so that an element of political, social, economic, and cultural history can scarcely be dispensed with in any account of literary phenomena and forces�.
The only inference we can draw from the quotations in his Jail Notebook is that Bhagat Singh was greatly inspired by the political writings of John Locke (1632 � 1704), particularly by his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the Two Treatises of Civil Government (1680 -1690) and A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). It is an accepted fact that John Locke had a tremendous intellectual and political influence on men like Thomas Jefferson (1743 -1826), George Washington (1732 � 1799), Benjamin Franklin (1706 -1790) and John Adams (1735 � 1826) and many others who created the American State in the last two decades of the 18th century. On page 23 of the Jail Notebook, Bhagat Singh, under the heading Tree of Liberty, has recorded the following quotation of Thomas Jefferson with approval: �The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure�.
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On page 24 of the Jail Notebook, we see the following inspiring message from the Will of Fanscisco Ferrer (1859 � 1909), a Spanish Catalan free-thinker and anarchist:
�I also wish my friends to speak little or not at all about me, because idols are created when men are praised, and this is very bad for the future of the human race.... Acts alone, no matter by whom committed, ought to be studied, praised or blamed. Let them be praised in order that they may be initiated when they see to contribute to the common weal; let them be censured when they are regarded as injurious to the well-being, so that they may not be repeated. I desire that on no occasion, whether near or remote, nor for any reason whatsoever, shall demonstrations of a political or religious character be made before my remains, as I consider the time devoted to the dead would be better employed in improving the conditions of the living, most of whom stand in great need of this.� Men like Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Kamaraj are being idolized by the Congress Party with supreme unconcern for the current problems being faced by the toiling and faceless poor masses of India today.
On page 21, Bhagat Singh quotes the following poem of Walt Whitman (1819 � 1892) on LIBERTY:
�Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets-
Those hearts pierced by the grey lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere
With unslaughtered vitality.
They live in other young men, O Kings!
They live in other brothers again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death-
They were taught and exalted!�
On page 25 of the Jail Notebook, Bhagat Singh has quoted the famous poem of FIGHT FOR FREEDOM by William Wordsworth (1770-1850). On page 26, we see him recording in his own hand-writing the immortal poem THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE by Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). He has also translated a few of the lines from this poem into Urdu. The facsimile of his writing of this poem (both in English and Urdu) is presented below:
Bhagat Singh thought deeply about Law, Justice and Jurisprudence and their impact on society and politics through the ages. Bhagat Singh was convinced that Law without Justice resulted in only an arid formation. Here are some of his observations in his Jail Notebook (pages 105-106):
Historical Jurisprudence: Deals with the general principles governing the origin and development of Law; legal conceptions. It is the history.
Ethical Jurisprudence: Is concerned with the theory of justice in its relation to Law.
Law and Justice: The total disregard of the ethical implications of the Law tends to reduce analytical jurisprudence to a system which is only in the nature of an arid formation.
According to Bhagat Singh, in England, two different words 'Law' and 'Justice', are a constant reminder that these are two different things and not the same thing. And their use tends to hide from view the real and intimate relation which exists between them. In the European Continent, Bhagat Singh says that �Continental Speech� conceals the difference between �Law� and �Right�, whereas the �English Speech� conceals the connection between them.
On Page 107, Bhagat Singh has quoted Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), English jurist, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vol. (1765�69), is the best-known description of the doctrines of English law. The work became the basis of university legal education in England and North America. He was knighted in 1770. Here is the quotation given by Bhagat Singh from Blackstone:
�Law in its most general sense signifies a rule of action and is indiscriminate to all kinds of action, whether rational or irrational, animate or inanimate. Thus we say, the Laws of Motion, of Gravitation, of Optics, of Nature, and of Nations.�
On page 104 of his Jail Notebook, it is fascinating to note that Bhagat Singh, under the title 'All Legislators Defined as Criminals', has quoted Feodor Mikhailovach Dostoevski (1821-1881), one of the greatest Russian novelists in world literature. In his famous novel 'Crime and Punishment', he wrote as follows: �All Legislators and Rulers of men commencing with the earliest down to Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomed, Napoleon, etc. etc., have, one and all, been criminals, for, while giving new laws, they have naturally broken through older ones which had been faithfully observed by society and transmitted by its progenitors�.
On page 107, Bhagat Singh defines the pernicious nature of 'Foreign Subjugation' in the words of Prof. A.E. Ross: �Subjugation to foreign yoke is one of the most potent causes of the decay of nations�.
There are brilliant quotations under the headings and themes like 'Life and Education', 'Truth', 'Desire vs. contentment', 'Aims of Life', 'Science of the State', 'Kinds of Governments', 'Sovereignty of the People', 'French Revolution', 'Hindu Civilization', and many other interesting subjects.
On page 278, under the title 'No Indian Parliament Conceivable!', Bhagat Singh has noted: �The Indian National Congress assumed unto itself, almost from the beginning, the function of a Parliament. There was and is no room for a Parliament in India, because, so long as British Rule remains a reality, the Government of India, as Lord Morley (1838-1923) has plainly stated, must be an autocracy�benevolent and full of sympathy with Indian ideas, but still an autocracy.�
I have very carefully read all the pages of Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook. If I am permitted to speak on his behalf, I would summarize the letter and spirit of his message to us in the following words:
a) The best and noblest lives are those which are set toward high ideals.
b) Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.
c) The ideal life is in our blood and never will be lost.
d) An ideal is the only thing that has any real force. We have lost sight of our own ideal and its tremendous force and vigour. Somehow, that must be recaptured.
e) Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the Ages. Just because the rains descend, and the winds blow, we cannot afford to build on the shifting sands.
f) All politicians, regardless of caste, colour, creed or race are fraternal companions in hypocrisy.
g) To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals�that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
h) Better be poisoned in one's blood, than to be poisoned in one's principles. Blessed is the Man who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it.
When I went through some of the remarkable entries in the Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook. I was reminded of the following words of George Santayana (1863 � 1952) in his Little Essays published in 1920: �The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best-chosen words�. But after reading the gleaming and glowing words of Bhagat Singh issuing out of the gloom of the condemned prisoners' cell in Lahore Central Jail between September 1929 and March 1931, I can say with a certain degree of self assurance that Santayana was only partially right. In the case of Bhagat Singh, his great ideals not only were expressed magnificently through his very short and heroic martyr's life but also through his ever living words recorded in his Jail Notebook. As a revolutionary freedom fighter, who believed passionately in the supreme efficacy of deliberately calculated, planned, and launched campaign of organized violence against the British enemy, Bhagat Singh's daily message to his revolutionary friends and comrades was: �Words without actions are the assassins of fearless and selfless idealism. Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road..... our bodies can be mobilized by law, police and men with guns, if necessary � but we should all strive to find that which will make us believe in what we must do, so that we can fight through to the finish to our final victory�.
Contemporary history comes alive in Bhagat Singh's Jail Notebook. His understanding of contemporary politics, political and social trends was very sensitive and all-pervasive. On page 13 of this Notebook, we find the following entries under the titles �Benevolent Despotism�, �Government of India�, �British Rule in India� and �Liberty and English People�.
 | which was started by Lala Lajpat Rai for education of students participating in the non-cooperation movement. Shaheed Bhagat Singh can be seen standing fourth from the right. |
Benevolent Despotism
�Montague-Chelmsford called the British Government a 'benevolent despotism' and according to Ramsay Macdonald, the imperialist leader of the British Labour Party, 'in all attempts to govern a country by a benevolent despotism, the governed are crushed down. They become subjects who obey, not citizens who act. Their literature, their art, their spiritual expression go'.
Government of India
�Rt Hon'ble Edwin S. Montague, Secretary of State for India, said in the House of Commons in 1917 : ' The Government of India is too wooden, too iron, too antedeluvian, to be of any use for modern purposes. The Indian Government is indefencible'
British Rule in India
�Dr. Ruthford's words: ' British rule as it is carried out in India is the lowest and most immoral system of Government in the world � the exploitation of one nation by another�
 chains in Lahore central jail in 1928. Bhagat Singh was 21 at that time. | Liberty and English People �The English people love liberty for themselves. They hate all acts of injustice except those which they themselves commit. They are such liberty-loving people that they interfere in the Congo and cry, 'Shame' to the Belgians. But they forget their heels are on the neck of India� Bhagat Singh was convinced that the British monarch was getting a fat salary at the expense of the common poor people of India for doing nothing excepting to support a Government in India which was only looting the nation and sucking the blood of the toiling millions. On page 16, Bhagat Singh observed as follows under the title King's Salary: �It is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid out of the public taxes of any country, for the support of an individual, whilst thousands who are forced to contribute thereto, are pining with want and struggling with misery. Government does not consist in a contract between prisons and palaces, between poverty and pomp; it is not instituted to rob the needy of his mite and increase the worthlessness of the wretched�. On page 16, under the title �Give me Liberty or Death�, Bhagat Singh has quoted extensively from the most famous speech of Patrick Henry (1736 �1799). Patrick Henry was a prominent figure in the American Revolution. Henry is perhaps best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses in Virginia on March 23, 1775, urging legislature to take military action against the encroaching British military force. He ended his speech with his most famous words: �Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! The crowd jumped up and shouted �To Arms! To Arms!�. These great words have been quoted with acclaim by Bhagat Singh. |
We find Bhagat Singh quoting extensively from the writings of Socrates (470 BC � 399 B.C), Aristotle (384 B.C � 322 B.C), Plato (427 B.C � 347 B.C), Zeno (490 B.C � 430 B.C), Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 A.D � 180 A.D), Epicurus (341-270 B.C) and Seneca (4 B.C-65 A.D)
On page 165, Bhagat Singh has referred to Aristotle in these words: �He was the first to disentangle politics from ethics, though he was careful not to sever them. 'The majority of men' Aristotle argued, 'are ruled by their passions rather than by reason, and the State must therefore, train them to virtue by a life-long course of discipline, as in SPARTA. Until political society is instituted, there is no administration of justice..... but it is necessary to enquire into the best constitution and best system of legislation'. On the same page, Bhagat Singh has said this about Plato �He traces the origin of society and the State to mutual need, for men as isolated beings are incapable of satisfying their manifold wants. Plato while depicting a kind of idealized Sparta says, 'In an ideal State, philosophers should rule, and to this aristocracy are government of the best, the body of citizens would owe implicit obedience'. He emphasizes on the careful training and education of citizens�.
As a revolutionary leader, committed to the supreme cause of political and socio-economic emancipation and liberation of the oppressed and suppressed toiling masses, Bhagat Sing was greatly influenced by Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables. Bhagat Sing has quoted the following words of Victor Hugo from his preface to Les Miserables : �So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, a social damnation artificially creating hells in the midst of civilization, and complicating the destiny which is divine with a fatality which is human; so long as three problems of the age�the degradation of man through poverty, the ruin of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through ignorance�are not solved; so long as in certain regions, social asphyxia is possible � in other words, and from a still wider point of view, � so long as ignorance and wretchedness exist on the earth, books like this cannot be useless�.
As a keen student of all the Social Sciences, Bhagat Singh understood that he who learns but does not think is lost and he who thinks but does not learn is in danger. For him learning consisted of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth. He was of the view that learning and liberty should march hand in hand, or they do not march at all: the one is the condition of the other.
In November 1930, after he was sentenced to death, Bhagat Singh wrote to his comrade B.K. Dutta who had been sentenced to transportation for life: �The Judgment has been delivered. I am condemned to death. In these cells, besides myself there are many other prisoners who are waiting to be hanged. The only prior of these people is that somehow or other they may escape the noose. Perhaps I am the only man amongst them who is anxiously waiting for the day when I'll be fortunate enough to embrace the gallows from my ideal. I will climb the gallows gladly and show to the world as to how bravely the revolutionaries can sacrifice for the cause�.
Bhagat Singh was a great admirer of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), who influenced the French Revolution and later the American Revolution in many ways. Bhagat Singh often quoted the following words of Thomas Paine with passion and fervour: �I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles to death�. AND BHAGAT SINGH DID JUST THAT AND SO HE BELONGS TO THE AGES.
�Nationalism depends for its success on the awakening and organizing of the whole strength of the nation; it is therefore vitally important for nationalism that the politically backward classes should be awakened and brought into the current of political life; the great mass of orthodox Hinduism which was hardly even touched by the old Congress Movement, the great slumbering mass of Islam which has remained politically inert throughout the last century, the shopkeepers, the artisan class, the immense body of illiterate and ignorant peasantry, the submerged classes, even the wild tribes and races still outside the pale of Hindu Civilization, nationalism can afford to neglect and omit none. .... What nationalism asks for is for life first and above all things: 'Life, and still more life, is its cry'. Let us by every means get rid of the pall of death which stifled us, let us dispel first the passivity, quiescence, the unspeakable oppression of inertia which has so long been our curse; that is the first and imperative need.� These words were written by Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) in his Journal 'Bande Mataram' on 17 December, 1907. In every sense of the word he was one of the foremost Prophets of Indian Nationalism and Patriotism.
Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932), one of the earliest revolutionaries in Bengal delivered five lectures on the Madras Beach from 2 May, 1907 to 9 May, 1907 wherein he expounded the philosophy, goal, programme and strategy of the National Movement in considerable detail with ecstatic fervour and passion. Maha Kavi Subrahmania Bharathi, Subramania Siva, and Rt Hon Srinivasa Sastri attended all these lectures on the Madras Beach. It is on record that all of them came under the spell of Bipin Chandra Pal. The genius of Bipin Chandra Pal lay in his unusual capacity for locating geniuses in others and it was he who formed the right estimate of Sri Aurobindo as early as in 1907 when he wrote as follows:
�The youngest in age among those who stand in the forefront of the Nationalist propaganda in India, but in endowment, education, and character, perhaps, superior to them all�Aravinda (later Sri Aurobindo)�seems distinctly marked out by Providence to play in the future of this movement a part not given to any of his colleagues and contemporaries. The other leaders of the movement have left their life behind them: Aravinda has his before him. Nationalism is their last love: it is Aravinda's first passion. They are burdened with the cares and responsibilities of large families or complex relations: Aravinda has a small family and practically no cumulative obligations. His only care is for his country�the MOTHER, as he always calls her. His only recognised obligations are to her. Nationalism, at the best, a concern of the intellect with some, at the lowest a political cry and aspirations with others, is with Aravinda a supreme passion of his soul. Few, indeed, have grasped the full force and meaning of the Nationalist ideal as Aravinda has done.�
 a boy 1878 (England) | Born on 15 August, 1872 at Calcutta, Sri Aurobindo (1872�1950), was a Hindu/Indian nationalist, a revolutionary, a scholar, a poet, a mystic, and an evolutionary philosopher, a yogi and a guru. After a very short political career for a few years in the fist decade of the twentieth century in which he became one of the leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, Sri Aurobindo turned to the development and practice of a new spiritual path which he called the �integral yoga,� the aim of which was to further the evolution of life on earth by establishing a high level of spiritual consciousness which he called the Supermind that would represent a divine life free from physical death. Sri Aurobindo wrote prolifically in English on his spiritual philosophy and practice, on social and political development, on Indian culture including extensive commentaries and translations of ancient Indian scriptures, on literature and poetry including the writing of much spiritual poetry. Sri Aurobindo is rightly considered as one of the greatest Yogis of all time in Hindu history. It is an emancipating and elevating experience to read about the revolutionary life, times and activities of Sri Aurobindo from 1893 to 1910. |  (1872-1950) |
| Sri Aurobindo's father Dr Krishna Dhan Ghosh was basically a product of European education and culture. He was determined to ensure his children received an entirely European upbringing, totally routed in Western culture. Thus it can be seen that two strong currents of thoughts, ideals, and aspirations met together and strove for supremacy in Bengal, among the generation to which Sri Aurobindo's parents belonged. One was a current of Hindu Nationalism � of the revived life, culture and ideals of the nation that had lain dormant for centuries and had been discarded as lower and primitive by the first batch of English-educated Hindus, specially in Bengal. The other was the current of Indo-Anglicism � the onrushing life, culture and ideals of the foreign rulers of the land, which, expressing themselves through British law and administration on the one side, and the new schools and universities on the other, threatened to swamp and drown the original culture and character of the people. The two stocks from which Sri Aurobindo sprang represented these two conflicting forces in the country. Sri Aurobindo received his early primary education in an Irish Nun's School in Darjeeling. Soon thereafter, his father sent Sri Aurobindo, along with his two elder brothers, to England for further studies. These boys were placed under the care of an English clergyman, Drewett and his wife at Manchester with strict instructions that they should not be allowed to make the acquaintance of any Indian/Hindu influence. In 1885, Sri Aurobindo was sent to St. Pauls in London where he passionately pursued the study of Classics and in his spare time read English and French literary works. He took a special interest in European history and the Muse of poetry entered the soul of Sri Aurobindo. |  class students, Baroda (1906) |
During his Service in Baroda State, Sri Aurobindo worked as Vice-Principal of Baroda College. He also used to assist the Maharaja of Baroda in drafting letters, composing speeches and preparing documents. It was in Baroda that Aurobindo plunged himself in the study of Indian languages, culture, religion and history. In a very short time he mastered the Sanskrit language and therefore was able to delve deep into the Classics of Indian philosophy. Sri Aurobindo was greatly influenced by the works of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894) and Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873). Simultaneously, he also started learning Yoga and participating in spiritual practices for which he received concrete guidance and instruction from one Shri Vishnu Bhaskar Lele of Gwalior.
In 1893, Shri Aurobindo started writing political articles under the general title �New Lamps For Old�, at the instance of his Cambridge friend, K G Deshpandey, who edited the English section of an Anglo-Marathi paper known as the 'Indu Prakash'. These articles constituted a direct, invasive and eloquent attack on the Indian National Congress, whose policies Shri Aurobindo regarded as a process of futile petition and protest. Shri Aurobindo gave a stirring call to his countrymen to organise all the forces in the nation for revolutionary action as the sole effective policy for the attainment of our independence.
After thirteen years in England where he re ceived a thoroughly Western education, Sri Aurobindo returned to India on February 6th 1893, at the age of 20. It was an age of faith and hope. Bankim Chandra Chaterjee's (1839-1894) Anandamath which contained the immortal song of 'Bande Mataram', the hymn to the Motherland, had been published only eleven years earlier. Swamy Vivekananda (1863�1902) had just come to the end of his first pilgrimage round India, and was preparing to sail for America. But it was going to take another dozen years for their call to their countrymen to find full expression in the political field. For the present, the eight-year-old Indian National Congress founded in Bombay in 1885, whose members were mostly drawn from the Anglicized upper classes of society, seemed to have full faith in British fair-mindedness and the �providential character� of British rule in India, and year after year swore its �Unswerving allegiance to the British Crown�. The Indian National Congress was content with submitting petitions which were simply ignored by the colonial rulers. There were another twelve years to go before the start of the open struggle for freedom�the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement�in 1905, and twenty five years before Mahatma Gandhi's entry into the Indian political scene in 1918.
| Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of explosive articles under the title �New Lamps for Old� in the Indu Prakash, a popular Marathi-English Bombay Daily at that time. In a few months, on account of official pressure from the Government, the editor of this Newspaper stopped publishing such articles. In those articles, Sri Aurobindo was taking stock of the prevailing political situation in the country at that time and launched into a detailed and forceful criticism of the �mendicant policy� of the Indian National Congress. Here are a few excerpts from his articles in the Indu Prakash during this time: August 7,1893 �We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery� August 21, 1893 �Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism� August 28, 1893 |  wife Mrinalini, Nainital. |
December 4, 1893
�To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the 'Judicial' from the 'Executive' functions�while we, I say, are finessing our trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilized societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated.�
 with Baroda state officers, Kashmir 1903 | It can be clearly seen from the above observations of Sri Aurobindo that he thought very poorly of the spirit, ways and methods and men of the Indian National Congress of his time in 1893. I wonder, not without valid reason, what Sri Aurobindo would have said about the disgracefully anti-national and anti-Hindu Indian National (Notional!) Congress of today, not even committed to the sacred cause of our national integrity and national security, under the stranglehold of a Catholic lady from Italy, owing her silent undeclared allegiance only to the Pope in Rome and not to the Indian Constitution. From 1900 onwards, Sri Aurobindo came to understand that true nationalism did not consist in just a mere political programme and that it had to be promoted and propagated as an article of faith � as a great religion. He also realized that passive resistance or constitutional agitation was not the right path for achieving Indian Independence. As Francois Gautier has rightly observed: �In the true spirit of a yogi, he re-enacted the Bhagvad Gita's great message: that violence is sometimes necessary, if it flows from Dharma � and today's Dharma is the liberation of India. Thus he began contacting revolutionary groups in Maharashtra and Bengal and tried to co-ordinate their action.� |
Sri Aurobindo also became a Member of a Secret Society in Western India, headed by a Rajput Noble of Udaipur and brought about a sort of liaison between this group and that in Bengal led by P. Mitter. He also undertook a special journey into Central India to meet the sub-Officers and men of one of the Regiments of the Indian Army who had been won over to the side of Revolutionaries raised by that Noble from Udaipur. Sister Nivedita (1867-1911), the Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda had called on Sri Aurobindo at Baroda on October 20, 1902 and stressed the need for his reaching Calcutta in order to give an effective lead to the Nationalist and Revolutionary Forces in Bengal. The celebrated Bhavani Mandir Scheme, written and circulated by Sri Aurobindo in 1905 marked the direct influence of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's �Ananda Math� on Sri Aurobindo. This plan envisaged the erection of a temple in a secret place among the Hills consecrated to Goddess Bhavani, symbolizing Mother India, and founding an order of Bhramacharins who would be consecrated body and soul to the liberation of the Mother from foreign yoke through an armed uprising. Though the Bhavani Mandir Scheme did not materialize, yet the Rowlatt Committee Report (1918) said that �The Book is a remarkable instance of the perversion of religious ideals to political purposes and it really contained the germs of the Hindu Revolutionary Movement in Bengal�.
There is no doubt that the Bhavani Mandir Scheme throws considerable light upon the mind of Sri Aurobindo in those hectic days in which he had three 'Mad Dreams' about which he had written to his wife Mrinalini, in his letter dated August 30, 1905, a historic letter which was seized by the police a few years later and produced as documentary evidence in the Alipore Bomb Case in 1908. The first madness was to look upon 30 crores of Indians as his brothers and sisters and do all that lay in his power to relieve their misery; the second to see God face to face; and the third to look upon the country as the Mother and to redeem her from the grip of a demon�the British Rule.
In the same letter to his wife Sri Aurobindo wrote as follows: �My third madness is that while others look upon their country as an inert piece of matter�a few meadows and fields, forests and hills and rivers�I look upon my country as the MOTHER. I adore Her, I worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother's breast and started sucking her blood? Would he quietly sit down to his dinner, amuse himself with his wife and children, or would he rush out to deliver his mother? I know I have the strength to deliver this fallen race. It is not physical strength, - I am not going to fight with sword or gun, - but the strength of knowledge. The power of the Kshatriya is not the only one; there is also the power of the Brahmin, the power that is founded on knowledge. This feeling is not new in me, it is not of today. I was born with it, it is in my very marrow. God sent me to earth to accomplish this great mission.�
Thus, Sri Aurobindo, set ablaze the hearts of young Indians in Bengal in 1905 with his radical project for freedom. Alarmed by the rising tide of Bengali feeling against British Rule, Lord Curzon (1859-1925), the then Viceroy, partitioned Bengal in 1905. The main objective of his 'Divide-and-Rule' policy was to break the growing political agitation in Bengal BY USING THE MUSLIM-DOMINATED EAST BENGAL AS THE THIN EDGE OF A WEDGE BETWEEN HINDUS AND MUSLIMS�A POLICY THAT ULTIMATELY CULMINATED IN THE PARTITION OF INDIA IN 1947. The tragedy of today's India is that the UPA Government, abetted by the Communists with a known and criminal track record dating back to the days of 'Quit India Movement' of 1942, has taken this policy of Lord Curzon to its logical culmination, resulting in the cultural destruction of India.
Sri Aurobindo rose like a meteor in India's political firmament for a while from 1906 to 1910 and then disappeared into the realm of spirituality in Pondicherry. But during the brief period of his political activity, he left an indelible mark on the freedom movement. He became a guru of the Revolutionaries and encouraged them to do daring deeds. Through his powerful writings in 'Bande Mataram' and his innumerable public speeches, Sri Aurobindo directed the activities of the Nationalists not only in Bengal but, throughout the country.
| In 1905, at the Benares session of the Indian National Congress, Smt. Sarala Devi Chaudharani, a niece of Rabindranath Tagore sang the 'Vande Mataram Song', despite the ban imposed on its singing by the British government. It was a hymn of love of Motherland sublimated into an ecstatic devotion to the DIVINE MOTHER BHARAT. In that exalted vision of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894), the composer of this great national song, was manifest the trinity of Saraswathi (The Goddess of Knowledge and Culture), Lakshmi (The Goddess of Beauty and Wealth), and Durga (The Goddess of Strength and Energy). 'Vande Mataram' became the national battle cry for freedom from British Rule and Oppression during the Freedom Movement. In 1905, the Freedom Movement had taken an organized shape and in the same year our national politics took a new revolutionary turn with the announcement of Swadeshi Movement on 7 August 1905 at Calcutta. The partition of Bengal was announced by Lord Curzon (1859-1925), the then Viceroy of India, on 16th October, 1905 in the teeth of opposition of all Bengalis to the whole scheme of partition. The Nation as a whole was galvanized into a violent mood and extremist groups, not only in Bengal but the rest of India, came into the open to spearhead the nationalist movement. At the suggestion of his brother Barindra Ghose, Sri Aurobindo started a paper, 'Yugantar', which preached open revolt and absolute denial of the British Rule and included such items as a series of articles containing detailed instructions in guerilla warfare. |  a walking stick in hand) with Sri Aurobindo seated on his right in 1906 |
In March, 1906, a peoples' organisation called the Barisal Parishad was created to fight against the Partition of Bengal. A big Provincial Conference was held at Barisal in March 1906. The rising star of the new Age, Sri Aurobindo was to adorn this Conference. The Government took advance action to ban the singing of Vande Mataram Song at this Conference. The delegates were furious at the ban and they decided to defy it. A massive public procession chanting 'Vande Mataram' was organized to march through the city of Barisal. Surendra Nath Banerjee (1848-1925), a veteran leader was leading the vanguard of this huge procession. The Police let loose violence through a lathi charge against all who participated in that procession. The procession was broken up by the Police. Thousands were injured. Many historians have viewed this episode as a precursor to the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of April, 1919. After participating at the broken up Provincial Conference at Barisal in 1906, Sri Aurobindo toured the whole of East Bengal along with Bepin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) and both of them gave rousing and inspiring anti-British speeches, calling upon the people of Bengal to rise in armed revolt against the British Rule in India.
In August 1906, Bepin Chandra Pal founded the 'Bande Mataram', a Nationalist Daily. Sri Aurobindo was intimately associated with it, and soon virtually, though not in name, became its editor. 'Bande Mataram' became the organ of New Nationalism of the extremist party forged ahead by the forward group of young men under the proclaimed leadership of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 � 1920). Sri Aurobindo became his second in command in this nationwide extremist movement. Besides Sri Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Paul, some other very able writers like Shyam Sunder Chakravarti, Hemendra Prasad Gosh and Bejoy Chatterjee were on the staff of 'Bande Mataram'. The creation of 'Bande Mataram' daily was indeed unique in journalistic history, unique in the radical influence it played in converting the mind of a people and preparing it for armed revolution. Historically it is very important to note that almost simultaneously, Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), the Lion of the Punjab, also started a journal called 'Vande Mataram' from Lahore in 1906
Referring to the revolutionary impact of 'Bande Mataram'and the catalytic role played by Sri Aurobindo in that process, Bipin Chandra Pal , the founder of the daily wrote as follows : �A new paper was started. Aravinda ( Sri Aurobindo )was invited to join its staff. A joint-stock company was shortly floated to run it, and Aravinda became one of the directors. This paper � �Bande Mataram� � at once secured for itself a recognized position in Indian journalism. The hand of the master was in it, from the very beginning. Its bold attitude, its vigorous thinking, its clear ideas, its chaste and powerful diction, its scorching sarcasm and refined witticism, were unsurpassed by any journal in the country, either Indian or Anglo-Indian. It at once raised the tone of every Bengali paper, and compelled the admiration of even hostile Anglo-Indian editors. Morning after morning, not only Calcutta but the educated community almost in every part of the country, eagerly awaited its vigorous pronouncements on the stirring question of the day. It even forced itself upon the notice of the callous and self-centred British press. Long extracts from it commenced to be reproduced week after week even in the exclusive columns of the �Times� in London. It was a force in the country which none dared to ignore, however much they might fear or hate it, and Aravinda was the leading spirit, the central figure, in the new journal. The opportunities that were denied to him in the Bengal National College he found in the pages of the �Bande Mataram,� and from a tutor of a few youths in that College he thus became the teacher of a whole nation�.
Sri Aurobindo's articles in 'Bande Mataram' were emitting fire and fury against the British Government all the time. On 8 June, 1907, the Government issued a formal warning to the Editor of the 'Bande Mataram' �for using language which is a direct incentive to violence and lawlessness�. The Government started a campaign of repression against newspapers in Bengal and the rest of India in July 1907 and on 30 July, 1907, the Bande Mataram Office was raided by the Police. Sri Aurobindo was charged with sedition in August 1907. But as no evidence was forthcoming that he was the editor of the newspaper, he was acquitted, though the printer was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. There was an interesting episode in connection with this trial. Bipin Chandra Pal, the great revolutionary leader and an intimate associate of Sri Aurobindo, was called by the Government as a prosecution witness in the case to prove Sri Aurobindo's editorial association with 'Bande Mataram'. Everyone knew that Sri Aurobindo was the heart and soul of the paper and no one knew it better than Bipin Chandra Pal and yet he was unwilling either to tell a lie in open court or to harm Sri Aurobindo in any way. He refused to give evidence, as in his opinion the prosecution case was injurious to the larger interests of the country at that time. Therefore Bipin Chandra Pal cheerfully offered to accept the prescribed penalty for his conduct and was duly sentenced to six months' simple imprisonment.
Sri Aurobindo told Satis Chandra Mukherjee that he might be taken away to Prison at any moment and that his continued association with the Bengal National College might cause great damage to the institution. Sri Aurobindo resigned from the Bengal National College on 23 August, 1907. We get a glimpse of his agitated but very clear mind from the following extract of his reply to the farewell address given him by the students of the Bengal National College on 23 August, 1907: �There are times in a nation's history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time have now arrived for our Motherland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else is to be directed to that end. ... Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice.�
The massive popular agitation in Bengal and later in the rest of India following the Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905, brought into national prominence the rise of a new political party, an Extremist Party, which differed in essential points and ideology from that which had dominated the Indian National Congress ever since its inception in December 1885. This new Party was really the product of the new spirit of Hindu nationalism. The doctrines which it advocated were being promulgated on public platforms sometime, if not very long, even before the Partition of Bengal. But hitherto it did not make any headway or create any stir in the public life of India. The spirit of defiant opposition which was evinced by the Bengalis as a whole since 1904 with regard to the Partition of their country, gave a fillip to the new political party and since then it became a great rival to the old Party and ultimately supplanted it at the Surat Session of the Congress in 1907. These two parties came to be known, respectively, as 'Moderates' and 'Extremists'. These two main political parties, representing two distinct schools of thought, started pulling against each other from 1907 till the death of Lokmanya Thilak in 1920.
The transformation of a Moderate into an Extremist, due to the popular agitation against the Partition of Bengal, was initially brought about by Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932), ably assisted by Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), Barin Ghose (Sri. Aurobindo's brother), Sister Nivedita (1867-1911), Jatindranath Bandyopadhyaya, P.Mitra, Ullaskar Dutt and others. On December 21, 1904, Bipin Chandra Pal wrote in the 'New India': �The belief that England will of her own free will help Indians out of their long-established civil servitude and establish those free institutions of Government which she herself values so much was once cherished, but all hope has now been abandoned. What India really wants is a reform in the existing Constitution of the State, so that the Indians will govern themselves as other nations do, follow the bent of their own national genius, work out their own political destiny, and take up their own legitimate place, as an ancient and civilized people, among the nations of the world.� Henceforth Bipin Chandra Pal fell in line with nationalist leader Sri Aurobindo, and became a pillar of the Nationalist School and the Extremist Party.
As the Swadeshi Movement outstripped its original limitation and became an All-India Movement, so the Extremist Party of Bengal became an All India Party under the leadership of Lokmanya Tilak (1856-1920), Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928), G S Khaparde, Bipin Chandra Pal and Sri Aurobindo. This new alignment in Indian politics became an accomplished fact before the end of 1906 and was the most striking feature in the Congress Session held in Calcutta in December 1906. The Moderates could never reconcile themselves with the boycott of foreign goods and the existing educational institutions. The Extremists on the other hand wanted Poorna Swaraj. They wanted to do nation building through a system of National Education rooted in India's cultural heritage, which meant Sanatana Dharma.
Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of articles on 'Passive Resistance' in the Bande Mataram between 9 and 23 April, 1907. They contained a masterly exposition of the Doctrine of Passive Resistance, which later, in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi played an important role in India's struggle for freedom. The following extract from Sri Aurobindo's article in 'Bande Mataram' on 17 April, 1907, conveys a fair idea of the theory and programme of Passive Resistance: �The essential difference between Passive or Defensive and Active or Aggressive Resistance is this, that while the method of the Aggressive Resistor is to do something by which he can bring about positive harm to the Government, the method of the Passive Resistor is to abstain from doing something by which he would be helping the Government. The object in both cases is the same�to force the hands of the Government; the line of attack is different. The Passive Method is especially suitable to countries where the Government depends mainly for the continuance of its administration on the voluntary help and acquiescence of the subject people. The first principle of Passive Resistance, therefore, which the new School have placed in the forefront of their programme, is to make administration under present conditions impossible by an organized refusal to do anything which shall help either British commerce in the exploitation of the country or British officialdom in the administration of it�unless and until the conditions are changed in the manner and to the extent demanded by the people. This attitude is summed up in one word, 'BOYCOTT'�.
The radical policy differences between the Moderates and the Extremists reached a point of climax at the Surat Session of the Congress in December 1907. At this Session, Lokmanya Tilak explained the difference between the Moderates and the Extremists in these simple words: �I admit that we must ask for our rights, but we must ask with the consciousness that the demand cannot be refused. There is a great difference between asking and petitioning. ... You must be prepared to fight in the event of your demand being turned down. Protests are of no avail. More protests, not backed by self-reliance will not help the people. Three Ps�prayer, pleas, and protests�will not do unless backed by solid force. Look to the example of Ireland, Japan and Russia, and follow their methods. We must show that the country cannot be governed well by the present method. We must convince the Government of this. Do not rely much upon the sympathy of the rulers.�
The Extremists broke away from the Congress on 27 December, 1907 at Surat and created the Nationalist Party. Sri Aurobindo presided over the Conference of this Party at Surat and reaffirmed the demands for SWARAJ, SWADESHI, AND NATIONAL EDUCATION, which had been adopted at the previous Calcutta Session of the Congress held in Calcutta in December 1906, under the Presidentship of Dadabhai Naoraji (1825-1917). And yet it was going to take the Congress another 22 years to declare Poorna Swaraj or Complete Independence for its goal�which was done only in the Lahore Session of the Congress in December 1929.
After the Surat Session of the Congress, Sri Aurobindo became the focal point of India's National Movement with its ideology of organized violence against British Rule to oust the British from India. Referring to the cataclysmic impact of Sri Aurobindo on the rising tide of Hindu Nationalism in Bengal during this time, Ramsey Macdonald, who later became the Prime Minister of Briton, wrote in the Daily Chronicle in England in 1907: �The Bengalee inspires the Indian National Movement. In Bombay, the Nationalist is a liberal politician, a reformer who takes what he can get and makes the best of it. In the Punjab he is a dour, unimaginative person who shows a tendency to work in a lonely furrow. In Bengal he is a person of lively imagination who thinks of India, and whose nationalism finds expression not only in politics, but in every form of intellectual activity. .... Bengal is better than the rest of India in political agitation. Bengal is also idealizing India. It is translating nationalism into religion, into music and poetry, into painting and literature. From Bengal gush innumerable freshets of religion all flowing to revive and invigorate the Nationalist spirit. A literary revival makes for the same end. ...�
 |  (Brother Of Sri Aurobindo) In 1909. |
The renowned Revolutionary, Hema Chandra Das Kanungo, who, at the instance of Vir Savarkar (1883-1966), had gone to Paris in 1906 to meet the Russian Nihilists from whom he got the formula of, and practical lessons in, the manufacture of Bombs, returned to India and on reaching Poona in January 1907, demonstrated the formula and manufacture of a bomb before Lokmanya Tilak and Sri Aurobindo. Both of them were pleased to see the new weapon and they admired the courage of Hema Chandra Das who had brought it all the way from Europe. Sri Aurobindo asked his younger brother BARINDRA GHOSE to form a Revolutionary Centre in the Maniktolla Garden in Muraripukur of Calcutta. The Garden belonged to Sri Aurobindo and his brothers. Soon, a miniature bomb factory sprang up in this Garden. Barindra Ghose's organization tried the first bomb on the Bengal Governor's Carriage and after two unsuccessful attempt in October and December 1907, succeeded in wrecking the train in a third attempt. In April 1908, a bomb was hurled at the carriage of Magistrate Kingsford in Musafarpur, who was notorious for inflicting inhuman punishment on Swadeshi Convicts. Of the two young men who did it, Profulla Chaki shot himself dead when caught. The other 17 year old young revolutionary, KHUDIRAM BOSE, was arrested and hanged.
 Amrit Bazar Patrika (5-9-1908) |
The Government came down with a heavy hand upon the Revolutionaries and in the small hours of May 2, 1908, a large police party invaded the Maniktolla Garden at Muraripukur. The Police Investigation Report stated: �Those who were living there were all educated young men belonging to respectable families. They studied the Bhagavat Gita, practiced yogic practices and of course prepared bombs.� Even while the police raid was in full swing at Muraripukur, another party of police surrounded Sri Aurobindo's house at Grey Street in Calcutta and arrested him. Sri Aurobindo, and his brother Sri Barindra Ghose and others were sent to Alipore Jail and lodged there. There began one of the most famous and celebrated trials in Indian history, the Maniktolla Bomb Case, popularly known as Alipore Conspiracy Case. On May 2, 1908, Lord Minto, the then Viceroy of India wrote to Lord Morley (1838-1923), the Secretary of State for India: �The British are now confident of having a chance to silence for ever the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present�.
The Alipore Bomb Case (or the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy Case or the Alipore Bomb Trial) became one of the most important court trials in the history of India's Freedom Movement. When Bengal was partitioned, it sparked off an outburst of public anger against the British. This widespread anger led to civil unrest and a nationalist campaign was carried out by a group of Revolutionaries, led by Aurobindo Ghosh, Rasbihari Bose and Bagha Jatin and organized into groups like 'Jugantar'. To crush this public uprising, the British cracked down hard on the activists and the conflict came to a head on April 30, 1908 when Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill Magistrate Kingsford at Musafarpur. He was known to be a cruel judge, with a reputation for handing down particularly harsh sentences against the nationalists. However, the bomb thrown at his horse carriage missed its target and instead landed in a carriage carrying two British women, killing them.
 | The local police immediately raided Sri Aurobindo's property at Maniktolla Garden in Muraripukur of Calcutta where revolutionaries were trained by his organisation and along with many Revolutionary Activists, Sri Aurobindo was himself arrested on charges of planning and overseeing the attack and for some time was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Alipore Jail. After an intense manhunt, Khudiram Bose was arrested though Prafulla Chaki shot himself rather than fall into the hands of the police. The case came up before the Alipore Sessions Court and the Judge Mr Beachcroft, ICS, who interestingly enough had been a classmate of Sri Aurobindo at Cambridge. While the trial went on, a series of dramatic events took place. One of the accused turned approvar. But he was shot dead inside the Jail in broad day light. The Officer who caught Profulla Chaki was killed. Public Prosecutor Biswas, the able Assistant of Barrister Norton who was Counsel for the Crown, was shot at on the stairs of the Court. Surprisingly when all these developments were taking place, Sri Aurobindo who was in his solitary cell, was approaching the turning point in his life. He spent most of his time in reading the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads and in intensive Meditation and practice of Yoga. He was constantly hearing the voice of Vivekananda speaking to him for a fortnight in the Jail in his solitary Meditation and felt his immediate presence. Although he had taken up Yoga since 1904, it was now that the spiritual life and realisation which had continuously been increasing in intensity and magnitude, entirely claimed his whole being. Recalling this spiritual experience, Sri Aurobindo later said that while in Jail he saw the convicts, jailers, policemen, the prison bars, the trees, the judge, the lawyers as different forms of Vishnu in the spiritual experience of Vasudeva. This meteoric spiritual experience in jail culminated in his attaining the mystic experience of the all-pervading Supreme Reality. |
'My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.'
| Chittaranjan Das later became one of the foremost leaders in India's Freedom Movement and came to be hailed as Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das. It was at this turning moment in our national history that Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) paid a visit to Sri Aurobindo and wrote the now very famous lines: Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my country's friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul.... The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God Hath come... Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee. |  roll in jail in 1909. |
Thus Government were determined to get rid of Sri Aurobindo as he was the only formidable obstacle to the success of their repressive policy and decided to deport him. Sister Nivedita (1867-1911) came to know about this Government Plan and she informed Sri Aurobindo in advance and urged him to leave the British India. Sri Aurobindo wrote a signed article in Karmayogin in which he spoke of the Government Plan of his forced deportation and left behind for the country what he called his Last Will and Testimony. As Sri Aurobindo had rightly anticipated, his brilliant manoeuvre foiled the British Government's plan of his deportation. However, the British Government now decided to implicate him in a Sedition Case. During one night when Sri Aurobindo was working at the 'Karmayogin' office, he received information regarding Government's intention to search his office and arrest him. At that moment he received a Divine Command to leave British India for the French territory of Chandernagore and accordingly in a few hours he went into secret residence in Chandernagore. He sent a very urgent message to Sister Nivedita, asking her to take upon herself the responsibility of editing the Karmayogin. At Chandernagore, while in meditation, he received another Divine Command to proceed to Pondicherry. A boat manned by some young Revolutionaries of Uttarpara took him to Calcutta where he boarded the boat Duplex and reached Pondicherry on 4 April, 1910.
After reaching Pondicherry in 1910, Sri Aurobindo's life became more and more absorbed in spiritual practices than in political or public activities. To begin with he kept some private communications with the Revolutionary Forces he had led in British India, through one or two individuals. The Extremist and Nationalist Leaders like Mahakavi Subrahmanya Bharathi (1882-1921) and Sri V V S Iyer (1881-1925) used to meet Sri Aurobindo every day for Vedic Studies. It is a poignant fact of Modern Indian History that ten years after Sri Aurobindo withdrew from the political scene and settled down in Pondicherry, two very prominent leaders wrote to him in 1920 to return to British India and resume his leadership of Indian Politics. One was Joseph Baptista, who was a freedom fighter, and a right hand man of Lokmanya Tilak who requested Sri Aurobindo to take up the Editorship of an English Daily which was being planned in Bombay as the organ of a new party which Lokmanya Tilak and his supporters were then trying to form.
The second was Dr Munje, one of the extremist leaders from Maharashtra. Dr Munje went to Pondicherry in 1920 to persuade Sri Aurobindo to preside over the Nagpore Session of the Indian National Congress. Sri Aurobindo declined to return to British India. It should be noted that it was Dr Munje who along with Dr K B Hedgewar, later founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in October 1925.
Thus Sri Aurobindo's withdrawal from political life was complete in 1920. However, Sri Aurobindo intervened in Indian politics twice afterwards, on special occasions. The first was during World War II when he declared himself publicly on the side of the Allies, because he saw Hitler and Nazism as two dark Asuric Forces, the success of which would lead to the enslavement and set back to the evolutionary process of progress of mankind. The second was when he supported the Cripps's offer in 1942 because he felt that by its acceptance India and Briton could stand united against Asuric Forces and that the proposal of Cripps could be used as a step towards Indian independence.
Sri Aurobindo was prophetic when he wrote as follows against the Partition of India on August 15, 1947: 'But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may always remain possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India's internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go.'
Sri Aurobindo, a great Prophet of Indian Nationalism, attained Mahasamadi on 5 December, 1950. His great dream for Akhand Bharat remains to be fulfilled by the new generation that is now emerging.
Veer Savarkar has been rightly hailed as a Prince among Indian revolutionaries. An incomparable freedom fighter, a historian, a gifted playwright, an ethic poet and a fiery orator, he was indeed a Carlylean hero cast in a truly magnificent mould. He led a consecrated life. He was an inspiration alike to the young and the old.
Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (1878-1972) paid this tribute to him: 'Veer Savarkar was my first Revolutionary Idol. 'When he gave up his Law studies in London and declared rebellion against the British Rule, he caught the imagination of us all.'
| Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was born on 28 May, 1883 into a family of jagirdars (landlords) in the village of Bhagpur near Nasik. Vinayak was one of four children others being, Ganesh (Babarao), Mainabai and Narayan, born to Damodarpant Savarkar and Radhabai. Being descendents of a line of Sanskrit scholars, the Savarkars inculcated the love of learning into their children. Vinayak and Babarao were sent to the Shivaji School in Nasik. When Vinayak was nine years old, his mother died of cholera. Damodarpant himself looked after his children thereafter. There was an outbreak of plague epidemic in Nasik in 1899 and Savarkar's father died of plague in 1899. The burden of the family fell on Babarao's shoulders. Savarkar's patriotic spirit found an outlet through an organisation called the Mitra Mela that he formed. Savarkar inducted young patriotic men like himself into the Mela. He encouraged the members of the Mela to strive for 'absolute political independence for India' by whatever means necessary. In the event of an armed revolt the young crusaders toughened themselves through physical training. The Mitra Mela served the city of Nasik in many ways, especially during the plague when the group carried victims for cremation. |  his Indian sociologist-An Organ of Freedom and of Political, Social, and Religious Reform-Cover Page dated 14.5.1908. |
 (1883-1966) | In 1905, a huge Dussehra bonfire of foreign goods was lit in Poona by Savarkar and his friends to express their violent resentment toward the partition of Bengal. Savarkar organised in Pune a mammoth procession at the close of which he made a big bonfire of foreign clothes. Lokmanya Tilak (1856-1920) also participated in the rally. For organising the nation's first bonfire of foreign clothes, Savarkar was fined Rs 10 and expelled from the College Hostel by his principal. Savarkar left for London to study Law in June 1906 on receiving a scholarship. Savarkar stayed at the India House in London, which was established by Pandit Shyamaji Krishnavarma (1857-1930), a patriot, scholar and social reformer. Shyamaji Krishnavarma started a journal Indian Sociologist, for the propagation of the ideals of freedom and revolution. He was the man who had announced liberal scholarships for Indian students desiring to study in Europe. Savarkar was able to go to England only with the help of Shyamaji's scholarship. Interestingly it was Lokmanya Tilak who had recommended his scholarship to Shyamaji. In London, Savarkar founded the Free India Society which held weekly meetings and celebrated Indian festivals and anniversaries of important figures and days in the Indian struggle for freedom. On 10 May, 1907, scuffles broke out between Indians and Britishers at the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of the 1857 martyrs of the First War of Indian Independence (described by British Historians as the Indian Mutiny) organised by the Free India Society. In 1908, Savarkar completed his historic and immortal work 'THE HISTORY OF THE WAR OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE.' This book was originally written in Marathi and later translated into English by the well-known revolutionary of Tamilnadu, V V S Iyer (1881-1925) who was also staying along with Savarkar in India House at that time. This book was proscribed by the British government for being 'revolutionary, explosive and seditious' even before it was published. This book was later published in France and Germany and it played a very significant role in inspiring great revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh (1907-1931) and Subash Chandra Bose (1897-1945). |
What is interesting to note is that at that time simultaneously in India, Savarkar's elder brother Babarao led an armed movement against the Minto-Morley reforms. Babarao was sentenced to transportation for life to the Andamans jail. In protest, a youth called Kanhere shot dead the British Collector of Nasik, A M T Jackson. Savarkar was implicated in the murder of Jackson because of his contacts with the India House. Savarkar soon moved to Madame Cama's residence in Paris. A warrant was issued and Savarkar was arrested on 13 March, 1910. In one of his last letters to a close friend before his arrest, Savarkar conveyed the plan of his intended attempt to escape from the custody at Marseilles. His friend was expected to be waiting there with a car. The escape attempt at Marseilles failed since the car arrived too late. When he was being taken to India as a prisoner in the P & O Liner SS Morea, Veer Savarkar made a daring attempt to escape by jumping into the sea at Marseilles Port. Though he swan across to the pier, he was arrested by the French Police and handed over to the Scotland Yard Officer. Savarkar was tried and found guilty on the counts of 'waging war by instigation using printed matter, and providing arms... (and) for abetting the murder of Mr. Jackson. Savarkar was awarded 25 years imprisonment on the former charge and 25 years for the latter. A sum total of 50 years imprisonment which he was to serve at the Andamans prison. Veer Savarkar was only 27 years old at the time of his sentencing!
Savarkar arrived at the Andamans prison on 4 July, 1911. Life for the prisoners was very harsh. Savarkar's day began at 5 a.m. chopping trees with a heavy wooden mallet and then he would be yoked to the oil mill. If prisoners talked or broke the queue at mealtime, their 'once a year letter writing privilege' was revoked. Savarkar withdrew within himself, quietly and mechanically doing the tasks presented to him. He was successful in getting permission to start a jail library. With great effort and patience he taught the illiterate convicts to read and write. On 2 May, 1921, the Savarkar brothers were brought back to India on the SS Maharaja.
Savarkar remained imprisoned in Ratnagiri Jail and then in Yeravada Jail until 6 January, 1924 when he was freed under the condition that he would not leave Ratnagiri district and abstain from political activity for the next five years. While in Ratnagiri Jail, Savarkar wrote 'Hindutva' which was smuggled out and published under the pen-name 'Maharatta.' On his release, Savarkar founded the Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha on 23 January, 1924 which aimed to preserve India's ancient culture and work for social welfare. He appealed for a wider use of Hindi as the mother tongue and suggested reforms to the Devanagiri script to facilitate printing. While in Ratnagiri, he wrote the 'Hindu Padpadashashi' and 'My Transportation for Life' and a collection of poems, plays and novels. At the end of his five- year confinement in Ratnagiri, Savarkar joined Tilak's Swaraj Party and founded the Hindu Mahasabha as a separate political party. He warned of the Muslim League's designs of partitioning the nation. In 1937, Savarkar was elected President of the Hindu Mahasabha. He toured the nation widely and delivered the simple message to the effect that followers of Vedism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism were all Hindus.
Savarkar agreed to join hands with the Congress in support of Gandhiji's Quit India Movement in 1942 as long as the Congress did not compromise the unity of the nation to the Muslim League. 'The Quit India Movement must not end in a Split India Movement!' he thundered on a BBC broadcast of his speech. On 15 August, 1947, Savarkar proudly unfurled the national flag along with the saffron flag of the Hindu Mahasabha.
The government of India deliberately implicated him in the case relating to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. He was honourably acquitted by the Court on 10 February, 1949. He passed away on 27 February, 1966.
M C Chagla, the then Union Education Minister paid this tribute to him: 'Savarkar was a great patriot and an illustrious son of India. He was always of the view that anyone living in this country who loved and drew inspiration from the great heritage of India and was loyal to India was a Hindu. Revolutionaries like Savarkar created an atmosphere which made it possible for Mahatma Gandhi to succeed. It would be unpatriotic if the people of India fail to give Savarkar a prominent place in the history of India.'
Labels: Hindu Rashtra, Hindutva, Nationalism
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