Great is Journalism. Is not every Able Editor a Ruler of the World, being a persuader of it ; though self-elected yet sanctioned by the sale of his Numbers ?
Thomas Carlyle
Mr. TILAK became the declared editor of the Kesari on 22nd October 1887, and of the Mahratta on 3rd Spetember 1891. Since then, he conducted these journals as proprietor till the last, and though, the editorship was occasionally transferred to others, still he supplied the necessary inspiration, except during the intervals when he was a guest of His Majesty’s gaols.
From the very beginning, he neglected the Mahratta, Indeed, it may be said, he never liked journalism in Enghsh. He believed only in the vernacular as an instrument of national awakening. Hence he never cared to turn the Mahratta into a daily newspaper. English weeklies in India have always been a source of financial embarrassment to the conductors, and the Mahratta was no exception to this rule. At the time of Mr. Tilak’s death, the circulation of the Mahratta stood at about 2000.
With the Kesari he was in his element. A weekly paper, now with a circulation of over 35,000, it has moulded the national life of Maharashtra during the last 30 years. The Kesari, as the name indicates, stands for manli-
326 LOKAMANYA TILAK
ness, strength. During all its vicissitudes, courage has never failed it. Its wisdom has been occasionally chal###lenged, its tact or fairplay. But not even the worst enmies have whispered cowardice to its discredit.
During his life-time, Mr. Tilak conducted the Kesari nominally as a proprietory concern. In the evening of his life, he intended to put it on a democratic basis. It was only latteriy that the Kesari was a financial suc###cess. During the first lo years of his ownership of the paper, it was burdened with a heavy debt. During the last six years ctgain the extraordinary rise in the cost of paper did not make it quite a profitable concern, and in spite of the increase in the subscription rates, Mr. Tilak had to succour the paper from the profits of the Gita###Rahasya. Then there was the terrible expenditure of the long- drawn Tai Maharaj case, which had to be pro###vided for. In spite of all these difficulties, Mr. Tilak had unreservedly placed the cash-box of the Kesari at the entire disposal of the national propaganda. He spent hundreds and thousands for the national work, without boast or ostentation. He could have easily saved large amounts by substantially increasing the subscription, which his devoted readers would have gladly paid ; but he accepted the Kesari as a sacred trust and not as a business concern. He wanted it to reach the hands of the poorest of the poor and become the vehicle of his message. The cheapest and the best —it had and has no second.
Though repeatedly pressed to turn it into a daily paper, Mr. Tilak till the last kept it as a we3kly and it was only last year that he made arrangements to bring it oat as a bi-weekly. The ideal he had kept before
IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR 32/
him — cheapness and excellence — was incompatible with the hurry and cost of a daily newspaper.
Mr. Tilak and the Kesari were convertible terms. Their careers have been synonmous with the history of Maharashtra during the last 30 years. It has been a period of storm and stress. It has witnessed a vast transformation and has been the era of action and re###action — ^political and social. Through rocks and shoals, Mr. Tilak steered the Kc^sari, not caring for favour, nor afraid of frown, with a grim S3nse of duty . He was always bold but uniformly wary. His is one long record of intellectual and moral intrepidity, sustained by breadth of vision and depth of insight. The Kesari has been a castle for national fight, reared under the very nose of the Bureaucracy, proving impregnable even under shells of repression. Truly, it has become a national asset.
The style of Mr. Tilak’s Kesari was, like the physio###gnomy of its illustrious editor, plain, blunt, and aggres###sive. It was " reason fused and made red-hot with passion." It despised mere literary garnish and was the very negation of the soft suppleness of an intellectual epicurean. It had nothing of the flowing humour of Mr. N. C. Kelkar’s style, the sweatness of Mr. Pangarkar’s,* the grace of Mr. Agarkar’s or of the subtle suggestiveness, dehcate irony and arrcstive coquetry of Prof- S. M. Paranjpye’st style. It reminds you, not of a cloister
- Editor o£ the Mumukshu and tho author, among other books, of the life oE Moropant and the life of Tukaram. He is an eloqueat exponent of what may be called Nco-Orthodoxy.
^ Editor of the now defunct Kal, which by its amazingly bold articles had created (1899) quite a panic in Congress circles.
328 [lokamanya tilak
or an academy, not of a music-hall or a ball-room, but of the battle-field. Straight, pointed, Mr. Tilak’s writ###ten words, arrow-like whistled through the air and hit the mark. They struck terror into the hearts of those who opposed him. The flunkeys, the Government minions and the busy nobodies were as mortally afraid of them as were the Reformers, the Moderates or the Liberals. Even the powerful Bureaucracy, protected by the prestige of the British Empire and the swords and guns of two hundred thousand soldiers, feared his at###tacks. Mr. Tilak has been frequently blamed for his strong language. We should, however, remember that he was the centre of acute political and social contro###versies extending over one generation. He could not be expected to rouse the masses to a sense of self-respect, self-reliance, and self-confidence except by pointed lan###guage. He, however, never hit below the belt. His criticism was impetuous but never vulgar, mean or vindictive. It bore ’ no spots which all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten."
His instructions to his assistants reveal the secret of his direct but homely style. " Imagine that you are speaking to a villager and not writing for University people. No Sanskrit words please. Avoid quoting sta###tistics. Don’t scare away the reader by quoting figures. Keep them to yourself. Let your style be simple and homely. It should be as clear as day-light. The meaning must never be obscure."
He was as good as his advice. True, in the early nineties, the Kesari was written in a more learned style. The exuberant scholarship of Mr. Tilak peeped through every column. Not a subject under the sun, but
IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR 329
iound its way in the Kesari. At a minute’s notice he poured forth columns of wonderful learning, duly adorned with a literary setting. Religion, philosophy, economics, agriculture, astronomy, science — there was no subject too difficult for his pen or mind. He not only assimilated all the available knowledge on the subject in hand, but put his own stamp on it. His luminous and often original writmgs on knotty questions of philosophy or science are an intellectual treat and would repay a careful perusal even to-day.
But Mr. Tilak soon realised that it is not seed, lavishly sown that bears fruit, but the seed that is carefully put under the earth. This made him take into consider###ation the intellectual level of his readers. He put him###self the question " Whom do I write for ?" and it was got long before he gave himself the correct answer. uince then, his writings and speeches tended more and more to simplicity, without losing an iota of vigour.
The equipment which he brought to bear on his edi###torial work was indeed, extremely rare, not only in this country but in any other. Possessed of a profound knowledge of the law, he did not care what restrictions the Government put on the freedom of the Press. He was prepared, he used to say, to convey his message under any rigours imposed by the law. Only the Bureau###cracy must adhere to the compact and must not shuffle its position again and again and try to seek new meaning into the definition of sedition every time, by straining its words and distorting their import and significance.
His complete mastery over the Sanskrit language and literature, Vedic and post-Vedic, classical and philoso###phical, enabled him not only to form a style at once simple
33P LOKAMANYA TILAK
and eloquent, but to free journalistic diction from the unnatural pompousness — too often mistaken for eloquence, which the study of English classics had brought into Marathi. He formed a new style in Marathi journalism, and most of the Marathi journals of the day have adopted it.
His profound knowledge of philosophy, science, metaphysics — Indian and European — stood him in good stead not only in making scholarly criticisms, but in the leading controversies of the last 30 years. Our social and religious life, ideas and institutions, are, so to speak, in the melting pot and the changes that are to be introduced must suit the basic ideas of our society. Mr. Tilak believed in what may be termed, " Indian Sociology " as Mr. Ranade did in " Indian Economics." His attitude towards Social Reform was largely deter###mined by sociological considerations. Others had seen only the crust that lies on the Indian civilisation and had pronounced it to be worthless. Mr. Tilak had gone deeper and had learnt how precious our culture is.
He had studied the constitutional laws and histories of England and other European countries. Politics was his sp3cial study and he wanted to write an original thesis on this subject. At Mandalay, he devoted all his leisure to the study of the French and the German.
It would thus be seen that the range of Mr. Tilak’s reading was enormously vast. But he was not a mere reader of books. He meditated profoundly on what he read. He supplemented his reading and thinking by communicating with the best minds of his age. His active life afforded the necessary corrective to his
IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR 33r
tiioaghts. The combination of a thinker and a fighter ia the person of its editor, gave the Kesari that amazing hold over its readers, which has hardly a parallel.
Possessed of a wonderful memory, Mr. Tilak never cared to cultivate those methods by which many a newspaper writer tries to lessen the burden on his memo###ry. Mr. Tilak never kept notes nor topic-books. What he read, he remembered. What he remembered was alwaj^ ready at his beck and call. Quotations, extracts, references — everything was ready at a moment’s notice. When he began to dictate articles for the Kesari, his amanuensis could, with very great difficulty, keep pace with him. But though Mr. Tilak was a rapid reader and a rapid writer, he was a very careful student. Before commencing to dictate, he carefully studied the question in all its bearing, ransack###ed all the available literature on the subject and then considered himself ready for the task. Thoroughness was the secret of his success.
As the political life of the people is developing, it has been found necessary to supply suitable equivalents for English political terminology. Such v/ords as, Respon###sible Government, Imperial Federation, Passive Resis« tance, despotism. Limited Monarchy, Budget, Decentra###lization, do not easily lend themselves to translation. The brunt of the work of coining suitable Marathi words congenial to the genius of the language, had mainly fallen on Mr. Tilak, and it was very interesting and instructive to find this all-India leader discussing occassionally with his sub-editors possible equivalents to knotty political terms. Tlie word ’ Bureaucracy ’ in particular baffled him for a number of years and though
332 LOKAMANYA TILAK
he translated it by * Adhikari Varga, still he was not quite pleased with the expression. It was in the course of a lecture that the word * Nokarshahi ’ occurred to him. So delighted was he with this word, that he called some of his literary friends at the end of the speech, and shared with them his joy at the addition of an extremely nice word to the Marathi vocabulary. Like the elephant of the story, Mr. Tilak’s intellectual tusk, strong enough to bear the load of heavy timber, was also capable of lifting up a pin. His genius was .at once comprehensive and subtle.
The expression " old wine in new bottles ‘* is gene###rally an empty compliment. Mr. Tilak’s discussion of abstruse political theories, however, never struck his readers as something outlandish, something developed and prepared thousands of miles away and thence imported into India. His readers always felt at home with his writings and were never repelled by the English political thought which he discussed in Marathi. Mr. Tilak not only made his reader understand him, he made him also remember the main points in his writings. Some words, some expressions, some sentences in his articles always lingered in the memory of the reader. The article may be forgotten, but such words stick to the memory. Usually the title of the heading of the article was pithy and expressive. It summed up the whole of the article in some striking phrase. He always said that a good heading was worth half the writing.
The object of the propagandist is to influence his readers. He seeks inspiration from the people, and returns it thousandfold. He receives instruction and imparts it at compound interest. Mr. Tilak bore this
IN THE EDITORIAL CHAIR 333.
truth in mind while conducting the Kesari. He con###centrated all his energies on the work of national awakening. Whatever helped that work found a place in the Kesari ; otherwise it was shunned, though the very best. People went to the Kesari, not to get news, but to interpret it. Their estimates of men and things were largely influenced by the Kesari. Their attitude was determined by that of the Kesari. A compliment from the Kesari has built up many a career ; its censure has marred it. Verily it has been a great dictator, though a benevolent one.
This then, is the work of the Kesari. It has formed the style of Marathi Journalism ; it has expanded the thought-expressing capacity of the Marathi language. It has familiarised the people with the political thought of modern European life. It has widened the outlook of the sons of the soil. It has roused them to a consciousness of the glorious past and the wretched present. It has inspired them with new hope for the future. It has concentrated their attention to the live political issue ; and has mercilessly thrust in the back-ground, whatever was not directly concerned with that issue. It has set an example of devotion, of sacrifice, of plain speaking and of courage. It has taught them to keep their heads cool in storms and rear them again after the hurricane spent its force. It has been the centre of political edu###cation, the source of political agitation, and the pivot of aU national organization, in Western India. As one speaker aptly put it, it has transformed the Maharash###tra of 1890 to what it is in 192 1.