Just to let in a ray or two more into the secret chambers of the activities of Abhinava Bharat which must long remain dark and sealed to the outside public for the simple reason, that their disclosure cannot be made by the actors who took part in them under the present political conditions in India, we take the liberty of reproducing two reminiscences as related by two distinguished men who wrote them from personal knowledge. One is from the pen of Mr. Savarkar himself. Only this year he wrote it in the “Maratha” of Poona on the news of the sudden and sad demise of Mr. V.V.S. Aiyer, who went to England as a confirmed moderate, slowly drifted towards revolutionary tenets after he came in contact with Mr. Savarkar and ultimately worked so jealously and so fearlessly in that party that he became the most trusted comrade of Mr. Savarkar and rose to be the Vice-President of the Abhinava Bharat. The Rowlatt Report tells us how he was suspected of being the leader of the Pondicherry branch of that Society and how it was under his guidance that a Shakt Brahman shot the collector of Tuticorin in 1911. The Rowlatt Report calls Mr. Aiyer “The right hand man of Savarkar.” Says the letter to the “Mahratta”:
“Heavy grief has often embittered our life; but none heavier than what thy sudden death caused, oh friend, ever taxed our capacity to endure. Memories of those momentous years and trying days rise in a flood and, struggling to find a vent, keep knocking at the gates of our heart. How we wish we could have spoken of them all and recited our reminiscences; but our lips must remain sealed. How long to write of the goodness and gentleness of disposition—how when betrayed thou stoodst unshaken, how thou servedst them who owned thee not and how thou sufferedst when unknown and madest not the slightest mention of it when thou gotst known - how we long to write of it all, put our pen is a broken reed. The noble story of thy life must, for the time being may perhaps, for all time to come, remain untold. For while those who can recite it are living, the time to tell it may not come and when the time comes when all that is worth telling will no longer remain suppressed and will be eagerly listened to the generation that could have recounted it might have passed away. Thy greatness, therefore, must stand undimmed but unwitnessed by man like the lofty Himalayan peaks. Thy services and sacrifices must lie buried in oblivion as do the foundations of a mighty castle.
“That news of thy sudden death was bitter enough. But bitter was far is this inability to relate to posterity under what heavy obligations thou hast placed them to express the fullness of our personal and public grief. “For indeed he was a pillar of strength, a Hindu of Hindus, and in him our Hindu race has lost one of the most exalted representatives and a perfect flower of our Hindu civilization—ripe in experience, and mellowed by sufferings and devoted to the service of man God, the cause of Hindu Sanghatan was sure to find in him one of its best and foremost champions in Madras.
“In 1907 or somewhere there, one day the maidservant at the famous India House in London handed a visiting card to us as we came downstairs to dine and told us the gentleman was waiting in the drawing room. Presently the door was flung open and a gentleman, nearly dressed in European costume and inclined to be fashionable warmly shook hands with us. He told us he had been a pleader at Rangoon and had come over to England to qualify himself as a full- fledged barrister. He was past thirty and seemed a bit agreeably surprised to find us so young. He assured us of his intention to study English music and even assured us that he was eager to get a few lessons in dancing as well. We, as usual entered our mild protest against thus dissipating the energy of our youth in light-hearted pastimes when momentous issues hung in the balance. The gentleman, unconvinced impressed, took our leave promising to continue to call upon us every now and then.—He was Shrijut V.V.S. Aiyer.
“In 1910 somewhere in March, we stood as a prisoner, then only very recently pent up in Brixon—the formidable prison in London. The warder announced visits, anxiously we accompany the file of prisoners to the visiting yard. We stand behind the bars wondering who could have come to call on us and thus invited the unpleasant attentions of the London Police. For to acknowledge our acquaintance from the visitor’s box in front of the prison bars was a sure step to eventually get behind them. The visitors are let in. they crowdedly pass past our window. Presently one dignified figure enters the box in front of us. It was V.V.S. Aiyer. His beard was closely waving on his breast. He was no longer the neatly dressed fashionable gentleman. His whole figure was transformed with some great some great act of dedication of life. “Oh leader!‟ he feeling accosted us: “why you left Paris at all!‟ We soothingly said what is I am here, pent up in this prison—and the best way now is to see what is to be done next, how to face the present.
While fully discussing the future plans the bell rang and the warders came rushing and shouting unceremoniously—“Time is up.” With a heavy heart we looked into each other’s eyes. We knew it would perhaps be the last time we ever saw each other in this life. Tears rose. Suppressing them we said: “No! No! We are Hindus. We have read the Gita. We must not weep in the presence of these unsympathetic crowds.” We spoke in Hindu, curious crowds of Englishmen watched the young Indian rebel and his friend. We parted. I watched him till he disappeared and said to my mind, “Alas! It is well nigh impossible to see this loving soul again.” For one of two fates was certain to fall to my lot, gallows or the Andamans, and neither could hold any prospects before me of seeing my friends again.
This was in 1910. fourteen years rolled by, and the impossible actually happened. Traveling the most dangerous and meandering by-parts and by- lanes and subterranean passages of life, so formidably bordering the realms of death, I met Shrijut Aiyer a couple of months ago. He had traveled all the distance from Madras to Bombay to enable us to revel a few hours in the wine of romantic joy. We forget for a while the bitterness and the keen pangs of the afflicted and tortured past and lightly gossiped as boys fresh from schools meeting after a long holiday. He took my leave. I watched him disappear and said to my mind, “Now I can call him again anytime I like.” Little I knew that it was then that he was to disappear beyond all human recall. When human wisdom shook its head and shorted out “Impossible,” events proved it possible and when it gaily assured itself, “at any time,” Destiny put in a stern Never; thus our Fate seems to act with no nobler intention than to mock and humiliate human, calculations!
With Aiyer the politician we cannot concern ourselves here. It is the loss of Aiyer, the scholar, the friend, the noblest type of a Hindu gentleman, the author of Kural, the saintly soul whose life has been one continuous sacrifice and worship, that we so bitterly bewail today and bitterly chafe at our inability to pay a public tribute to his memory in a fashion worthy of the noble dead. Oh, the times on which our generation has fallen! The noblest sink down and are washed off to the shores of death, while the unworthy keep gaily swimming on the tides of line. But thou hast done thy duty, friend! It was far Human Love, that thou livedst and thou diedst too for human love even as martyr unto her. Thou knewest no peace in life, Oh! Soldier of God. But peace be with Thee in Death. Oh friend! Peace be with thee and divine rest!