I
In politically fallen, socially degraded and financially ruined Hindusthan, the eighteen-eighties and nineties witnessed the darkest period in the history of our country. The first peep of the dawn in the form of the refonns of 1909 was still to come. The dawn of 1919 was beyond the horizon. The spiritual planets like Maharshi Ranade, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Swami Vivekananda were kindling light of social regeneration and spiritual heritage. Dayananda, Dadabhai, Ranade and Vivekananda were rousing the people from their slumber ; Ram Singh Kuka and Wasudeo Balwant had disturbed their thoughts for a good while. Tilak was carrying discontent and unrest from towns to villages and cottages. Babu Anand Mohan Bose and Babu Surendranath Banerjee were infusing a spirit of new life in Bengal. Dreading the resurgent revolts for the overthrow of its power, the British mind was deeply engrossed in finding out a safety valve for the wrath of the Indian revolution. And not long before, the British top-ranking officers and politicians founded the Indian National Congress on December 28, 1885, despite the fears and opposition of Sir Syed Ahmed, who warned the Muslims to keep aloof from the Congress.
Sprung from the neo-ideology of this institution, which was fathered by Englishmen and mothered by the Indian intelligentsia, the Moderates in the following decades placed mild, just and bare demands of the Indians before their god- sent and enlightened rulers and pleaded for them with all the force and prayerfulness of their master-minds. For, strangely enough, they sincerely believed that the victors would of themselves bless the vanquished with the much cherished reforms.
The press was almost mu 2 u:led. The Arms Act was introduced, not, as it may be imagined, with a view to
2 SAVARKAS AND HIS TIMES
ddiveriHg Indians but to degenerating and emasculating them further. Bills and budgets were prepared, printed, published and enforced before they were even known or seen by Indians. The Ilbert Bill also fomented the growing ill-feeling. The First Indian Councils Act of 1861 was slightly widened in 1892. In short, it was a shameful and mournful period. The alternative was reform or revolution.
Two events typified the new year 1883. Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a leader of renaissance, was at the end of his earthly pilgrimage, and Krantiveer Wasudeo Balwant, a man of great action, laid his bones in Aden longing for the establish- ment of an Indian Republic. In such a tense atmosphere sin:- charged with unfulfilled aspirations was bom Swatantrya Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar on Monday, the 28th May 1883, at 10 p.m. at Bhagur, a village near Nasik. The aims and aspirations of the Swami and ICrantiveer were to be imified in a great idea, new voice and new nationalism. Seventy-five days before this birth, Karl Marx, the Prophet of the Proletariat, passed away unnoticed in a London comer and sixty-two days after this birth was born Benito Mussolini who later moulded the destiny of Italy.
Savarkar springs from the illustrious clan of Chitpavan Brahmins that produced Nanasahib of 1857, Wasudeo Balwant and Lokamanya Tilak, all of whom strove to snatch the crown of Independence from the hands of the British. The Savarkars originally came from the Konkan, a land symbolising the great feat of reclamation performed by Parshxuram who is a mighty mythological figure. During the declining days of the Peshwa rule, the Savarkars were an important family which had moved in and seen great events. They were Jahgirdars of a small village, Rahiu’i, and enjoyed the honour of palanquin for their acknowledged eminence in Sanskrit scholarship. The blood, bones and brains of such ancestors carved out this epic figure of Indian Revolution, Vinayak Savarkar, who, like Mazzini, ushered in the revolutionary war of liberation in the annals of Hindusthan. And it is to be noted that, as, with the rise of Mazzini, the Austrian rule over Italy began to wane, so with the rise of De Valera and Savarkar the British Empire began to wither and vanish.
CHXLOBOOD AND YOUTH
3
n
A man of position and personality, Vinayak’s father, Damodarpant Savarkar, was well-built, studious, stem and self-respecting. In spite of his English education he loved and remembered his past. He was gifted with poetical talents and was a good conversationalist. What is more, he was an admirer of Tilak. Damodarpant’s firm and undemonstrative temperament did not stand any nonsense from his children. Vinayak’s mother, Radhabai, was a pious, lovely and bright lady known for the tenderness of her heart. Of these parents were born three sons and one daughter. The first was Ganesh, the second Vinayak, the hero of this biography, the third was a daughter named Mainabai and the fourth was Narayan.
Damodarpant was a good-natured and religious-minded man. He recited the epics Mahahharata and Ramayana and read out to his sons Ballads and Bakhars on Pratap, Shivaji and the Peshwas. He was a warm admirer of Homer and had studied and read Pope’s translation of the Iliad to his sons. It was the practice of Savarkar’s mother to make her eldest son read chapters from the Mahahharata or the Rama- yana to her children before they retired to bed. Thus the Ballads, Bakhars, legends, heroic exploits, historical episodes and mythological stories powerfully contributed to the mental development of child Savarkar.
Vinayak, the infant Jahgirdar, was sent to the village school at the age of six. Soon he showed signs of his remark- able inborn genius. Much of his inspiration he found in history and epics. His love of books and newspapers was so great that he read omnivorously, and any book or newspaper that he laid his hand upon, he read from cover to cover. His studies were intense, exciting and prolonged. His depth and intelligence and the immense interest he took in human affairs can be judged from one incident. While rea ding the history of the Arabs, he asked his father about the fiirst pages of their history. The first pages of the book w«re missing. Naturally the father repUed that they might have been tom off. What the boy, in fact, wanted to know was the antecedmts of the Arabs. The range and loftiness of this idea touched the infinite Universe. Savarkar depicted this idea in one of his
4 SAVARKAR AND HIS TIMES
latter-day poems and concluded that the first pages of all history are always unknown ! This is the curse on history, he added.
Vinayak was hardly ten when well-known newspapers from Poona accepted his poems, not knowing that the contributions came from a precocious lad. His insatiable thirst for knowledge, his excellent memory and the pecuhar charm in his voice and gait impressed every one and raised high hopes of his future. Damodarpant saw something new and extra- ordinary in his son that startled him. He was terribly alarm- ed when one day he saw his son reading the Upmiishads in the house ; for, reading the Upanishads in a house, it is said, forebodes evil for the reader’s worldly life. They are to be read and studied in the woods !
Witty, bold and handsome, Vinayak was also full of pranks. He once broke the bangles of his sister, and was shielded by his elder brother in the safe from the wrath of his father. In his boyhood he learnt archery and riding. To the horror of his companions he once caught a serpent with a piece of wire in his hand.
A man is seen at his best in his childhood. Milton says that childhood shows the man, as the morning shows the day. Here is an index to the life-book of Savarkar. In June 1893, serious riots broke between Hindus and Muslims in the Azamgarh District of the United Provinces and in August of the same year in Bombay. The news of the atrocities then perpetrated on the Hindus in the United Provinces and Bombay fired his blood and he resolved to avenge the woes and deaths of his co-religionists. The boy Savarkar led a batch of selected school-mates in a march upon the village mosque. The battalion of these boys showered stones upon it, shattered its windows and tiles and returned victorious. This incident gives the first hint of the heroic mettle Vinayak was made of and the key to his future daring life and leadership. The victory, however, was not allowed to go unchallenged. The Muslim school-boys gave battle to Vinayak, the Hindu Generalissimo. Although the number of his soldiers decreased at the time of joining the battle, Vinayak routed the enemy with missiles like pins, penknives and thorns with which he had equipped his army. The battle had its lesson. The boy
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 5
leader fell to training and organising his group. For the military training the group was divided into two detachments — one Hindu and the other a British or a Muslim — ^to defend a field or a compound. Always the Hindus won and the Muslims or the British lost in the mock fights and warfare.
Vinayak completed his Primary Education at the village school, and moved to Nasik with his elder brother for high- school education. In the meanwhile, misfortune overtook the family. Radhabai, Vinayak’s mother, died of cholera, leaving the children to the care of her husband. At the time of this fir-st calamity Vinayak was hardly ten. He was passionately devoted to his mother, and so he felt the loss terribly. Henceforward his father worked from dawn to dead of night, personally discharging the household duties and tending the .small ones affectionately.
In every life there are certain momentous incidents that decide the fate or change the mode of one’s life. A frustrated and penniless mutineer from Piedmont asked alms of Mazzini in the name of the outlaws of Italy. That was the moment of Mazzini’s conversion and dedication to the struggle for his country’s Independence. Such an occasion occurred in boy Savarkar’s life, too. It made an indelible impression on his mind. Those were the times full of horrid tales. People of Maharashtra stood between famine and death, plague and soldiers, the devil and the deep sea, as it were. The harass- ment caused by the rigid segregation camps during the plague epidemic, the strict quarantines, the dreadful plague hospitals, the reckless burning of properties and the outrages on women reached a climax. The patience of the people was wearing out. Tilak warned Lord Sandhurst’s Government that they should not drive the people to desperation.
These countless miseries of the famine and plague-stricken masses and the excesses committed by the soldiers infuriated the Chaphekar brothers of Poona, and they shot dead the Plague Commissioner, Mr. Rand, the bullying incompetent tyrant and one Mr. Ay erst on June 22, 1897, in Poona, the traditional cradle of the liberators of Hindusthan. That was the ‘ auspicious ’ day of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s rule. The day was to be celebrated despite the grinding famine and raging plague. And the celebration was
6 SAVARXAR AMD HIS TIMES
perfonned in Poona in such a way that the whole country became ablaze with the performance which electrified the Indian people. Once again Poona proved the historical law that repression, injustice and racial humiliation give rise to violent reaction that recoils on the head of the aggressor. As a result of this assassination, though outwardly on a charge of publishing seditious articles, Tilak was thrown behind the bars. Betrayed by the Dravid brothers, Damodarpant Chaphekar was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. He embraced gallows with the Giia in his hands on April 18 , 1898 .
But in a slave country struggling for freedom such abnormal times have a knack of feeling the pulse of a nation and of showing up simpletons and sycophants and separating traitors from patriots. Amd nine out of ten informants in such a country rarely go impunished. Consequently one night with the stroke of the city gun at nine, went out two bullets and the Dravid brothers of Poona, the informants in the Chaphekar trial, were shot dead in the street by the junior Chaphekar, Vasudeo and his friend Ranade, nephew of the historian Rajwade. This brave youth Chaphekar, liis another brother, Balkrishna, and Ranade were also hanged in May 1899. The end of the Chaphekar brothers marks a turning point in the history of freedom movement of India ; for they proved to be the harbingers of the coming revolutionary movement in India.
In the meanwhile, Vinayak had an attack of small-pox at Nasik and he was back to Bhagiur. There the horrible news about Chaphekars’ heroic end fell upon Vinayak’s ears. It drove the boy Savarkar to a grim resolve. He approached the family Deity, Durga, the Ashtapraharana Dharini, in the sanctuary and invoked the blessings of the Great Mother, the source of divine inspiration and strength. Sitting at the feet of the armed Goddess Durga at dead of night, he took a vow of striving nobly and sacrificing his nearest and dearest, his life and all, to fulfil the incomplete mission of the martyred Chaphekars. He vowed to drive out the Britishers from his beloved Motherland and to make her free and great once again. It was the glorious vow of Shivaji. Shivaji the Great took his vow of liberating his country from foreign domina- tion at the age of sixteen in the temple of Rohideshwar. Tilak
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 7
took to political agitation at about five-and-twenty after finishing his college education. Mazzini entered politics at the age of seventeen, and De Valera, who was born a year before Savarkar, at thirty, but Savarkar entered politics and took the vow of liberating his Motherland when he was hardly sixteen. So sincere, inspired and spontaneous was the love for his coiuitry burning in his heart !
To stir up his comrades and people Savarkar composed one night a ballad over the martyred Chaphekars. His face glowed. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he pored over his lines. Hearing the sobs, his father woke up and found his son sitting far into the night by the lamp. He read the lines of the ballad and clouds shadowed his face. The father scented a new danger and tried to dissuade his son from those daring thoughts of martyrdom at so early an age. He gently patted Vinayak on his back and advised him to take to some light songs. The father at once understood what those dripping lines, their spirit and their flash would mean to their author and his family.
At Nasik Vinayak’s academic career was not extraordinary. However, the depth of his knowledge and the fire of his eloquence had been spread far and wide by his teachers. While a junior high-school student, his article on ‘ The Glory of Hindusthan’ appeared in two parts as an editorial in the local paper, Nasik Vaihhav. With the great flow of his words, breadth of his knowledge and boldness of his views, he easily towered above all in the elocution competitions. Astounded at the range of his knowledge and power of his speech, the judges at first doubted the originality of his views, but subsequently were glad to own their mistakes. Vinayak’s poems of welcome to Maharshi Ranade and Tilak and the several ballads he composed during these years for the village chorus also won him reputation.
In 1899 Vinayak’s father and imcle succumbed to plague. Vinayak’s younger brother Narayan was also attacked by plague. He was removed first to a dilapidated temple on the outskirts of Bhagur and then to the NasUc Plague Hospital where Ganeshpant, alias Babarao, looked after him even at the risk of his own life. Fear lurked in Vinayak’s mind that Babarao might also catch the infection. And one day it did
8 SAVARKAR AND HIS TIMES
SO happen. Vinayak was terribly shocked. Boy as he was, he burst into tears in a comer, but he did not give out a word of it to Babarao’s young wife. The stuff of his courage was that of a man who stamps his mind upon history. Death was on the prowl in Nasik which had become the city of the dead. In this haunted and deserted city Vinayak passed his days and nights with heart-throbs fearing to hear bad news about his brothers who were writhing with deadly pain in the hospital. At last the danger was over. Both the brothers recovered and returned, and were once more united in a happy home.
Ill
Stars shine out at night. Although Vinayak’s mind was filled with these great anxieties, his vow would not let him sit alone. He was I’estless. He had a purpose in life and it was the liberation of his Motherland from the foreign yoke. He mused on it by day, dreamt about it by night, and he was waiting for an opportunity to throw himself into his life’.s mission with all the strength of his mind and muscle. Shakespeare has described such a poAverful mind in these beautiful lines :
“ The force of his own merit makes his way,
A gift that heaven gives for him.”
With that end in view Vinayak made friends with Mhaskar and Page, new friends of Babarao, at Nasik. Simple, hard- working, credulous, Babarao was as great an obliging man as he was a propagandist. Babarao’s selfless service won the goodwill and affection of many persons and families. Among the new additions were Mhaskar and Page. Sober and sincere, they were both patriotic workers in the background as are most men in Government service. In action they were TUakites and in thought they were drawn to the revolutionary ideas of Shivrampant Paranjpe. The political views of Paranjpe were the burning thoughts of the boy Savarkar. Paranjpe and Savarkar were politically parallel, but socially poles apart. Both were orators. The elder orator was a master of satire, the younger w’as a live volcano. While
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 9
Paranjpe was the dream of revolution, Savarkar was its living reality.
After img debates and varied discussions Vinayak won Paranjpe’s followers over to his side, administered to them the vow, and formed a Patriots’ Group of three members. This Group, established in 1899, soon assumed the shape of a Friends’ Union called ‘ Mitra Mela ’ at the beginning of 1900. Chosen youths of merit and mettle were secretly initiated into this fold. This was the famous ‘ Beehive in the words of Sir Valentine Chirol, of revolutionaries in Western India ! The Mitra Mela sprouted into the world-famous Abhinava Bharat in 1904, its network was spread over Western and Central India and subsequently its branches in the form of the Ghadr Party resounded in England, France, Germany, America, Hong-Kong, Singapore and Burma with their heroic deeds and risings like the Komagata Maru episode. The aim and ideal of the Mitra Mela was absolute political Indepen- dence of India, and it emphatically asserted that such an independence could be won, if need be, by an armed revolt. Its watchward was instruction and insurrection.
The organisation started. By diffusing knowledge, dispel- ling doubts and ignorance of the members and inspiring them with the noble aim, its young leader Vinayak Savarkar vita- lised the gilded youths and the intellectual vagabonds, and brought the best out of them. He gave them aim, form, means and ways. Those innocent and reckless youths were converted into a batch of patriots and a galaxy of martsn-s who afterwards made history.
The new patriotic and political atmosphere transformed the city into a living force of a political volcano. The Mitra Mela dominated all public and political institutions of Nasik, changed religious fimctions and festivals into political and national celebrations. These activities of the Mitra Mela gave sleepless nights to the District authorities. The Mitra Mela re-sanctified and revitalised the life of Nasik which had grown stale, insipid and hapless.
Nasik has played a very important role in India’s ancient and modem history. This southern Kashi stands on the bank of the Godavari and is the place where Sri Ramchandra passed his voluntary exile resulting from his eternal devotion
10 SAVARKAR ANO HIS TIMES
to his father. It was from Nasik that Sri Ramchandra started on his great march to annihilate the tyranny of Ravan. It was here that Ramchandra and Laxman cut the Nasika — nose — of the demoness Shiupanakha. Strange to say, Savarkar started his war of Independence for the liberation of his people in Nasik, cut off the nose of the British Imperialism and was later on exiled for his deathless devotion to his Fatherland, changing Nasik into the new Jerusalem of Revolutionary India.
During the weekly meetings of the Mitra Mela sometimes there were hot and lively discussions. On the eve of the accession of King Edward VII in 1901, a debate was held to consider whether they should hold a condolence meeting for the death of Queen Victoria and to declare allegiance to King Edward or not. Mhaskar and Page were in favour of declaring allegiance in order to allay the suspicions of the Government. There was a battle royal. Savarkar asked : “ King or Queen, the question is whose king is he. England’s Queen or King is the Queen or King of our enemies. To declare allegiance to such a King or Queen is not allegiance. It will be the Bible of slavery ! ” Ultimately it was decided to oppose both the moves. While Vinayak was at Kothur, a speaker at one meeting extolled King Edward VTI as ‘ our father ’. Within an hour of this meeting posters appeared in the village from novrhere and bitingly queried : “ Then what relation does your father beeir to your mother ? ”
Vinayak’s charming personality, his voracious reading, his trenchant views and inspiring thoughts electrified his col- leagues. They devotedly took to heart the teachings and preachings of the leader. The precepts were thenceforth no more abstract ideas. They were an everyday guidance and moving force in the daily life of Nasik. Vinayak created in his followers a liking for reading, debating and physical train- ing to make worthy and noble sacrifices, if need should arise. He himself took physical exercise — Namaskars — ^till the pers- piration from his body left his mark on the ground. In later life, however, he opined that moderate exercise consolidates and strengthens the body.
Members of the Mitra Mela served the city in many useful ways. They chastised the tyrannical elements and
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 11
brow-beat the bully. Those were the days occasionally smitten with terrible plague that reduced families to ashes, and razed houses to the ground. It was a dreadful sight. The cries of the dying men, women and children, the groans of the afSicted and the wailings of their relations were too shocking for these budding youths. There was paucity of men to carry the corpses to the cremation ground. This band of youths carried the dead all day long. Vinayak also shared the toilsome task. One night thoroughly fagged out, young Vinayak fell asleep in the cemetery unnoticed and was left behind.
Anolher prominent cast of Vinayak Savarkar’s leadership was that he knew no caste distinctions. To him all Hindus were equal. Those of his countrymen who were prepared to sacrifice their lives on the altar of freedom were his comrades. He shared his food with Maratha families and broke his bread under their roof. His attractive figure and engaging manners inspired respect and individual devotion in his circle. He was popular but by nature reserved and rather shy. He was amongst them but not of them and so he sometimes retired secretly to some sequestered corner to hold, as he put it, “ the Parliament of his mind ” ! His dress consisted of a dhoti, a coat, a jacket and a cap with a line of embroidery in the middle.
The heart of Vinayak’s poems and patriotism in those days was the resurrection and liberation of Hindusthan. In one of his poems composed at this stage of his life he says : “ O Aryan brothers, arise.” Elsewhere he says : “ For the uplift of Aryan Race and Aryan Land, better to keep it in one unit grand.” At another place he observes : “ Follow the laws of Nature. Little drops of water make the pond. Organise all Hindus and unify them.” These lines are the best interpreters of his thoughts as the words ‘ Arya ’ or ‘ Hindu ’ and ‘ One Unit ’ are the rallying-points of his ideology.
The influence the Mitra Mela exercised upon the poetry and politics of Maharashtra was of great magnitude. With a little hyperbole it may be said that the Mitra Mela was a Univer- sity. Its songs of freedom and its tales of the lives of the makers of world history inspired the students with a great vision, and infused vitality in their bones. Choirs were formed. They fed and fanned the flames of the passions of the people
12 SAVARKAR AND HIS TIMES
with revolutionary ideas. It was a group of these singers from Nasik that sang a ballad later on at the historic Fort Raigad in the presence of Tilak, making the Father of Indian Unrest quite restless.
Poets, speakers, propagandists, patriots and martyrs were produced by the Mitra Mela in scores. Out of such lumi- naries came the poet Govind Trimbak Darekar of Maha- rashtra. A Maratha by caste, his popular name was Aba. He was lame. The young poet was richly gifted, but was unlettered and therefore unacquainted with the rules of com- position. Savarkar tutored him and Aba Darekar became Poet Govind, the famous revolutionary poet of Maharashtra. If Savarkar ’s Ganges and Govind ’s Godavari were taken away from the sea of Maharashtrian Poetry, what Marathi Poetry would remain on Patriotism and Martyrdom ?
It is remarkable to note that though mostly engaged in the propagation of his ideals, Savarkar never had a failure in his school career. As a rule his colleagues and he were very particular about their success in examinations. Nor were they ever a whit behind their class. But to Savarkar life being an oblation, he, like Tilak, cai’ed more for the service of his Motherland than for academic distinctions. Yet his preparations were extraordinary. The prodigy that he was, his head was a storehouse of world history, an encyclopaedia of political and social revolutions and revolutionary figures. Few professors, even at fifty, could rival the sweep, breadth and depth of his vast knowledge. He had mastered the poets Ramdas, Moropant and Mukteshwar and proficiently com- pared and contrasted them in literary circles. One of the articles entitled, ‘ Who was the Greatest Peshwa ’, written for a competition carried away the prize. It may be mentioned here that this was recently prescribed by the Bombay Univer- sity for the Matriculation Examination. Savarkar has brought out in this article the brilliance and great leadership of the Peshwa Madhavrao I. Thus, before entering the Fergusson College, Poona, young Savarkar was a first rate debater, a powerful orator, a rising writer and a leader of a revolu- tionary organisation which was creeping over all villages and towns in the District.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH f3
A few months before Savarkar’s Matriculation Examina- tion, there occurred an important event in his life. Savarkar was married to the eldest daughter of Sri Trimbak Ram- chandra Chiplunkar alias Bhaurao, who knew Savarkar from childhood. Noble and kind-hearted, Bhaurao was a tall and attractive figure. He loved riding and hunting. Being a Karhhari in the Jawahar State lie wielded much influence in the State. The most important pail the marriage played in Savarkar’s life was fhat it solved the problem of his University education which had absorbed the attention of Babarao Savarkar for the previous five or six months. For Babarao was to Vinayak, what Baliram was to Krishna or Chimaji to Bajirao I.
After the premature death of their mother and untimely death of their father, the burden of the family fell upon Babarao’s shoulders. He had to struggle valiantly to keep the wolf from the door and to drive the household chariot along the right path of revolution. That showed his mettle and unbounded attachment to his brothers for whom he sacrificed his personal ambition. To tell the truth, Babarao would have been a great yogin had he not subordinated his future to that of his younger brother. Even as a boy, Babarao believed fervently that his younger brother was born with a mission for liberating his Motherland, that his uncommon genius and his great faith would bring about a political revo- lution in Hindusthan and that he would win back her lost freedom. This belief revolutionised his whole being. The family was in straightened circumstances and disturbed con- ditions owing to a theft committed in their house. Still Babarao vowed before his ailing and anxious “ Tatya ” that, come what might, he would send him to the University. On his part Vinayak passed the Public Service Examination and was ready to enter Government service, if need arose. But Sri Bhaurao Chiplunkar promised help, fulfilled the promise and relieved Babarao of his anxiety. Savarkar’s regard for his generous father-in-law approached reverence. Years after, through the airhole of the dark cell in the Andamans, he sighed his grateful tributes to Bhaurao Chiplunkar in these
14"^ SAVABKAR AND HIS TXMBS
words : " If there be any man or any family next to dear Baba to whom I owe all that is best in me and owing to whose noble patronage and winning solicitude I had imusual chances and facilities of assimilating the noblest things of this world and even of doing something for our common Motherland, then that man and that family is theirs (Chiplunkars’) •”