Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

46

Tilak

In times of revolution everything is unsettled. It was an immense revolution that had begun in India. "Revolutions are incalculable in their goings and absolutely uncontrollable. The sea flows and who shall tell it how it is to flow ? The wind blows and what human wisdom can regulate its motions?" wrote Sri Aurobindo in the Bande Mataram, on 6 February 1908. "The will of Divine Wisdom is the sole law of revolutions and we have no right to consider ourselves as anything but mere agents chosen by that Wisdom. When our work is done, we should realise it and feel glad that we have been permitted to do so much. Is it not enough reward for the greatest services that we can do, if our names are recorded in History among those who helped by their work or their speech or better, by the mute service of their sufferings to prepare the great and free India that will be?"

Bal Gangadhar Tilak's name is recorded in History in golden letters. His work, his speech, his writing, and his immense suffering. Tilak did not serve the Mother for a reward or do God's work for hire. He was a patriot who "has kept

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back nothing for himself or for other aims, but has given all himself to his country." Sri Aurobindo said, "He was a really great man and a rare disinterested one. Tilak had a brilliant mind."

In his Introduction to Speeches and Writings of Tilak in 1918, two years before Tilak's death, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Neither Mr. Tilak nor his speeches really require any presentation or foreword. His speeches are, like the featureless Brahman, self-luminous. Straightforward, lucid, never turning aside from the point which they mean to hammer in or wrapping it up in ornamental verbiage, they read like a series of self-evident propositions. And Mr. Tilak himself, his career, his place in Indian politics are also a self-evident proposition, a hard fact baffling and dismaying in the last degree to those to whom his name has been anathema and his increasing pre-eminence figured as a portent of evil.... He could not but stand in the end where he stands today, as one of the two or three leaders of the Indian people who are in their eyes the incarnations of the national endeavour and the God-given captains of the national aspiration." Tilak's life, his character, his work and endurance, were some of the reasons of his immense hold on the people. He was accepted by the heart and the mind of the people: 'Lokmanya' — honoured by the people. "All honour to the sturdy elder brother," wrote the editor of The Modern Review for December 1916, "who has loved and dared and worked and suffered for the Motherland." Tilak was the first political leader to develop "a language and a spirit and [to use] methods which in dianised the movement and brought into it the masses.... To bring in the

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Tilak in 1916

mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics."

It was the Swadeshi movement that brought forward Tilak prominently as an all-India leader. "From the inception of the Boycott to the Surat catastrophe and his last and longest imprisonment, which was its sequel, the name and work of Mr. Tilak are a part of Indian history."

We have made before a glancing reference to the three prosecutions of Tilak. His first imprisonment—with hard labour —was in 1897 on a charge of sedition for publishing an article in Kesari. Tilak's second imprisonment took place in 1908, again charged with sedition, for publishing certain articles favouring the accused in the Alipore Bomb case.

That was a lengthy trial. Tilak was fifty-two years old then. He was not granted bail, and remained in prison throughout. Even the bail plea of M. A. Jinnah's — then a budding lawyer, later the creator of Pakistan—was refused, although he had pleaded that Tilak was under treatment for diabetes. Tilak conducted his own defence, assisted by Khaparde, Karandikar, Kelkar, Baptista and other eminent lawyers. But from the start there was little doubt about the-outcome of the case. The colonial government was desperately looking for an opportunity to neutralize Tilak, whose immense popularity rattled it. The

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judge obligingly toed the line and, brushing aside all the arguments from Tilak's side, made no pretence to impartiality. Tilak was made to stand in the dock while charges against him were read out. The nine-member jury was made up of six Europeans, two Paris and one Jew. When the jury pronounced its verdict of 'guilty'—with two dissenting voices saying 'innocent'—Tilak, the iron-willed, said, "All I wish to say is that in spite of the verdict of the jury, I maintain that I am innocent. There are higher powers that rule the destiny of things, and, it may be the will of Providence that the cause I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free." He was given a sentence of six years' transportation to Mandalay in Burma, and a fine of Rs. 1000. In 1916 he was prosecuted once again for sedition, but was acquitted.

Tilak had accepted the leadership of the Nationalists. After the debacle of the Congress on 27 December at Surat, the Moderates opened their Convention on the 28^th, while two hundred policemen guarded the wreck of the pandal.

Nevinson records. "In the afternoon the Extremists also held a convention, and also appointed a committee to watch events. In the large courtyard of a private house they met in silent crowds. Grave and silent —I think without saying a single word —Mr. Arabindo Ghose took the chair, and sat unmoved, with far-off eyes, as one who gazes at futurity. In clear, short sentences, without eloquence or passion, Mr. Tilak spoke till the stars shone out and someone kindled a lantern at his side."

In their book Lokamanya Tilak, G. P. Pradhan and A. K. Bhagwat, wrote: "Tilak and Aurobindo were master

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Sri Aurobindo presiding over the Nationalists'

Conference at Surat. On his right is Khaparde;

on his left, standing, is Tilak.

minds and when they came together each had his impact on the other ... Tilak knew that Aurobindo symbolised a new force in Indian politics and he was aware that Aurobindo could and did rouse in hundreds of young men a desire to sacrifice everything for the sake of the motherland.... To him India's fight for freedom was really an effort for the realisation of her soul. Under Aurobindo's leadership the New movement transcended the limitations of politics and embraced life." The biographers conclude, "The association of Tilak and Aurobindo was a happy coincidence." Little wonder that after his release in 1914, Tilak tried through a few friends to convince Sri Aurobindo to return to the political scene.

Both being hard-headed realists, they knew that India's independence was not for tomorrow or the day after, but they knew also that it could be hastened. So they spared no effort to sow the seed of the high aim and point the mind of the people to a great and splendid destiny, not in some distant millennium but in the comparatively near future.

When a course of life is chosen, emergencies have to be met with as they come. "The great rule of life" explained Sri Aurobindo, "is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course," and gave a warning, "but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected."

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Sri Aurobindo followed this rule of life, for his habit in action was "not to devise beforehand and plan but keep a fixed purpose, watch events, prepare forces and act when he felt it to be the right moment."

Both Tilak and Sri Aurobindo had the 'unalterable purpose' of winning India her freedom.

As for the 'right moment' to act, Tilak thought that only Sri Aurobindo and himself could take any decision of the opportune moment. Tilak knew that "a revolutionary action was too serious a matter to be decided by anyone except those who had attained a philosophic calm of mind." Few, indeed, can be extremists while retaining their calmness.

Philosophic? Sri Aurobindo's second nature, I dare say. Not a ripple ever ruffled that equanimity and calm. I still remember Sudhir Sarkar of Khulna, narrating such a tale, with tears streaming down his cheeks. "You won't believe me, Sujata." He was then a boy of seventeen and had been deputed to serve Sri Aurobindo. He had accompanied Sri Aurobindo and family to Deoghar. Sudhir was sick with malarial fever. He was lying in a large room where many of them slept on a durries [cotton carpet] spread on the floor. Sri Aurobindo had his foolscap typescripts of the translations from the Mahabharata scattered round him. Sudhir violently threw up, spattering those papers. Not a word of reproach. Not even art exclamation of annoyance. "Sri Aurobindo got up, and calmly began cleaning up the ejected matter."

Sri Aurobindo had established equanimity and calm right down to his body-consciousness so that nothing stirred

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whatever happened. It was this quality in him to which Tilak referred when he used the word sthitaprajna. Or, like 'the Yogi on the Whirlpool.'

"On a dire whirlpool in the hurrying river

A life-stilled statue naked, bronze, severe

He kept the posture of a deathless seer

Unshaken by the mad water's leap and shiver."

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