|
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
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.
The condition of things in India being given, the one possible aim for
political effort resulting and the sole means and spirit by which it could be
brought about, this man had to come and, once in the field, had to come to the
front. 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. His life, his character, his work and endurance, his
acceptance by the heart and the mind of the people are a stronger argument than
all the reasonings in his speeches, powerful as these are, for Swaraj, Self-government, Home Rule, by whatever name we may
call the sole possible present aim of our effort, the freedom of the life of
India, its self-determination by the people of India. Arguments and speeches do
not win liberty for a nation; but where there is a will in the nation to be
free and a man to embody that will in every action of his life and to devote
his days to its realisation in the face of every difficulty and every
suffering, and where the will of the nation has once said, "This man and
his life mean what I have in my heart and in my purpose," that is a sure
signpost of the future which no one has any excuse for mistaking. Page - 348 eminent position to any of the causes which have usually made for political leading in India, wealth and great social position, professional success, recognition by Government, a power of fervid oratory or of fluent and taking speech; for he had none of these things to help him. He owes it to himself alone and to the thing his life has meant and because he has meant it with his whole mind and his whole soul. He has kept back nothing for himself or for other aims, but has given all himself to his country.
Yet is Mr. Tilak a man of various and no ordinary gifts, and in several lines of life he might have achieved present distinction or a pre-eminent and enduring fame. Though he has never practised, he has a close knowledge of law and an acute legal mind which, had he cared in the least degree for wealth and worldly position, would have brought him to the front at the bar. He is a great Sanskrit scholar, a powerful writer and a strong, subtle and lucid thinker. He might have filled a large place in the field of contemporary Asiatic scholarship. Even as it is, his Orion and his Arctic Home have acquired at once a worldwide recognition and left as strong a mark as can at all be imprinted on the ever-shifting sands of oriental research. His work on the Gita, no mere commentary but an original criticism and presentation of ethical truth, is a monumental work, the first prose writing of the front rank in weight and importance in the Marathi language, and likely to become a classic. This one book sufficiently proves that had he devoted his energies in this direction, he might easily-have filled a large place in the history of Marathi literature and in the history of ethical thought, so subtle and comprehensive is its thinking, so great the perfection and satisfying force of its style. But it was psychologically impossible for Mr. Tilak to devote his energies in any great degree to another action than the one life-mission for which the Master of his works had chosen him. His powerful literary gift has been given up to a journalistic work, ephemeral as even the best journalistic work must be, but consistently brilliant, vigorous, politically educative through decades, to an extent seldom matched and certainly never surpassed. His scholastic labour has been done almost by way of recreation. Nor can anything be more significant than the fact that the works Page - 349 which have brought him a fame other than that of the politician and patriot,
were done in periods of compulsory cessation from his life-work, - planned and
partly, if not wholly, executed ,during the imprisonments which could alone
enforce leisure upon this unresting worker for his
country. Even these by products of his genius have some reference to the one
passion of his life, the renewal, if not the surpassing of the past greatness
of the nation by the greatness of its future. His Vedic researches seek to fix
its pre-historic point of departure; the Gita-rahasya
takes the scripture which is perhaps the strongest and most comprehensive
production of Indian spirituality and justifies to that spirituality, by its
own authoritative ancient message, the sense of the importance of life, of
action, of human existence, of man's labour for mankind which is indispensable
to the idealism of the modern spirit. Page - 450 and religious India in the paths of democratic politics. It was this
position which enabled him to effect the union of the new political spirit with
the tradition and sentiment of the historic past and of both with the
ineradicable religious temperament of the people of which these festivals were
the symbol. The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its
mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on
the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English
history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the
country or in the inner spirit of the nation. Mr. Tilak
was the first political leader to break through the routine of its somewhat academical methods, to bridge the gulf between the present
and the past and to restore continuity to the political life of the nation. He
developed a language and a spirit and he used methods which Indianised
the movement and brought into it the masses. To his work of this period we owe
that really living, strong and spontaneously organised movement in Maharashtra which has shown its energy and sincerity in
more than one crisis and struggle. This divination of the mind and spirit of
his people and its needs and this power to seize on the right way to call it
forth prove strikingly the political genius of Mr. Tilak;
they made him the one man predestined to lead them in this trying and difficult
period when all has to be discovered and all has to be reconstructed. What was
done then by Mr. Tilak in Maharashtra
has been initiated for all India by the Swadeshi
movement. To bring in the 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. This second period of his labour for his country culminated
in a longer and harsher imprisonment which was, as it were, the second seal of
the divine hand upon his work; for there can be no diviner seal than suffering
for a cause. Page-351
him at last the wider field, the greater driving power, the
larger leverage he needed to bring his life-work rapidly to a head, and not
only in Maharashtra but throughout the country. The
incidents of that period are too fresh in memory to need recalling. 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. These three
imprisonments, each showing more clearly the moral stuff and quality of the man
under the test and the revealing glare of suffer- ing,
have been the three seals of his career. The first found him one of a small
knot of pioneer workers; it marked him out to be the strong and inflexible
leader of a strong and sturdy people. The second found him already the
inspiring power of a great reawakening
of the Maratha spirit; it left him an uncrowned king in the Deccan
and gave him that high reputation throughout India which was the foundationstone of his present commanding influence. The
last found him the leader of an All-India party, the foremost exponent and head
of a thorough-going National- ism: it sent him back to be one of the two or
three foremost men of India adored and followed by the whole nation. He now
stands in the last period of his life-long toil for his country. It is one in
which for the first time some ray of immediate hope, some prospect of near
success shines upon a cause which at one time seemed destined to a long
frustration and fulfilment only perhaps after a century of labour, struggle and
suffering. Page-352 vital force in
the spirit which make a great personality readily the representative man of his
people. The Maratha race, as their soil and their history have made them, are a
rugged, strong and sturdy people, democratic in their every fibre, keenly
intelligent and practical to the very marrow, following in ideas, even in
poetry, philosophy and religion the drive towards life and action, capable of great
fervour, feeling and enthusiasm, like all Indian
peoples, but not emotional idealists, having in their thought and speech always
a turn for strength, sense, accuracy, lucidity and vigour, in learning and
scholarship patient, industrious, careful, thorough and penetrating, in life
simple, hardy and frugal, in their temperament courageous, pugnacious, full of
spirit, yet with a tact in dealing with hard facts and circumventing obstacles,
shrewd yet aggressive diplomatists, born politicians, born fighters. All this
Mr. Tilak is with a singular and eminent
completeness, and all on a large scale, adding to it all a lucid simplicity of
genius, a secret intensity, an inner strength of will, a single- mindedness in
aim of quite extraordinary force, which remind one of the brightness, sharpness
and perfect temper of a fine sword hidden in a sober scabbard. As he emerged on
the political field, his people saw more and more clearly in him their
representative man, themselves in large, the genius of their type. They felt
him to be of one spirit and make with the great men who had made their past
history, almost believed him to be a reincarnation of one of them returned to
carry out his old work in a new form and under new conditions. They beheld in
him the spirit of Maharashtra once again embodied in
a great individual. He occupies a position in his province which has no
parallel in the rest of India. Page -353 but he has
always been a little impatient of them as dissipative of serious strength and
will and a waste of time and energy which might better have been solidified and
devoted to effective work. But he is entirely a democratic politician, of a
type not very common among our leaders, one who can both awaken the spirit of
the mass and respond to their spirit, able to lead them, but also able to see
where he must follow the lead of their predominant sense and will and feelings.
He moves among his followers as one of them in a perfect equality, simple and
familiar in his dealings with them by the very force of his temperament and
character, open, plain and direct and, though capable of great reserve in his
speech, yet, wherever necessary, admitting 'them into his plans and ideas as
one taking counsel of them, taking their sense even while enforcing as much as
possible his own view of policy and action with all the great strength of quiet
will at his command. He has that closeness of spirit to the mass of men, that
unpretentious openness of intercourse with them, that faculty of plain 'and
direct speech which interprets their feelings and shows them how to think out
what they feel, which are pre- eminently the democratic qualities. For this
reason he has always been able to unite all classes of men behind him, to be
the leader not only of the educated, but of the people, the merchant, the
trader, the villager, the peasant. All Maharashtra
understands him when he speaks or writes; all Maharashtra
is ready to follow him when he acts. Into his wider field in the troubled Swadeshi times he carried the same qualities and the same
power of democratic leadership. Page - 354
though a
strong-willed man and a fighter by nature, has this much of the ordinary Indian
temperament, that with a large mind open to progressive ideas he unites a
conservative temperament strongly in touch with the sense of his people. In a
free India he would probably have figured as an advanced Liberal statesman
eager for national progress and greatness, but as careful of every step as firm
and decided in it and always seeking to carry the conservative instinct of the
nation with him in every change. He is besides a born Parliamentarian, a leader
for the assembly, though always in touch with the people outside as the
constant source of the mandate and the final referee in differences. He loves a
clear and fixed procedure which he can abide by and use, even while making the
most of its details, - of which the theory and practice would be always at his
finger-ends, - to secure a practical advantage in the struggle of parties. He
always set a high value on the Congress for this reason; he saw in it a
centralising body, an instrument and a first, though yet shapeless, essay at a
popular assembly. Many after Surat spoke of him as
the deliberate breaker of the Congress, but to no one was the catastrophe so
great a blow as to Mr. Tilak. He did not love the
do-nothingness of that assembly, but he valued it both as a great national fact
and for its unrealised possibilities and hoped to make it a central
organisation for practical work. To destroy an existing and useful institution
was alien to his way of seeing and would not have entered into his ideas or his
wishes. Page - 355
place of good
bread. Nor does he like to go too far ahead of possibilities, and indeed has
often shown in this respect a caution highly disconcerting to the more
impatient of his followers. But neither would he mistake, like the born
Moderate, the minimum effort and the minimum immediate aim for the utmost
possibility of the moment. Such a man is no natural revolutionist, but a
constitutionalist by temper, though always in such times necessarily the leader
of an advanced party or section. A clear constitution he could use, amend and.
enlarge would have suited him much better than to break existing institutions
and get a clear field for innovations which is the natural delight of the
revolutionary temperament. Page - 356
need and
advisability demand and the sense of the people is ready to advance. This
attitude may be right or wrong; but, Mr. Tilak being
what he is and the nation being what it is,. he could take no other. Page - 357
gradual preparation for liberty,
or merely to discuss isolated or omnibus grievances and strive to enlighten the
darkness of the official mind by luminous speeches and resolutions, as was the
general practice of Congress politics till 1905. A national agitation in the country which would make the Congress
movement a living and acting force was always his ideal, and what the Congress
would not do, he, when still an isolated leader of a handful of enthusiasts in
a corner of the country, .set out to do in his own strength and for his own
hand. He saw from the first that for a people circumstanced like ours there
could be only one political question and one aim, not the gradual improvement
of the present administration into something in the end fundamentally the
opposite of itself, but the early substitution of Indian and national for
English and bureaucratic control in the affairs of India. A subject nation does
not prepare itself by gradual progress for liberty; it opens by liberty its way
to rapid progress. The only. progress that has to be made in the preparation
for liberty, is progress in the awakening of the national spirit and in the creation
of the will to be free and the will to adopt the necessary means and bear the
necessary sacrifices for liberty. It is these clear perceptions that have
regulated his political career. Page - 358 racterised the august, useful and calmly
leisurely proceedings of that temperate national body. We all know the convulsion that followed the injection of this foreign
matter; but we must see why Mr. Tilak insisted on
administering annually so potent a remedy. The four resolutions were for him
the first step towards shaking the Congress out of its torpid tortoise-like
gait and turning it into a living and acting body. Page - 359
of programme or
action dictated by the necessities of the time. Thus during the movement of
1905-1910 the Swadeshi leader and the Swadeshi party insisted on agitation in India and
discouraged reliance on agitation in England, because the awaking and fixing of
self-reliant national spirit and will in India was the one work for the hour
and in England no party or body of opinion existed which would listen to the
national claim, nor could exist, - as anybody with the least knowledge of
English politics could have told, - until that claim had been unmistakably and
insistently made and was clearly supported by the fixed will of the nation. The
Home Rule leader and the Home Rule party of today, which is only the "New
Party" reborn with a new name, form and following, insist on the contrary
on vigorous and speedy agitation in England, because the claim and the will have
both been partially, but not sufficiently recognised,
and because a great and growing British party now exists which is ready to make
the Indian ideal part of its own programme. So; too,
they insisted then on Swaraj and rejected with
contempt all petty botching with the administration, because so alone could the
real issue be made a living thing to the nation; now they accept readily enough
a fairly advanced but still half-and-half scheme, but always with the proviso
that the popular principle receives substantial embodiment and the full ideal
is included as an early goal and not put off to a far-distant future. The
leader of men in war or politics will always distrust petty and episodical gains which, while giving false hopes, are
merely nominal and put off or even endanger the real issue, but will always
seize on any advantage which brings decisive victory definitely nearer. It is
only the pure idealist, - but let us remember that he too has his great and
indispensable uses, - who insists always on either all or nothing. Not
revolutionary methods or revolutionary idealism, but the clear sight and the
direct propaganda and action of the patriotic political leader insisting on the
one thing needful and the straight way to drive at it, have been the sense of
Mr. Tilak's political career. Page - 360 and
political thought now dominant in the country which he has so prominently
helped to create. Mr. Tilak has none of the gifts of
the orator which many lesser men have possessed, but his force of thought and
personality make him in his own way a powerful speaker. He is at his best in
his own Marathi tongue rather than in English; for there he finds always the
apt and telling phrase, the striking application, the vigorous figure which go
straight home to the popular mind. But there is essentially the same power in
both. His words have the directness and force - no force can be greater - of a
sincere and powerful mind always going immediately to the aim in view, the
point before it, expressing it with a bare, concentrated, economy of phrase and
the insistence of the hammer full on the head of the nail which drives it in
with a few blows. But the speeches have to be read with his life, his
character, his life-long aims as their surrounding atmosphere. That is why I
have dwelt on their main points; - not that all I have said is not well-known,
but the repetition of known facts has its use when they are important and
highly significant. Page - 361 great opportunities have hastened its success, of which he has taken full advantage. The lava-like flood of the Swadeshi movement fertilised the soil and did for the country in six years the work of six ordinary decades; it fixed the goal of freedom in the mind of the people. The sudden irruption of Mrs. Besant into the field with her unequalled gift, - born of her untiring energy, her flaming enthusiasm, her magnificent and magnetic personality, her spiritual force, - for bringing an ideal into the stage of actuality with one rapid whirl and rush, has been the second factor. Indeed the presence of three such personalities as Mr. Tilak, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Gandhi at the head and in the heart of the present movement, should itself be a sure guarantee of success. The nation has accepted the near fulfilment of his great aim as its own political aim, the one object of its endeavour, its immediate ideal. The Government of India and the British nation have accepted complete self-government as their final goal in Indian administration; a powerful party in England, the party which seems to command the future, has pronounced for its more speedy and total accomplishment. A handful of dissentients there may be in the country who still see only petty gains in the present and the rest in the dim vista of the centuries, but with this insignificant exception, all the Indian provinces and communities have spoken with one voice. Mr. Tilak's principles of work have been accepted; the ideas which he had so much trouble to enforce have become the commonplaces and truisms of our political thought. The only question that remains is the rapidity of a now inevitable evolution. That is the hope for which Mr. Tilak still stands, a leader of all India. Only when it is accomplished, will his life-work be done; not till then can he rest while he lives, even though age grows on him and infirmities gather, - for his spirit will always remain fresh and vigorous, - any more than a river can rest before the power of its waters has found their goal and discharged them into the sea. But whether that end, - the end of a first stage of our new national life, the beginning of a greater India reborn for self-fulfilment and the service of humanity, - come tomorrow or after a little delay, its accomplishment is now safe, and Mr. Tilak's name stands already for history as a nation-builder, one of the half-dozen greatest political perso- Page - 362 nalities, memorable figures, representative men of the nation in this most critical period of India's destinies, a name to be remembered gratefully so long as the country has pride in its past and hope for its future. Page - 363 |