But Vinayak had no such qualms. Mazzini and his revolutionary ideas formed a regular feature of the Free India Society lectures. The details of how Mazzini ‘induced Italian soldiers employed by Austrian rulers to join in the freedom struggle, how he took help from various princely states in Italy to liberate his country’ 43 seemed the perfect prescription for Indians yearning for freedom. There were undoubtedly sceptics who wondered how a prototype of an advanced European country like Italy, whose people and princely states craved for freedom and who had ample supply of arms, could be replicated in India. They felt that suggestions of a similar armed struggle in India were impractical, laughable and even suicidal. To these, Vinayak would respond:
The arms being borne by Indian soldiers under the British command are our arms. True, our Indian soldiers are illiterate, but they too must have some desire to make our country independent. Spread the fire of movement for freedom among them and see how the same soldiers turn against the English with the same arms and ammunitions!44
Within barely a week of his arrival at India House, a restless Vinayak approached the manager, Mr Mukherjee, with a query of whether the library had Mazzini’s autobiography (Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini ) and articles. 45 After finding just one volume, he managed to procure three of the six volumes. Vinayak felt as though some secret treasure had been unearthed. In just a week, he read the three volumes. Impressed by his dedication, Mukherjee managed to get him the missing volumes from elsewhere. Towards the end of the study, Vinayak realized the remarkable similarity in the thought and approach proposed by Mazzini and his own efforts in India. This bolstered his confidence that his method was right after all. He writes:
Secret societies must work on two fronts: Propaganda and Action. Some work has to be done in secret and some in the open. It is impossible to regain independence without resorting to force of arms. However, it is also essential to carry out propaganda by peaceful means to prepare the masses for their part in the revolution. It is essential to join forces with the enemies of Britain in Asia and Europe and sympathetic elements in America. Guerrilla tactics must be used to attack British sources of power, its centres, its officers; individually and in groups, to induce Indians employed by British such as soldiers to rise in revolt, to rise whenever there was a war between Britain and other foreign power, to carry out revolutionary activities one after the other—that was my plan of action. And I used to argue my case in open but still keeping within the legal limits. I was surprised to find that Mazzini had followed the same path for liberation of his country . . . I realized that if my friends and followers were to read Mazzini’s articles that will increase their faith in our methods enormously. In 1906, I and my colleagues in Abhinav Bharat were hardly twenty to twenty-two years of age. Our leaders, both Moderates and Militants dismissed our activities as ‘childish’. They were the leaders of our society at that time. But then Mazzini and his fellow revolutionaries were similarly ridiculed as ‘childish’ and ‘absurd’ by contemporary elders in Italian society in 1830s. Mazzini had replied to such ridicule in his articles. The funny thing was that in 1906 persons like Mazzini and Garibaldi were regarded as ‘great patriots’ by Indian leaders without realizing that in their days Mazzini and Garibaldi too were being branded as ‘foolhardy’ and ‘childish’. Mazzini’s articles were going to make firm our plans of action and induce faith among people of India in our methods.46
It was with this intention that Vinayak resolved to translate Mazzini’s autobiography into Marathi. His idea was not to merely write a widely read historical account but to inspire fellow Indians to emulate Mazzini’s path. He therefore decided to add a preface to demonstrate the parallels between India and Italy, and how Mazzini’s strategy could be customized and followed by Indian revolutionaries. Fired with this zeal, in a record two-and-half months since his arrival in London, by 28 September 1906, Vinayak managed to complete the translation titled Joseph Mazzini yanche Atmacharitra va Rajkaran (Politics and Autobiography of Joseph Mazzini). It had nine selected essays that ran into nearly 300 pages. The preface itself was about twenty-five pages long. In the introduction, Vinayak emphasized the importance of kartavya (duty) to Mazzini’s political philosophy. The sense of duty remained an important aspect of Vinayak’s political philosophy all his life.
Referring to the uprising of 1848 in Italy, Vinayak implored Indians to consider their own experiences in the 1857 uprising. He opines that although the Italian revolution led by Mazzini was unsuccessful in reaching its objectives it must not be construed as a failure; Indians must learn from their mistakes and carry on a relentless war in India against the British Empire. He refers to the resolve of the Italians that freedom was not to be got through begging. Hence, looking at the examples of other European nations, they decided to take recourse to secret societies where men were trained for revolution. The lack of arms did not deter Italy, wrote Vinayak. Instead, young Italians went to Spain, America, Germany, Poland and other countries to smuggle arms and also learn the art of war. In his preface, Vinayak mentions how arms managed to cross borders and enter the country as a result of widespread disaffection in the army and by administering the oath of Young Italy to many soldiers. A lot of what he wrote in the preface had less to do with Mazzini or Italy but was a clear strategy of action for India and her revolutionaries. It was masked in such coded language that no one could point a finger at him for inciting sedition against the British government. The readers too were smart enough to catch the author’s message.
Publishing the book was no easy task. Vinayak turned to his elder brother Babarao back home for support. He sent him the manuscript in October 1906. By then, Babarao and his activities in Abhinav Bharat in Nashik had already caught the attention of the local police. He had been detained during a Dussehra procession for his loud slogans of Vande Mataram , and for roughing up policemen who objected to such ‘calls of sedition’. He was questioned till late in the night and the following day nearly 200 people, including Babarao and the youngest brother Narayan, were arrested. Ironically, many of them were not even present in Nashik during the said incident; this was a clear pretext to intimidate the members of Abhinav Bharat. A year-long trial before the first class magistrate of Malegaon division, W. Plunkett, was held in different parts of Nashik district. This soon became famous as the ‘Vande Mataram Trial case’. While Narayan and a few others were acquitted in the judgment delivered on 8 May 1907, the rest were convicted under Section 332 of the IPC. Abhinav Bharat and Babarao were clearly on the radar of the intelligence agencies.
Despite this, Babarao got the manuscript that Vinayak sent him from London printed. Vinayak had dedicated the book to his two mentors— Tilak and S.M. Paranjpe. Babarao thought it prudent to show a copy of the manuscript to Tilak for his suggestions. Tilak was alarmed by its explosive content and warned Babarao that while he had no objection to what he wished to do with it, he would advise caution since it was dangerous to publish such a book. But Babarao was undaunted. It was a difficult task to find a printer. But with the help of some Abhinav Bharat members who had influence with the printing press of the newspaper Jagadahitechchhu , by June 1907, 2000 copies of the book were printed.
In order to avoid police scrutiny, Babarao had already published a series of other books under the name of Laghu Abhinav Bharat Mala (small books and pamphlets), Vinayak’s ballads Singhadacha Powada and Baji Prabhucha Powada and Govind Kavi’s ballad on the assassination of Afzal Khan by Shivaji. A new publication series titled Thorali Abhinav Bharat Mala (books and biography series) was started and the first book to be released was the Mazzini biography, priced at Rs 1.50. Within a month, the entire first print was sold out, and many asked for advance pre-orders even before the second edition could be printed. This was an indication of the public sentiment and its inclination to read both Vinayak’s writings, as well as the biography of a distant, largely unknown European revolutionary. People read the book in groups and at Abhinav Bharat meetings in different cities and towns. The Kal gave the book a rousing review:
Patriot Savarkar is well known to Marathi readers. His enthusiasm, fierce patriotism, superb articles and oratory have made him well known. Having passed his BA examination from Bombay University he had recently left for England to study to become a Barrister. Though he has gone abroad, he has not forgotten his country, his people and his language for one moment. It is persons like him who should be going abroad. The large buildings, big factories and enormous wealth of England, did not impress him; but he has been all the time thinking of uplifting our country from slavery and to progress it to the level of advanced countries . . . Savarkar has written this book in Marathi, while staying in London, the heart of the English language. This is probably the first literary work, which was written in London for the benefit of our people. There is a wonderful confluence of three—Mazzini’s articles devoted to the goddess of freedom, its translation by Savarkar in the free atmosphere of England, and the anxious readers in Maharashtra. This is bound to relieve us from all the pain. These articles by Mazzini are streams of nectar. Like the Mantras of Vedas, they have tremendous power . . . One cannot thank Savarkar enough for making these articles available. Those who can read must study such works of literature. Those who cannot read can still benefit, if someone reads it out for them.47
With advertisements of the second edition of the book coming out, the authorities were alerted. The government had an option of confiscating the book and also prosecuting the author and publisher for sedition. But Vinayak had taken extreme care to ensure that no law of the land was broken. He had simply translated Mazzini’s thoughts and nowhere had he propagated rebellion against the British Empire in India. In a confidential note regarding the book, E.B. Raikes, the advocate general for the judicial department, Government of Bombay, wrote:
On the summary before me I have no doubt that the Preface [introduction] was written with a directly seditious intention and that almost every native of this country who reads it will know this, but at the same time it is very difficult to point to a single line of it which can be said to be directed against the British Government . . . A regular attempt is being made to preach sedition under the guise of teaching historical lessons in this and many other articles . . . I cannot, however, advise that such a prosecution is certain of success . . . I incline to think that if the accused person were skilfully defended, he would have a good chance of getting off.48
Thus, knowing that the case would fail in a court of law, the government decided to proscribe the book in July 1907. Extensive searches were conducted in homes and shops to confiscate copies. People hid their copies in compartments and recesses of old walls that were later bricked and plastered over. Any person found possessing a copy of the book was presumed a revolutionary and automatically came under surveillance. It was only forty years later, in 1946, that the ban on the book was lifted, and Vinayak presided over an official release of the second edition.
Meanwhile, in October 1906, there was an interesting encounter between two individuals in London. They were to be political rivals for several decades thereafter, and their respective ideologies were to divide Indian polity irrevocably. This was when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came calling to India House and met Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
In 1893, Gandhi had gone to South Africa as a young twenty-four-year-old lawyer. He was there on a temporary assignment, to settle a commercial dispute for an Indian trader. A year after his arrival, the court ruled in favour of his client. Just when he was preparing to return to India, a group of Indian merchants requested him to stay on and fight a bill before the Natal Assembly, a British colony, seeking to remove Indians from the voters’ list. Within a month, more than 10,000 signatures had been gathered and presented to the colonial secretary, Lord Ripon. The bill was temporarily set aside, but eventually passed as law in 1896, disqualifying voters of non-European origin. These events serendipitously catapulted Gandhi into the role of an unofficial campaigner for the rights of the disenfranchised.
While Shyamji was aware and appreciative of Gandhi’s work, he was deeply critical of the latter’s role in the Anglo-Boer War. The war broke out in 1899 between the British Empire and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The Boers, or Afrikaners, were the descendants of original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. Following skirmishes with the British, they moved away to form their own independent republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. They lived peacefully with the British colonizers in their neighbourhood, till the discovery of diamonds and gold in the region aroused British avarice. The Boers offered a rigorous resistance to the British colonists in Natal and Cape Colony. Indians too were called upon to take sides. While Gandhi mentions that his ‘personal sympathies were all with the Boers’, his ‘loyalty to the British rule’ drove him ‘to participation with the British in that war’. His argument was:
I felt that, if I demanded rights as a British citizen, it was also my duty as such, to participate in the defence of the British Empire. I held then that India could achieve her complete emancipation only within and through the British Empire. So I collected to gather as many comrades as possible, and with very great difficulty got their services accepted as an ambulance corps.49
More than 500 Indians had signed up for the Indian Ambulance Corps and attended the wounded British soldiers at Spioenkop in Natal. Gandhi and others received war medals for their chivalry and loyalty to the Queen. In June 1903, Gandhi began a weekly called Indian Opinion —originating in four languages (English, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil)—as a mouthpiece for the Indian community.
Despite his own non-confrontationist attitude with the British, Shyamji was critical of the support that Gandhi and the Indians gave to the British against the native Boers. Some of Gandhi’s critical and racist comments against the ‘blacks’ of Africa too drew the ire of the Indian Sociologist. Addressing the native Africans by a derogatory term ‘Kaffir’, Gandhi had demanded separate entrances for whites and blacks at the Durban post office and had objected to Indians being classed with the South African black natives. In Gandhi’s own words:
Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.50. . . Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized . . . they are troublesome, very dirty, and live almost like animals.51
Just before Gandhi’s visit to India House in 1906, the Bambatha Rebellion was spearheaded by the Zulus protesting against unjust British taxes after the Boer War. Thousands of Zulus were ruthlessly massacred and several injured. Here too Gandhi supported the British and requested them to recruit Indians in the British army fighting against the Zulus. In the July 1906 issue of the Indian Sociologist, Gandhi was bitterly criticized for his role in aiding the suppression and massacre of the Zulu rebels.
It was against this strained background with Shyamji on political ideology that Gandhi visited India House on 20 October 1906. Writing about Shyamji, Gandhi says:
He has founded India House at his own cost. Any Indian student is allowed to stay there against a very small weekly payment. All Indians, whether Hindus, Muslims or others can and do stay there. There is full freedom for everyone in the matter of food and drink. Being situated in fine surroundings, the place has a very good atmosphere. On the first day of our arrival, both Mr Ally and I went to stay at India House, and we were very well looked after. But as our work requires our getting in touch with important people and as India House is rather remote, we have been obliged to come and live at his Hotel at great expense.52
While no record is extant of an exclusive meeting or the experiences that Vinayak and Gandhi had at the latter’s short stay at India House, Harindra Srivastava quotes an anecdote narrated to him by an eyewitness, Pandit Parmanandaji of Jhansi, a veteran freedom fighter. Vinayak was busy cooking his meal when Gandhi joined him to engage in a political discussion. Cutting him short, Vinayak asked him to first eat a meal with them. Gandhi was horrified to see the Chitpawan Brahmin cooking prawns, and being a staunch vegetarian refused to partake. Vinayak had apparently mocked him and retorted: ‘Well, if you cannot eat with us, how on earth are you going to work with us? Moreover . . . this is just boiled fish . . . while we want people who are ready to eat the British alive.’53 This was obviously not a great first meeting and their differences only widened with time.
The history of the Sikhs also intrigued Vinayak. He learnt the Gurumukhi script and read almost all Sikh religious books and original writings, including the Adi Granth, the Panth Prakash, the Surya Prakash, Vichitra Natak and other works by the revered gurus of the Sikh pantheon. He distilled these writings and issued several pamphlets including a famous ‘Khalsa’ series that created quite an impact on the Sikhs both within and outside India, arousing a sense of nationalism in them. He also issued a pamphlet under the series, with a clarion call to the Sikhs to abandon the British Indian Army, or at the very least assist the Indian freedom struggle. Sikhs made up an important 20 per cent of the Indian Army in the early part of the twentieth century. Appealing to their sentiments through the name of the army, the Khalsa, that their tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, had formed to fight the Mughals, was thus an important strategy. The British government sought an urgent interception and ban on the pamphlets under the India Post Act.54
Scotland Yard wired messages to inform the Criminal Intelligence Department in India that a considerable number of pamphlets had been posted to India to be carried in native newspapers.
Soon after completing Mazzini’s biography, Vinayak was keen on writing about the Indian uprising of 1857. It was the first widespread revolutionary movement across most of British India that shook the foundations of the East India Company. The helpful India House manager, Mr Mukherjee, brought him a book, The History of the Indian Mutiny by Sir John William Kaye. Much to his disappointment, Vinayak found that there was hardly any detailed mention of the various tumultuous events of 1857 or its protagonists such as Mangal Pandey, Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, Nana Saheb, Tatya Tope, Maulvi Ahmed Shah or Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. Later, he realized that like Mazzini’s writings this too was a six-volume epic that combined Kaye’s History of the Sepoy War in India with the writings of Colonel George Malleson to produce this elaborate treatise in 1890. The vindictive nature of the accounts documented from a British viewpoint was obviously offensive to Vinayak.
He decided to research the story himself and sought Mukherjee’s help. The latter took him to the India Office that controlled the affairs of India from London, which had a library with exhaustive resources, private papers and correspondences. 55 The library was located inside the office of the Secretary of State for India and needed special permission for entry and access. Through Mukherjee’s contacts, Vinayak managed to get a reader pass to the library. He humoured the librarian who loved to shower invectives against the treacherous Indian sepoys for their massacres of 1857 to gain his confidence and get as many secret files as possible. His research carried on for months. He read the works on 1857 of several British historians, army generals and scholars such as Sir Edwin Arnold, Dr Alexander Duff, Sir James Hope Grant, Meadows Taylor, Sir George Travelyan and others. 56 Vinayak noted that all the sources of his book were based on the works of English authors, for whom ‘it must have been impossible to paint the account of the other side as elaborately and as faithfully as they have done their own’.57
Even as the research for this book was under way, a new development was taking place in London. The first day of May was commemorated in Britain as a day of thanksgiving for the sacrifices of the British soldiers and officers who were martyred in the 1857 ‘mutiny’. In 1907, this day held an added significance, as it was the Golden Jubilee year. Leading London newspapers carried prominent headlines to mark this occasion. The Daily Telegraph flashed its headline on 6 May 1907: ‘Fifty Years ago, this week, an Empire saved by deeds of heroism.’ Plays, lectures, editorials and articles were organized and written by the British that portrayed the Indian mutineers as marauders and ruffians. Memoirs and reminiscences of some of the survivors or the kith and kin of those killed in India in 1857 were published. Services were held at various churches and public places. A big congregation at Christ Church on London’s Victoria Street recalled the ‘martyrdom’ of the founder of the Delhi Mission, Reverend Midgley John Jennings. Since it was presided over by the master of Trinity College of Cambridge, the Reverend Dr Butler, a resolution was passed that ‘Cambridge amid so many appeals to intellectual ambition, so many temptations to ignore the spiritual and unseen, might never forget what one owed to Jesus Christ, nor neglect his “other sheep” who were not of the Christian or European fold’.58
There were also reassurances given on behalf of several British officials that the ‘mutiny’ was merely an aberration and such a disaster would never recur. None less than Sir Henry Cotton, one of the pioneering members of the INC and president of its 1904 Bombay Session said:
There is no real danger of any general outbreak consequent on the present unrest in India. The people of India are disarmed, and it is needless to add that there is no organization amongst them, which could lead to any such general uprising. The 1857 Mutiny was only a mutiny of Sepoys who were armed. We have now only a very small number of Sepoys and a very large number of British troops. There is thus not the smallest reason for any panic. But there is every reason for a wise and careful inquiry into all the circumstances, which have led to the unrest, and the mere fact of that inquiry being undertaken would have a most beneficial effect.59
The youngsters at India House were witnessing all these happenings in and around London and were unwilling to take this lying down. Under Vinayak’s leadership they decided to put up a grand counter-celebration to honour the Indian martyrs of 1857. It is noteworthy that no political party or groups back in India organized any commemoration of such an important milestone of the nation’s past and the task was left to a few young students in distant London. India House was grandly decorated with festoons, bouquets, flowers and arches. Portraits of the heroes and heroines of 1857 were hung on stage. The invitation to the event is published in Mukund Sonpatki’s book Daryapar : ‘Under the auspices of the Free India League it is decided to commemorate the golden jubilee of the patriotic rising of 1857. The meeting is to be held on Saturday, 11th of May, the day of the declaration of Independence.’60
More than 200 people attended the event at India House, even as a parallel event was also held at Shyamji’s brother-in-law Nitin Sen Dwarkadas’s house (known as Tilak House) in Acton. In a stirring speech evocatively titled ‘O! Martyrs!’, Vinayak asserted that one should stop calling the 1857 episode a ‘mutiny’ or ‘uprising’, and instead use the nomenclature ‘First War of Indian Independence’. It was a rehearsal of sorts for a permanent war in India that would not rest till it witnessed a complete overthrow of the Empire. He roared:
Today is the 10th of May! It was on this day that, in the ever memorable year of 1857, the first campaign of the War of Independence was opened by you, Oh Martyrs, on the battlefield of India . . . all honour be to you, Oh Martyrs; for it was for the preservation of the honour of the race that you performed the fiery ordeal of a revolution . . . this day . . . we dedicate, Oh Martyrs, to your inspiring memory! It was on this day that you raised a new flag to be upheld, you uttered a mission to be fulfilled, you saw a mission to be realized . . . We take up your cry, we revere your flag, we are determined to continue that fiery mission of ‘away with the foreigner’, which you uttered, amidst the prophetic thunderings of the Revolutionary war. Revolutionary, yes, it was a Revolutionary war . . . No, a revolutionary war knows no truce, save liberty or death! Indians, these words must be fulfilled! Your blood, oh Martyrs, shall be avenged! . . . For the War of 1857 shall not cease till the revolution arrives, striking slavery into dust, elevating liberty to the throne. Whenever a people arises for its freedom, whenever that seed of liberty gets germinated in the blood of its fathers, whenever there remains at least one true son to avenge that blood of his fathers, there never can be an end to such a war as this.61
Vinayak designed small medallions with the words ‘In Memory of the Martyrs of 1857’ and ‘Bande Mataram’ displayed prominently, which had to be worn by all the Indian students of India House. Harnam Singh and another student at Cirencester, Rafiq Mohamed of Nabha, wore these medallions to college. The horrified professors ordered them to remove them. This led to a confrontation between Harnam and the principal of the college—something that was picked up by the London newspapers and subsequently the India Office. Harnam was expelled from college but he was feted with a hero’s welcome when he came to London to visit his comrades at India House. Rafiq Mohamed too faced expulsion and several others lost their scholarships. Mohamed, however, apologized to the principal, was re-enrolled and struck off the surveillance list by the India Office.62
As news of the India House celebrations and Vinayak’s speeches started appearing in newspapers, the intelligence agencies of Scotland Yard became extra cautious. A few pages of Vinayank’s manuscript on 1857 were smuggled out through a treacherous mole planted by the agencies at India House. Vinayak’s reader pass was cancelled and his entry into the library was subsequently debarred. But luckily for Vinayak most of the research for the book had already been completed by then. A few references to the quotations needed to be cross-verified. V.V.S. Aiyar was given the task and he managed to complete it successfully.
The title of Vinayak’s book, The Indian War of Independence of 1857 (the Marathi title was Atharashe Sattavanche Swatantra Samar ), was captivating because it gave status to the historical event hitherto despised as a ‘mutiny’. Vinayak says that he began his journey with the investigative mind of a historian, scanning all the documents of that era only to find to his utter surprise the brilliance of a war of independence shining in the mutiny of 1857. Quite dramatically, he states: ‘. . . the spirits of the dead seemed hallowed by martyrdom, and out of the heap of ashes sprung forth the sparks of a glorious inspiration.’ 63 In the introductory chapter, Vinayak focuses on the principles of great religious and political revolutions, such as in France or Holland. But to clarify the point with regard to the Indian context, he writes:
Every revolution must have a fundamental principle . . . A revolutionary movement cannot be based on a flimsy and momentary grievance. It is always due to some all-moving principle for which hundreds and thousands of men fight . . . The moving spirits of revolutions are deemed holy or unholy in proportion as the principle underlying them is beneficial or wicked . . . In history, the deeds of an individual or nation are judged by the character of the motive . . . To write a full history of a revolution means necessarily the tracing of all the events of that revolution back to their source—the motive.64
Vinayak argued that the general historiography of 1857, largely written by Western scholars, failed to acknowledge or appreciate the true reason for its outbreak. Most historians had also adopted methodologies that neglected ‘native’ voices. According to Vinayak, the common attribution to the greased cartridges layered with the lard of beef and pork was too simplistic. To keep harping on these ‘temporary’ or ‘accidental’ causes of the war was to completely ignore the ‘real spirit’ of the revolution. He writes about the English historians:
Some of them have not made any attempt beyond merely describing the events, but most of them have written the history in a wicked and partial spirit. Their prejudiced eye could not or would not see the root principle of that Revolution. Is it possible, can any sane man maintain, that that all-embracing Revolution could have taken place without a principle to move it? Could that vast tidal wave from Peshawar to Calcutta have risen in flood without a fixed intention of drowning something by means of its force? Could it be possible that the sieges of Delhi, the massacres of Cawnpore, the banner of the Empire, heroes dying for it, could it ever be possible that such noble and inspiring deeds have happened without a noble and inspiring end? Even a small village market does not take place without an end, a motive; how, then, can we believe that that great market opened and closed without any purpose—the great market whose shops were on every battle field from Peshawar to Calcutta, where kingdoms and empires were being exchanged, and where the only current coin was blood?65
The two cornerstones for the war, he postulated, were swaraj and swadharma—love for one’s country and one’s religion. These were the guiding principles for all revolution, in India or elsewhere. He quotes the proclamations of the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar exhorting fellow Hindus and Muslims alike to arise and fight to protect their lands and faith. Vinayak traces the same trajectory for revolutions elsewhere, including the one in Italy under Mazzini. His conceptualization of revolution and its causes is thus at variance with the general Marxist hypothesis.
Having thus laid out his thesis on the principles guiding a revolution, Vinayak forcefully argues that the histories of revolutionary wars need to be written as part of a nation’s strategy. His book was an attempt to do precisely that and present a correct analysis of the ‘war’, not a ‘mutiny’. He repeatedly mentions that the motive behind writing the book was to instil a burning desire among his countrymen to wage a well-planned armed struggle against foreign rule. He expected this historical account to also place before the revolutionaries an outline of a programme, plan of action and organization to achieve that end. There are delightful and dramatic pen pictures and anecdotes of Lakshmi Bai, Nana Saheb, Tatya Tope, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Mangal Pandey, Maulvi Ahmed Shah, Kumar Singh, Rana Amar Singh, Begum Hazrat Mahal and others. From Delhi, Ayodhya, Kanpur, Bihar and Jhansi to Benares, Rohilkhand, Allahabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Lucknow and Oudh, the narrative traverses the entire spread of the revolution. The book is rich in historical details, citation of sources and has a narrative flourish to it. He credits the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar for providing the movement a symbolic leadership and that it was in the Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audiences at the Red Fort) of Delhi that the seeds of revolution began to take root. Sympathizing with the Mughal plight, he writes:
The English had not stopped at merely taking away the Padshahi of the Padshah of Delhi, but had recently decided even to take away the title of Padshah from the descendants of Babar. The Emperor, though reduced to such an extremity, and Zinat Mahal, the beloved, clever, and determined Begum of the Emperor, had already decided that this last opportunity of regaining the lost glory should not be allowed to go by, and if dying was the only resource, then they should die the death which would only befit an Emperor and an Empress.66
Agreeing with Nana Saheb’s belief, Vinayak also suggests that the 1857 movement was one that brought Hindus and Muslims together; that Hindustan was ‘thereafter the united nation of the adherents of Islam as well as Hinduism’. 67 The animosity between the two communities, he explains, was necessitated in the past when the Muslims were aggressive invaders and rulers and the Hindus the submissive ruled. But now, both of them had a common enemy in the British who threatened both their regime and religion. Hence that antagonism of the past was buried and common cause was made. Thus, to protect their respective swadharmas and swaraj, it was necessary for Hindus and Muslims to join hands. Elaborating on this point, he states:
As long as the Mahomedans lived in India in the capacity of the alien rulers, so long to be willing to live with them like brothers was to acknowledge national weakness. Hence it was, up to then, necessary for the Hindus to consider the Mahomedans as foreigners. And moreover this rulership of the Mahomedans, Guru Govind in the Panjab, Rana Pratap in Rajputana, Chhatrasal in Bundelkhand, and the Maharattas by even sitting upon the throne at Delhi, had destroyed; and, after a struggle of centuries, Hindu sovereignty had defeated the rulership of the Mahomedans and had come to its own all over India. It was no national shame to join hands with Mahomedans then, but it would, on the contrary, be an act of generosity. So, now, the original antagonism between the Hindus and the Mahomedans might be consigned to the past. Their present relation was one not of rulers and ruled, foreigner and native, but simply that of brothers with the one difference between them of religion alone. For, they were both children of the soil of Hindusthan. Their names were different, but they were all children of the same Mother; India therefore being the common mother of these two, they were brothers by blood. Nana Sahib, Bahadur Shah of Delhi, Moulvi Ahmad Shah, Khan Bahadur Khan, and other leaders of 1857 felt this relationship to some extent and, so, gathered round the flag of Swadesh leaving aside their enmity, now so unreasonable and stupid. In short, the broad feature of the policy of Nana Sahib and Azimullah were that the Hindus and the Mahomedans should unite and fight shoulder to shoulder for the independence of their country and that, when freedom was gained, the United States of India should be formed under the Indian rulers and princes.68
He even praised the spirit of ‘jehad’ that ‘the great and saintly’ Maulvi Ahmed Shah had so cleverly woven through every corner of Lucknow and Agra. Delhi was liberated on 11 May 1857 and by 16 May all remnants of British rule were erased, and Zafar was declared the emperor of India. Celebrating this momentous episode, Vinayak writes: ‘The five days during which Hindus and Mahomedans proclaimed that India was their country and they were all brethren, the days when Hindus and Mahomedans unanimously raised the flag of national freedom at Delhi. Be those grand days ever memorable in the history of Hindusthan.’69
He emphasized how the event had helped unite Indians against all divisions of caste, creed, religion and region. It was this unity and sense of national identity that he wanted to tap into and mobilize yet again for a unified struggle against British tyranny.
Not one individual, not one class, alone had been moved deeply by seeing the sufferings of their country. Hindu and Mahomedan, Brahmin and Sudra, Kshatriya and Vaishya, prince and pauper, men and women, Pandits and Moulvies, sepoys and the police, townsmen and villagers, merchants and farmers—men of different religions, men of different castes, people following widely different professions—not able any longer to bear the sight of the persecution of the Mother, brought about the avenging Revolution in an incredibly short time.70
The book ends on a note of both poignancy and optimism in which he describes a scene in the Delhi Durbar of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar:
During the heat of the Revolution he (Zafar) composed a Ghazal. Someone asked him:
Dumdumay mein dam nahin khair maango jaanki
Ai Zafar thandi hui shamsher Hindusthanki.
(Now that, every moment, you are becoming weaker
pray for your life [to the English]
for, Oh! Emperor, the sword of India is now broken forever!)
The Emperor replied:
Ghazion mein bu rahegi jab talak iman ki
Tab toh London tak chalegi teg Hindustan ki.
(As long as there remains the least trace of love of faith in the hearts of our heroes
so long, the sword of Hindustan shall remain sharp
and one day shall flash even at the gates of London.)71
For Vinayak the historical legacy of India was an important aspect of all his writings. History was a tool that served to propagate a particular reading, and evocation, of Indian national identity from time immemorial. He hoped that a historically enlightened Indian would identify with a sense of national pride and move forward, just as the revolutionaries in America (1776), France (1789) and Italy (1848–49) had done.
Just like the Mazzini biography, this book too had a tortuous route to publication and sale. The journey of the book towards its publication is as fascinating as its contents and the research that went into it. In fact, it created a literary history of sorts by being the first book to be proscribed even before it was published. By 1907, the British government had enough suspicions about the activities at India House and had planted several moles there to get regular feedback. As mentioned earlier, a few chapters of Vinayak’s book on 1857, which were in Marathi, were found missing from the House. They found their way to the British Intelligence Headquarters at Scotland Yard. Yet Vinayak and his associates in Abhinav Bharat managed to smuggle the manuscript out of London and dispatched it to India, foiling the strict customs vigilance at Indian ports.
Babarao tried his best to find a printer, but no one dared to take the risk. Mr Limaye of Solapur, editor of the weekly Swaraj, agreed to print it. But the authorities got wind of it and with the threat of an impending raid looming large, Limaye backed out. Simultaneous raids took place at several prominent printing houses across Maharashtra. Finding it impossible to get the book printed in India, Babarao sent the manuscript to Paris. Here too, as Vinayak noted, ‘the French detectives were working hand in hand with the British Police to suppress the . . . revolutionary activities in France; and under their threat even a French printer could not be found ready to run the risk of printing this history’.72
Thereafter, it was decided that the book should be printed in Germany. Since Germany was a seat of Indology and Sanskrit learning, it might have the Devanagari script. However, the compositors there were totally ignorant about Marathi and did a shoddy job. In London, a few Abhinav Bharat members—Koregaonkar, Phadke and Kunte—decided to translate the book into English, under the supervision of V.V.S. Aiyar, to enable a wider readership. Once again, they tried to publish the translated version and the original in France and Germany but met with little success as both countries did not want to offend Britain. The German publisher showed the manuscript to his lawyer who warned him that his ‘business would be ruined if the firm is known to undertake such works’. 73 Finally, the manuscripts made their way to Holland where a printing press was convinced to publish it. The revolutionaries spread rumours that the book was being printed in France in order to hoodwink and distract the British intelligence and police. The book was finally printed and was ready for distribution.
The British intelligence carried reports about the book, and the viceroy, Lord Minto, sent back a terse message on 14 December 1908: ‘I hope we can stop Savarkar’s book on the Mutiny from entering India.’ 74 Accordingly, J.C. Ker, personal assistant to the director of criminal intelligence, noted that to prevent the import of the book they would need to use Section 19 of the Sea Customs Act, 75 given it was a ‘most objectionable book’. However, he advised caution that it would be unsafe to publicly notify it as such, prior to examining the title, contents and the tone of the book through a proof copy that could be procured. 76 An alternative route of using the Post Office Act was also considered but vetoed by C.J. Stevenson-Moore, the officiating director of criminal intelligence.
The British newspapers carried reports of the proscription of the book and ban on its sale in British India. The Homeward Mail from India, China and The East dated 9 August 1909 and the Times, dated 11 August 1909, reported:
The mail from India brings the following notification issued at Simla on July 23—‘In exercise of the power conferred by Section 19 of the Sea Customs Act 1878 (viii of 1878), the Governor-in-Council is pleased to prohibit the bringing by sea or by land into British India of any copy of the book or pamphlet in Marathi on the subject of the Indian Mutiny by Vinayek Damodar Sarvarkar or any English translation or version of the same.77
Vinayak wrote a spirited letter challenging the proscription. This was published in The London Times:
It is admitted by the authorities that they were not sure whether the manuscript had gone to print. If that is so, how does the government know that the book is going to be so dangerously seditious as to get it proscribed before its publication, or even before it was printed? The government either possesses a copy of the manuscript or does not. If they have a copy, then why did they not prosecute me for sedition as that would have been the only course legitimately left to them? On the contrary, if they have no copy of the manuscript how could they be so cocksure of the seditious nature of a book of which they do not know anything beyond some vague, partial, and unauthenticated reports?78
On 17 September 1909, Vinayak wrote in the Kal:
My attention has been drawn to the orders issued by the Government of India under the Customs Act, prohibiting the entry of a History of the Indian Mutiny alleged to be written by me, into India. It may be legal to suppress a book even before it is published. But certainly it can never be just. The Governor-General of India has mentioned my name in this connection without any inquiry and thereby laid himself open to censure. If the evidence in the hands of Government was reliable, they should have informed me of the charge and heard me. If the proper evidence was not forthcoming, it was the moral duty of Government to ask me to enter on my defense before condemning me. But it appears that Government are pleased to attack me unawares. Under such circumstances, I can declare that I have no connection with any book of such a nature as is indicated in the orders of the Government of India.79
The revolutionaries of Abhinav Bharat however found ingenious ways of having the book smuggled to India. Copies were wrapped in artistic covers printed with innocuous and bogus names such as ‘The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club’, 80 ‘Scott’s Works’ and ‘Don Quixote’. Boxes with false labels were used and one such box was smuggled into India by Sikandar Hayat Khan. However, since there was no ban on its sale in England, books were secretly sold and distributed at several places. The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the India Office Library (IOL) hold copies of the first edition. Madame Bhikaji Cama, who was in Paris, made copies available at a price of 10 shillings. She also got a second edition published in France. Vinayak had given her the original Marathi manuscript for safekeeping, which she had deposited in a bank locker in Paris. However, it was generally believed that during the First World War, the bank was destroyed and with it, the manuscript. It was only in 1947 that Savarkar received a letter from one Ramlal Bajpayee in America stating that the original was safe with his friend D.D.S. Kutinho in London, and two years later he managed to get the copy back through one Dr Gohokar of America. 81 A third edition was published by Lala Har Dayal and the Ghadr Party in America. Copies were sold in New York at $2 for a hardback and $1.50 for paperback versions.
A few decades later, the great Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh had the fourth edition of the book secretly published in India. 82 There are references of how Bhagat Singh was deeply influenced by a small English biography of Savarkar that he read in the Dwarkadas Library of Lahore. 83 Copies of the book were found during raids conducted on all the members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) who were accused in the Lahore Conspiracy Case (1928–31), including Bhagat Singh. This fact is bolstered by a first-person account given by Durga Das Khanna in an interview in 1976.84
Khanna was the former chairman of the Punjab Legislative Council in independent India but in his younger days he had been a revolutionary. He recalls his first meetings with Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev Thapar, the Punjab revolutionaries who had formed the HSRA in the 1920s. During their recruitment drive for the organization they had met Khanna, spoken to him about politics and a wide range of issues to gauge his political orientation, and they had also recommended several books. These included Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky’s The ABC of Communism (1920), Daniel Breen’s My Fight for Irish Freedom (1924), and Chitragupta’s Life of Barrister Savarkar. It hence becomes clear that Bhagat Singh and his associates expected new recruits to the HSRA to not only read about the Russian Revolution and the Irish Republican Army, but also Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s life story.
A decade later, in the 1940s, the other major national heroes, Rash Behari Bose and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, also got an edition of The Indian War of Independence of 1857 printed in Japan. A Tamil edition of the book, edited by Jayamani Subrahmanyam, one of the publicity officers of Netaji’s Indian National Army (INA), was also discovered in tatters in one of the raids.
Thus, for almost three-and-a-half-decades the book served as a veritable Bible for all revolutionaries. Through the book, Vinayak managed to draw a lineage of revolutionaries starting from its roots in the 1857 war till the time of India’s independence, positing himself at the centre as one of its important intellectual fountainheads. Subbarao, editor of Gosthi, notes about the book:
The British Raj in India has treated Savarkar’s book as most dangerous for their existence here. So it has been banned. But it has been read by millions of our countrymen including my humble self. In trying to elevate the events of 1857, which interested historians and administrators had not hesitated to call for decades as an ‘Indian Mutiny’, to its right pose of Indian War of Independence, albeit a foiled attempt at that, it is not a work of patriotic alchemist turning base mutineering into noble revolutionary action. Even in these days, what would the efforts of Subhas Bose’s Azad Hind Fouj be called if Savarkar’s alchemy had not intervened? True, both the 1857 and 1943 ‘wars’ have ended in failure for our country. But the motive behind—was it mere mutineering or War of Independence? If Savarkar had not intervened between 1857 and 1943, I am sure that the recent efforts of the Indian National Army would have been again dubbed as an ignoble mutiny effectively crushed by the valiant British-cum-Congress arms and armlessness. But thanks to Savarkar’s book, Indian sense of a ‘mutiny’ has been itself revolutionized. Not even Lord Wavell, I suppose can now call Bose’s efforts as a mutiny. The chief credit for the change of values must go to Savarkar, and to him alone. But the greatest value of Savarkar’s book lies in its gift to the nation of that Torch of Freedom in whose light a humble I and a thousand other Indians have our dear daughters named after Laxmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi. Even Netaji Bose in a fateful hour had to form an army of corps after Rani of Jhansi. But for Savarkar’s discovery of that valiant heroine, Rani of Jhansi should have been a long-forgotten ‘mutineer’ of the nineteenth-century.85