The Lokamanya and Myself
C. L. R. SASTRI
“Still,
let my tyrants know that
I
am not doomed to wear
Year
after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A
messenger or hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life eternal liberty.”
–EMILY BRONTE
It
was some three or four years before Lokamanya Tilak’s
lamentable demise. There was that in the scene which caused the event to remain
photographically lined on the tablets of my mind when a yesterday had faded
from its page.
I
was an undergraduate in
“Look
how the floor of heaven
Is
thick inlaid with patines of pure gold”
and there was a spirit
abroad that made men’s pulses beat faster than ever before, and, to cut a long
story short, I wended my footsteps, like several others, to where the “stormy
petrel” of Indian politics (as he was called) was expected
from distant Bombay.
In
those days the Bombay Mail used to reach
When
I reached the station I saw a veritable sea of humanity and was informed that
the train was two or three hours behind scchedule and
that the entrance to the platform was strictly prohibited. That fetched a deep
sigh from us (as how should it have failed to do). But, though we seemed to be
down, we were quite definitely not out.
The
Lokamanya’s was a name to conjure with, and the whole
night was before us. So we resolved to be in and around the station until we
were rewarded with his glorious darshan.
Some of us sat down on the road itself and “fleeted the time carelessly as
they did in the Golden Age.”
It
was, in a manner of speaking, an endurance test between the Bombay Mail and ourselves. I never had much faith in the Bombay Mail, my
affection having been monopolised by the trains that
arrived from
So
far as I was concerned the Bombay Mail won hands down. I waited
at the station until three in the morning: there was no Bombay Mail within
sight or hearing. Regretfully I retraced my steps
homewards and resigned myself to sleep–“tired
nature’s sweet restorer.” That had been my only chance of feasting my eyes on
my greatest Indian political hero: and hard as I tried, I missed it–for
no ascertainable fault of mine.
The
Lokamanya, I repeat, was my greatest Indian political hero. For all that I used
to call myself a “Liberal”–in those days, I mean,
when there was “an Indian National Liberal Federation”
– I have, throughout my life, in the deepest sense of the
word, been an “Extremist.” The Congress (new style) has never been my
particular cup of coffee. The Liberals, the much-maligned Liberals, had at
least been honest; they had never pretended that their homely cucumbers were
resplendent pumpkins.
It
is true that I was nurtured in that creed–“suckled
in that creed outworn”, as some, doubtless, would have put it.
My father was a staunch Liberal–and died a staunch
Liberal. He was a plain, outspoken man, and never could stomach the Congress’s
adroit performances on the political trapeze.
He was such a staunch Liberal, indeed, that he would not have had the slightest compunction in putting me on short commons if he had any reason to suspect that I was on the point of deviating from the straight and narrow path of the Liberal doctrine. (That, however, did not dissuade me from deviating, now and then, from that straight and narrow path.)
What
prompted me to venerate the Lokatnanya was the
peculiar blend of extremism and practicality in him. He had his head in the
clouds, to be sure, but his feet, as certainly, were planted on the too, too
solid earth. He had–heaven
knows–enough metaphysics in his capacious, in his magnoperative, brain: enough metaphysics and to spare. But
he disdained to display all his portable wares in the market-place and refused
to subscribe to the philosophy of “the cart and the trumpet” in George Bernard
Shah’s memorable phrase.
He
had his share of human foibles, but tickling the ears of the groundlings was,
definitely, not one of them. A well-marked intellectual reserve separated him
from his fellowmen. The fire of patriotism burned in him fiercely: but his
spirit was too lofty to exploit it for his own private
ends. In other words, he did not cheapen patriotism–the noblest impulse of “the
poor, bare, forked animal” that is known as man. That was left to his successors!
An Aristocrat of
Aristocrats
In the realm of the mind he was an aristocrat of
aristocrats. That study of his on the Rigveda is an
unforgettable monument to his erudition. It would be idle for me to pretend
that I am the fittest person to comment on it. I have–I am not denying it–some
appreciable interest in religion and philosophy. But evidently, that, by
itself, does not render me competent to sit in judgment on such “seminal” works
as his “
I can, however, do the next best thing: namely, to stand
to attention and to salute it. Has it not been declared that “we must needs love the Highest when we see it?” I know dozens and
dozens of persons who do not, if only to save their (immortal) souls. But a mere flotsam and jetsam on the vast ocean of life though I
am. I have, I trust, a sufficient grasp of the things that genuinely
matter to make unfeigned obeisance to the Lokamanya’s
gigantic intellect.
Not “Deep Calling Unto Deep”
I am not suggesting that it is a case of “deep calling
unto deep.’ I am content to put it no higher than that all spirit is mutually attractive
and that, as such, the vital spark in me is attracted to the vital spark in the
celebrated author of the
Tilak’s range of mind and sweep
of imagination were wonderful, were awe-inspiring.
“All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curfews!
Here’s the top-peak: the multitude below
Live, for they can, there;
This man decided not to Live but Know–
Bury this man there.”
An Avowed Extremist
I have confessed that what prompted me to venerate the
Lokamanya was his peculiar blend of extremism and practicality. He was, let us
not forget, an avowed Extremist and was one of those who helped to break up the Surat
session of the Congress in 1907 when, for the first time in the history of that
organisation, pandemonium reigned supreme, and the assembled delegates indulged
in “direct action” by hurling whatever came in handy at one another.
He figured prominently, again, at the
Some sort of rapprochement did take place between
the two divergent wings, but it broke down shortly after, and the Congress came
under the sole management of the “Extremists”: the “Moderates”, meanwhile,
rechristening themselves as the “Liberals” and devising their own forum, “The
Indian National Liberal Federation.”
But the Lokamanya himself was not to live to give the
Congress the direction it so sorely needed at his hands, passing away as he did
on August 1, 1920, while in
The Supreme Tragedy of
Indian Politics
That, in my considered opinion, was the supreme tragedy
of Indian politics. He passed away just at the moment when his services to the
country were in greatest demand. It could ill-afford to dispense with them. He
had put in a protracted spell in the
There was a double tragedy in his passing away at that
precise moment. I am thoroughly convinced that Indian politics would have had a
far different orientation had he been able to outwit “the abhorred shears” that
“slit” the lives of celebrities and of non-celebrities alike. Was it not he who
coined the pregnant phrase, “responsive co-operation?” He knew–none better–when
to snatch eagerly at the opportunities that were offered to him and when, like
Achilles, “to sulk in his tent” and to be “calculatingly indiscreet.”
Above all, it was not his line to cut off his nose to
spite his face. He was always clear in his own mind about what it was that he
desiderated, and could be relied upon to stick through thick and thin to that
carefully-thought-out position.
A Born General
He was that rares
avis in terris, a born
general, a born leader of men. In retrospect, it seems to me that his highest
claim to our gratitude must be that he steered clear of the common human
frailties and hewed close to old polonios’s hallowed
advice:
“...to thine
own self be true.
And it must follow, as the night the
day,
Thou canst not then be false to any
man.”