-47_The Initiation of Swadeshi

 

The Initiation of Swadeshi 

 

THE Swadeshi Movement of 1905 in India was a most astonishing event, something in the nature of a marvel; one might almost call it a miracle. It was like those great upheavals of Nature, as sudden and irresistible.

Earlier preparations and abortive attempts there had been galore, with results that counted for little. This huge mammoth mass of humanity lay inert, like Kumbhakarna of the epic story, for hundreds of years. Here and there once in a while an attempt had been made to pour into its ears fiery words of awakening, like:

 

Who would live a life bereft of all freedom,       

Who would care so to live? 

or, 

In this land of India there are thirty crores of men,         

And the foreigner rules here supreme! 

and, 

China is awake, Japan is awake,

            But India persists in her sleep.

 

In sheer desperation, the poet had exclaimed:

 

Unless the women of India are wide awake,     

This land of ours will never awaken. 

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If the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 was truly our freedom's battle, it was no more than a scratch on a solid block of stone. A few shots fired, one or two murders (like those of the Chapekar brothers) – the whole thing had the dimensions of a flea-bite.

But what was this happening now? All on a sudden, almost overnight, the dark accumulation of centuries was shaken off, and with the speed of lightning,

 

The Mother was up on her feet.

 

Over the entire land there passed a mighty flood, an earthquake shook all. We looked on in wonder, lifted our voices in splendid chorus:

 

We know not when, O Mother, out of the heart of Bengal,

You suddenly revealed yourself in your strange beauty.

Our eyes cannot turn their gaze from you, O Mother.

The doors have swung wide open in the golden temple.

 

Almost overnight again, how very different we became from what we had been as individuals! We used to be just humdrum creatures, most ignorant and inert; now we became conscious and alert, our lives acquired a meaning, an aim, a purpose. We used to move in the traditional ruts, dull and desperate. Instead of that our lives now got a cohesion, an orientation. Borne along the current and driven with the crowd, the most one could hope for in the past was to become a Deputy Magistrate or Professor, a Doctor or Advocate, worldly men of sufficient means. In a moment, all this got topsy-turvey, our lives were rent in twain as if by an earthquake. There lay across the chasm the deathlike life of the dead past, and here loomed a life of the present that faced the future with new duties.

Calcutta was at the time in the throes of a great turmoil. The press and the platform were loud with cries of "Freedom" and "Boycott":  

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the British must be driven out, India must be rid of the Britisher. In the parks and wherever there was an open space, crowds would gather to listen to lectures and orations, crowds mostly of boys from the schools and colleges – the girls had not yet come out and joined. Swadeshi, boycott, national education, rural uplift – these were the slogans dwelt upon everywhere. And with it all there went on, in secret, underground preparations for revolution and revolt and armed attack.

In our country, it has not been at all a rare thing for an individual to arrive at a turning point in his life which makes him leave the comforts of home and go out in search of something higher; such an event may be counted among the familiar and commonplace. But a whole nation rushing away from its old moorings in search of the unknown – this was a rather extraordinary spectacle. Something like it had been seen during the French Revolution, in the storming of the Bastille, for example, but the Indian awakening had a different form and character.

I myself attended a number of meetings, particularly at Hedua, in Panti's Math and College Square, in the evening after college hours. At one of those meetings in Panti's Math, I had a view of Rabindranath as a leader and high-priest of nationalism, calm and handsome and sweet-tongued and self-possessed but breathing words of fire charged with strength and enthusiasm. On another day I chanced to see, in the fading twilight of evening at a meeting in College Square, Sri Aurobindo. He was wrapped in a shawl from head to foot – perhaps he was slightly ill. He spoke in soft tones, but every word he uttered came out distinct and firm. The huge audience stood motionless under the evening sky listening with rapt attention in pin-drop silence. I can now recall only these few words of his: it was a matter of shame and regret for him that he was unable to speak in his native tongue, his early training and environment had been such as compelled him to express himself in a foreign language; he was asking 

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to be pardoned by his countrymen. And the other thing I remember was the sweet musical rhythm that graced the entire speech. This was the first time I saw him with my own eyes and heard him.

The events of another day come to mind. Perhaps it was on the occasion of the first declaration of Boycott, on the 7th of August, 1905. The Town Hall of Calcutta was the venue of the meeting. What a huge crowd had gathered there and what an oceanic movement! I had been taken there by Atul Gupta, the friend, philosopher and guide of my student days; I had been his disciple in every respect, in my studies as in patriotic work. He made me sit by his side and gave me the necessary instructions. The entire audience at one time stood up in a body and shouted their unanimous approval of a resolution: "All, all," they cried. I too had to do the same. You will perhaps call it drama, but after all, the critical moments of life are nothing but drama. There was no hypocrisy about the thing, it was just a manner of expression. One thing deserves to be mentioned here: the voices I heard of the many orators of that epoch. The glory of those voices is now lost, thanks to the kindness of the mike. Surendranath Banerjee, Ambikacharan Majumdar, Sachindranath Bose and of course Bepinchandra Pal – what high-pitched voices they had and how graceful in movement! How was it possible to combine in a single voice such power and strength with so much sweetness! I had read about the orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, heard the eulogies of France's Mirabeau and Danton, of Burke and Gladstone of England. But it was truly an experience to have heard with one's own ears a human voice of their calibre. One cannot do without a mike today if one is to address an audience of a thousand. In those days ten thousand people could easily listen to those superhuman voices. But why need we go so far? You have all listened to the voice of our Sahana, a voice that held the heart of Rabindranath enthralled. Let me here tell you an amusing story in this connection, though it belongs to a much 

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later date. There was a musical soirée at the residence of one of Dilip's relatives; it was at his uncle's I believe. I too was among the invitees and there was a fairly big crowd. The performers of the evening were to be a virtuoso, one of the well-known ones though I forget the name, and our Sahana. A question arose: who would sing first, Sahana or the virtuoso? It was agreed to have Sahana first and the virtuoso to follow; after all, a master must have the last word! Sahana finished her songs and now it was the master's turn. But he dropped a bombshell! He said, "One cannot sing anything after that, it would fall flat!" He did sing, though, after a while…. Those were the days indeed.

Now to resume the thread of my narrative. During the holidays I was back in my home town of Rungpore. Here there was evidence of the same movement, with identical features. We roamed the streets singing, that is, shouting hoarsely at the top of our voices we did the morning rounds with songs like

 

Awake, O men of India, how long would you sleep?

 

and so on.

Perhaps it was in October, there was a day of special oath-taking. The day was to be a day of complete fasting, no smoke should appear over the top of any house, any house showing signs of smoke would be marked in black for treachery. I too undertook a complete fast on that day – the first and the last time I have ever done such a thing. I did not even touch a drop of water during the twenty-four hours. But that did not keep me indoors doing nothing. I roamed the streets as usual, shouting "Bande Mataram" with the processions. The vital being in us, in its enthusiasm and excitement, cares not a whit for anything.

Something rather out of the ordinary came to pass one day. There was an order served on the town as a whole and on certain individuals in particular, forbidding all processions. 

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No one was to take out a procession or join in one. In defiance of the order – defying orders was part of the programme of those days – groups of young boys came out and roamed about the streets singing. But that was all they did, there was no occasion for any breach of the peace save the disturbance that their shouts might have caused. Nevertheless, the 'Bande Mataram' cry in itself was in the official view a symbol of resistance, of violence and atrocity. So the police soon rushed after us, ordering us to disperse. We left the main road and gathered in a garden-like empty space by the roadside. Many had left, but about a hundred – I was among that number – squatted down. The police sub-inspector Raicharan arrived on the scene with a mighty mien, accompanied by a few constables. As he kept on touching each of us on the head by turns, he muttered in his inimitable English, "You arrest, you arrest." We were taken to the Magistrate's bungalow, and as the day drew to a close we were released .on bail. The case came up before the court. The ringleader of our group had been Atul Gupta. Our counsel pleaded on his behalf that he was a man of position – he was at the time a student of the M.A. class – and should therefore be provided with a chair instead of having to stand on the dock. The magistrate took no notice and dismissed the plea. Atul Gupta's father happened to be a prominent nationalist of the town and the order banning processions had been served in his house. This had the effect of doubling or trebling the seriousness of Atul's offence; for he was an educated man, he claimed to be a leader, what he had done was done with full knowledge and deliberately. Hence the punishment he received was the heaviest of us all, a fine of a hundred rupees. Thus he became a marked man, and it stood in his way when in afterlife his name was considered for a judgeship of the High Court. There could be no place for him as a Judge in the British Empire, and he had to remain an advocate. This however did not hurt him in any way, either by way of prestige

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or emoluments. We had in our group another person considerably older than all of us. We used to call him a member of the vagabond company, as he did no work or studies. He was asked by the Court, "What is your occupation?" In order to keep up his dignity and position, he replied, "General merchant." The Magistrate took him at his word and awarded a fine of fifty rupees. Fifty rupees! But the poor fellow was not even worth five. I for my part might have escaped, as I was a mere boy, but I was fired twenty-five rupees. The reason was that when they asked me if I had been aware of the Government order, I said without any hesitation that most certainly I was. A deliberate defiance of the law! That was an unpardonable offence. Afterwards, during the Alipore Bomb case, this was cited against me on behalf of the prosecution in order to prove that I was an old offender. But the judge of the Alipore court, Beachcroft, had rather taken a fancy to me. He did not take any note of this point and dismissed it as school-boy bravado. Nevertheless, that confession of mine had been dubbed by many at the time an act of foolishness, as they said, had I but mentioned that I knew nothing of the Government order, they would have let me off without further ado. My answer was that I was embarking on a good and noble venture, how could I start off with a lie?

I have referred above to sub-inspector Raicharan. An ordinary sub-inspector, he was nonetheless an interest colourful personality, exercising considerable power and influence as a strong man. Immediately after our so-called "arrest", when he came to know who I was, he blurted out "So you are Rajanibabu's son? But why didn't you tell me earlier? I would have let you off. Now I can't do anything about it, it is too late." He knew my father very well and had been a sub-inspector at Nilphamari as well. As I was saying, sub-inspector Raicharan was a man with an individuality. I can still picture him riding at a gallop, his chest proudly thrust forward, the tail of his horse flying at the  

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back, in front his beard reaching to the chest, puffed up by the wind and parted in two. His mount too was a well-known race-horse of the town. They used to hold races in the huge meadow near the Collector's office – we called it the Collectorate Math. It was Raicharan's horse that always came first; he was his own jockey.

Thus it was that I received a new initiation in my life.

Within a short while I discovered that my mind had taken a completely different turn. Studies offered no longer an attraction, nor did the ordinary life in the world. To serve the country, to become a devoted child of the Mother, for ever and a day, this was now the only objective, the one endeavour. What would that imply?

It implied that one must give up everything else: studies of course, and parents and relatives, all. I felt it was my duty to keep my parents informed of this irrevocable decision of mine. I thought it would be an act of treachery towards them if I were to do anything so drastic without their knowledge. There was, no doubt, the old maxim of the sages, yad-ahar-eva virajet, tad-ahar-eva pravrajet, "one must leave one's home the day one feels the attachments cease to bind." The Buddha did that, Chaitanya did that, though Shankara wanted to arrive at an understanding with his mother first.

I thought I should now break the news to my father. I distinctly remember the scene. I was then aged seventeen and a student of the Third Year, not exactly a kid, you see. One evening, as my father rested in bed after his dinner, I came and sat by his side. I had come determined to tell him, but there was a little hesitation about the way of putting it. I could not obviously just blurt out. "I am going to leave home in order to do patriotic work." At last, I managed to put it like this, for we had a deep respect for our father: "I shall not be studying any more at the Presidency College; I shall join the National College." To join the National College had become a craze at the time, and I thought that to put it that way would be to give the least offence. I 

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stopped with that one sentence. My father listened to me and then he began his discourse: "Whatever you do, you should do after a good deal of thought. Never do anything under a sudden impulse, for that might later give you cause for regrets. First, you must remember that you are the eldest son in the family. We are getting on in age and you have younger brothers and sisters of whom it is incumbent on you to take charge, or else they would find themselves thrown out on the streets. Secondly, if you want to serve your country, that is a good thing and I do not stand in your way. But if you can succeed in becoming a somebody, in learning and position, then you would be able to do much better and bigger things, wouldn't you? You don't have to go very many years, at the most two or three, to finish your education. Once you acquire a decent position in life, you will not need to be just a common worker; you can, with your learning and intellectual gifts, become one of the leaders. Look at Atul Gupta, for instance. He didn't have to give up his studies, he has just done his M.A. and is now reading Law. He has acquired a name and some fame and will be able to work for the country ten times better as a man of position. And besides, there is another thing. If you feel a true urge for renunciation, like Shankara or Chaitanya, that is another matter, for that would add lustre to our family. But you must first look into yourself carefully to see if you have developed in yourself that strength and capacity. If it is just the caprice of a moment, then there will be no end of regrets afterwards..."

He went on in this strain for some time. I sat silent and motionless like a block of stone. But I felt a sense of release within: I had said what I wanted to say, done my duty. And as to my decision, that would be unshaken, "as long as shone a sun and a moon", yavaccandra-divakarau.

I was now reminded of the story of Parvati in the Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa. Mahadeva comes in disguise to beguile her mind. He says, "What you have set your heart on is but 

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a ghost, a goblin, a dirty creature. Is it meet to have such a low despicable thing for a husband?” And Parvati answer back, “You may say what you like, but my mind is set, it will not be shaken.” The mind had settled on its one attraction, mamatra bhavaikarasam manah sthitam, it had now no other way. 

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