Swatantryaveer Savarkar
For the better part of my school life I never thought I would ever have slightest of interest in history. The reason being, history as a subject was taught through school textbooks which were written with the sole purpose of spreading hatred towards the subject, except a few summary mentions of glorious kingdoms and freedom fighters. After approximately sixteen years of disconnect from school, I skimmed through the Balbharati textbooks on history for class six to class ten and to no surprise that except a few structural changes the content still stays the same.
Nowadays, with public awareness and rise of social media the revolutionary narrative of Indian freedom movement has been a point of discussion online as well as offline. And I am not saying that there was total ignorance to the contribution of revolutionaries, however, the focus of the public discourse was always the non-violent contributions of the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. The autobiographies written by these revolutionary legends act as a counter to the one sided narrative of the freedom struggle, a few examples are, The Tale of My Exile by Barin Ghosh, My Transportation for Life by Veer Savarkar, Twelve Years of Prison Life by Ullaskar Dutt, Bandi Jeevan by Sachindranath Sanyal. In addition there were some authors and film makers who tried to bring up the revolutionary efforts to the mainstream discourse, the examples which I know of are books by Dhananjay Keer on Veer Savarkar and Lokmanya Tilak, book by N C Kelkar on Lokmanya Tilak, book by B D Yadav on M.P.T. Acharya, books by Anuj Dhar and Vishwas Patil on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and some movies like Sudhir Phadke's Veer Savarkar and Rajkumar Santoshi's The Legend of Bhagat Singh. With all the above, still I feel that we did not do enough to keep their memories alive in the minds of the people. Today, when we get asked by the children about who were these freedom fighters, majority of us have to take help of Wikipedia / Google to search for answers. In such cases where the child is going to get a story from the Wikipedia every time, he is sure not to come to you and me for answers after probably two or three similar experiences. So, instead of complaining about how we failed to pay our respects to the legends in history and knowing well that my contribution will be just a drop in the ocean still I am making my attempt to write about Swatantryaveer Savarkar.
Out of all the revolutionaries I revere Swatantryaveer Savarkar the most, that is mainly due to the fact that we share the same place of birth and I am sure that most of the Nashikkars will share more or less the same feeling.
As every cloud has a silver lining, the year 1857 saw a ray of hope for all the Indians a hope of freedom from the British stranglehold however, it was short lived as the initial successes of the Indian War of Independence could not be sustained and eventually in 1858 there was handover of the power from the British East India Company to the British Crown. (Had it not been for Veer Savarkar we would still be referring the Indian War of Independence of 1857 as the "so-called" Sepoy Mutiny.) In times like these when the word freedom had no meaning, on 28th May 1883 a legend was born in a small village named Bhagur near Nashik who was to change the course of history his name was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The young Vinayak began his education at the local government school when he was six. An avid reader, his natural genius was further nurtured and honed by his father who used to summon his entire family after dinner and then followed an intense reading of scriptures, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and several other historical texts in Marathi as well as Sanskrit. These readings instilled a deep understanding of history and religiosity on the minds of Savarkar siblings. This would be followed by long and intense discussions in which Vinayak's mother Radhabai and his siblings were encouraged to participate and share their views. Despite being from the Chitpawan Brahmin community and a landlord himself, right from childhood Vinayak found the caste system reprehensible and had friends from all strata of society. It did not just remain a dormant idea but, he put it in practice and lived by as an example. Vinayak's habit of reading newspapers allowed him to witness the turbulent events in Maharashtra and country which sowed the seeds of the revolutionary movement by the name Abhinav Bharat and Mitra Mela.
Vinayak lost his mother at a very young age, however, this void was filled up in the year 1896 when his elder brother Ganesh Damodar Savarkar (Babarao) was married at the age of seventeen. Yesu vahini (Yashoda) as her younger brothers-in-law called her she stepped up to be a mother to them and a best friend for Vinayak. Lokmanya Tilak as a leader was an inspiration to many and through his writings (mainly in
Kesari) and his work deeply impacted the young Vinayak. Following his hero Lokmanya Tilak, Vinayak along with his friends organized the first Shivaji Jayanti festival at Bhagur, where Vinayak's keynote speech left everyone including Damodarpant, spellbound. These were the budding years of prolific orator which Vinayak came to be known for. After completing his primary school, he moved to Nashik for his further education. Early on Vinayak showed signs of being mature than his age and leading from the front in all the activities which also made him the favorite student of all his teachers at school. The year 1899 saw an outbreak of plague at Nashik and hence to protect his two sons Damodarpant forced Babarao and Vinayak to leave Nashik for Bhagur. However, by the time the two came back, the plague had spread Bhagur as well. Being a compassionate person that he was, Damodarpant got involved in relief operations, but as luck would have it, due to frequent contact with the afflicted he himself contracted plague and passed away leaving an orphaned Vinayak. After the demise of Damodarpant, the whole family left the land of his parents and ancestors moved to Tilbhandeshwar lane at Nashik. Though Nashik in those days was among the more backward towns of Maharashtra, however, for Vinayak the place never mattered as his aim was clear and compared to Bhagur Nashik gave Vinayak the much needed public support for the work that he was about to begin.
Vidhyarti Sangh an organization of students was setup by Trimbak Rao Mhaskar and Raoji Krishna Paage both of whom were involved in organizing small public agitations and influenced by Lokmanya Tilak, where they assumed public mobilizations and mass activism is the only way to national liberation. Both Trimbak Rao Mhaskar and Raoji Krishna Paage in their thirties had the idea of armed revolution but lacked the clarity of thought and vision on how to get there. Vinayak came to the rescue and expressed his thoughts and ideas to Mhaskar and Paage and revealed the desire to create a underground student organization. However, the Chapekar brothers incident had instilled fear in them and remained sceptic for a while. Later in November 1899 the three of them formed the
Rashtrabhakta Samuha under the stewardship of under sixteen year old Vinayak. With the need to to have a dual organization model where the front-end entity will organize the peaceful activities like festivals and melas, which could lead to a wider outreach for the organization. Thus, on 1 January 1900 came into existence the
Mitra Mela the Group of Friends which acted as a front-end for the Rashtrabhakta Samuha. Many ideas and methods were borrowed from Thomas Frost's work
Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 1776-1876. The activities of Mitra Mela saw Vinayak in his role of a prolific orator where as part of meetings on Saturdays and Sundays, one speaker would be selected and detailed discussions would follow the lecture. Whatever, be the topic the stress by Vinayak would always be on the need for armed struggle. After the initial meetings at Paage or Mhaskar's house the Mitra Mela got its permanent venue in Tibhandeshwar Lane at Aabaa Darekar's house. The Shivaji Festival in Nashik which used to be a dull affair until the arrival of the year 1900 when Mitra Mela through the youth mobilization made it a grand celebration. During this occasion, Vinayak delivered a stirring speech, where he highlighted on the demand for total and complete freedom and urged the people to work for the same by deriving inspiration from the god of revolution Shivaji Maharaj. The speech became the talk of the town an Mitra Mela suddenly created quite an impression on the people of Nashik. The Ganapati festival soon followed where Vinayak's talks drew huge audiences. The slogan coined by Vinayak,
"Swatantrya Lakshmi ki Jay" reverberated the streets of Nashik.
After Damodarpant's death the responsibility of managing the house came on to Babarao. There were debts to be cleared and Babarao decided to take up a government job where he needed to produce two security bonds of Rs 500 each. This was hard to get for a long time, but eventually he succeeded and got a job as a cashier in famine relief department, later he was dismissed due to refusing to be a party to departmental corruption. To pay of the debts Yesu vahini sold all her jewelry, later even sold her traditional nose ring which was gifted to her by her mother to pay for Vinayak's education. With all the hardships and sufferings the two Babarao and Yesu vahini ensured that these did not reach their younger brothers.
Vinayak never restricted himself to a specific genre of literature but history was at the core of his readings and it was these books which helped him construct his world view. This passion for reading helped him to speak eloquently on diverse topics such as dynasties of Iran, the Moors of Spain, the Dutch revolt, the Italian revolutionaries Mazzini and Garibaldi and all this to an audience who barely knew anything out of Maharashtra. The focus of Mitra Mela was not just gathering and sloganeering on festive occasions but creating the spirit of freedom in the minds of the youth and with that objective in mind Vinayak made a list of nearly twenty to thirty books that all members had to read which consisted of books about Napoleon, Mazzini, Vivekanand and others. In addition, they also had to read the weekly named
Kaal (काळ) by Shivram Mahadev Paranjape which had sections 'Tarun Italy' and 'Kheti Kissani' related to the revolutionaries in Europe. Along with the intellectual enrichment with the books exercise and physical fitness were a compulsory part Mitra Mela members. The focus on physical fitness was to be ready for the struggles in captivity and making the body and mind ready for such contingencies.
With sudden and untimely death of Trimbak Rao Mhaskar due to Plague and Raoji Krishna Paage distancing himself from the Mitra Mela activities, it was left to Vinayak to manage the whole scheme of things. Without losing hope Vinayak found new companions to continue the work of Mitra Mela one among them was Vishnu Mahadev Bhat (maternal cousins of Savarkars) who became one of his closest associates. Other members who joined Mitra Mela were, Aabaa Darekar, Sakharam Dadaji Gore, Khade brothers, Sarode, Shankar Gir Gosavi, Dhanappa Chiwdewala, Devsinh Pardeshi, Khushal Singh, Ganapati Magar, Mayadev, Ghanshyam Chiplunkar and others all whom considered Vinayak as their mentor and guru. As mentioned earlier Vinayak since childhood never followed any caste barriers and the members of Mitra Mela came from all strata of society.
In the year 1901 Vinayak's maternal uncle fixed his marriage which was a usual in those times when elders in the family took this responsibility and decided the things for their loved ones. However, in Vinayak's case the he felt that marriage would come in the way of his revolutionary activities and ruin the life of the girl if he were to get arrested or hanged. At the same time, he worried about his brother still financing his education. In this the girl's father Ramachandra Trimbak Chiplunkar (Bhaurao) came up with an assurance of financially supporting the college education for Vinayak for which Vinayak was deeply grateful. Following this assurance Vinayak married Yamuna, the eldest daughter of Bhaurao Chiplunkar in 1901 when Yamuna was only thirteen. After passing the final matriculation examinations in flying colors and answering the skeptics who feared that his revolutionary activities will impact his studies, with the support from his father-in-law Vinayak was all set to pursue higher education. By then, he had emerged as a powerful orator, a master debater, a prolific writer and poet and a leader of a revolutionary secret society that was slowly spreading its wings.
To be continued.....
