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Eternal India
encyclopedia
FREEDOM MOVEMENT
you not be bold even when in the grip of
death?’’
These acts enraged the British who
accused him of fomenting hatred towards the
officials and sentenced him to jail for 18
months. During 1905 after the partition of
Bengal his cry
“Freedom (or swaraj) is my
birthright and I will have it”
, swept the coun-
try.
After the 1907 Congress session he
was again arrested and deported to Man-
dalay (Upper Burma); During his stay
there, he. wrote commentaries on the
Bhagavad Gita and hinted that violence for a
right cause was morally justifiable. He as-
pired to contest in the elections as per the
provisions of the Montague-Chelmsford re-
forms of 1919. He died in 1920; He was
described as
“the father of Indian unrest”
by
the British journalist Valentine Chirol.
Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932)
He was
“one of the mightiest prophets of
nationalism”
(Aurobindo) and destined to
become the chief propagator of the Swadeshi
movement. He was a great orator; founded a
Bengali weekly
Paridarsak (
1880) and took
active part in the movement against the parti-
tion of Bengal and transformed it into an all
comprehensive programme of non-co-opera-
tion with the British; B.C. Pal was intimately
associated with the Brahmo-Samaj movement
:
“The Brahma Samaj under Keshav Chandra
Sen, had proclaimed a new gospel of personal
freedom and social equality, which reacted
very powerfully upon this infant national
consciousness and new political life and aspi-
rations of young Bengal... ”.
He witnessed the
early stages of Hindu nationalism and de-
scribed it:
“The new generation of Hindus in
the Punjab felt a keen humiliation in their
inability to meet the attacks of Moslem and
Christian propagandists... in the message of
Pandit Dayananada they discovered first, a
powerful defensive weapon by which they
could repudiate the claims to superiority of
Christianity and Islam over their national
religion... Dayananda.. made a violent attack
on Christianity and Moslem propaganda.. ”
Similarly the effect of the Theosophical
Society on the Indian mind is described by
him,
“This society told our people., that they
have every reason to feel justly proud of
it all, because of their ancient seers and
saints had been the spokesmen of the
highest truths and their old books, so
woefully misunderstood today, had been
the repositories of the highest human illu-
mination and wisdom., this message...at
once raised us in our self-estimation and
created a self-confidence in us.. But the
greatest contribution...was in its new and
strange gospel of ancient Indian wisdom
and its great world purpose and world
mission...
”
Being a great orator he delivered excellent and
persuasive talks both in English and Bengali
and played a decisive role in the freedom
movement; advocated the boycott of educa-
tional institutions and preached the gospel of
Swaraj or self-government as the ultimate
goal of India’s political struggle. Bipin was
greatly influenced by the writings of Bankim
Chandra and he made the following confession,
“
Durgesh-Nandini quickened my earliest
patriotic sentiments. Our sympathies were all
entirely with Birendra Singh; and the court
scene where the Moslem invader was
stabbed...by Vimala made a profound impres-
sion upon my youthful imagination.
In 1907
he undertook a propaganda tour throughout
India and asked for reformation within the
Congress. Speaking about the Indian Na-
tional Congress and British Rule he said,
“It
would be a dangerous thing not only for the
British government but also for India, if the
masses were to be imbued with antagonism to
British rule through political agitations.
” He
became a moderate after his return from Eng-
land and opposed the non-co-operation policy
of Gandhi; his popularity began to decline; he
died in 1932
.
Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950)
A completely Westernised individual and
extremist nationalist. He was the third son of
Dr. Krishna Dhan Gose; bom on 15th August
1872
;
educated at England; passed Indian
Civil Service but failed to take compulsory
riding test and was disqualified. Later became
the member of the secret society
“Lotus and
Dagger”
(London); appointed as the Professor
of English at the Baroda College; contributed
his articles to
“Yugantar”
a Bengali weekly
and
“Bande Mataram”
an English weekly.
He was against the mendicant policies of the
Congress and criticised it and said, “
I say, of
the Congress, then, this; that its aims are
mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds..is
not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness
and the methods it has chosen are not the right
methods and the leaders in whom it trusts are
not the right sort of men to be leaders...”
He was the most typical representative of
the new type of nationalism in its most intense
metaphysical and religious form. The extract
below conveys a fair idea of his type of nation-
alism.
“
...Nationalism is not a mere po-
litical programme... it is a religion
that has come from God., let no man
dare to call himself a nationalist. ”
In 1908 he was arrested in connection
with bomb throwing in Bihar and later re-
leased in 1909; soon he left for Chandrana-
gore and later Pondicherry (1910). Dedicated
his life to literature and philosophy and gave a
new interpretation of the Vedas, wrote
“Sav-
itri ”
based on the ancient Hindu legend.
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata
(1839-1904)
He was bom at Navsari (Gujarat), gradu-
ated from the Elphinstone College, Bombay.
In 1868 he started a private trading firm, and
after a visit to Manchester, in 1877 he estab-
lished the Empress Cotton Mills in Nagpur,
His dream of establishing an iron and steel
works in India was realised 3 years after his
death when an iron ore field was discovered in
1907 in what was later to become Jamshedpur.
During his Japanese visit (1893) he invited the
Japanese industrialists to establish silk indus-
try in Mysore; he offered his property to con-
struct a science university in India (Tata Insti-
tute of Science, Bangalore-1899); his dream
of hydro-electricity was realised in 1910
through the establishment of
“Tata-Hydro
Electric Power Supply Co. ”.