Eternal India Encyclopedia

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.

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.

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

“ ...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. ”

Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932)

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 “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.. ”

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. ”.