Balgangadhar Tilak And The Nationalist Press
Tilak, who was born in 1856, dedicated his entire life to serving his country. He co-founded the newspapers Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English) in 1881 with G.G. Agarkar (in English). He took over the two papers in 1888 and used their columns to spread anti-British sentiment and preach national resistance. Tilak was a fiery and courageous journalist with a straightforward, easy-to-read style.
• He began using the traditional religious Ganapati festival to promote nationalist ideas through patriotic songs and speeches in 1893. He founded the Shivaji festival in 1896 to instil national pride in young Maharashtrians.
• In the same year, he organised a boycott of foreign cloth across Maharashtra in protest of the imposition of an excise duty on cotton. He was one of the first national leaders to recognise the critical role that the lower middle classes, peasants, artisans, and workers could play in the national movement, and he saw the importance of bringing them into the Congress fold.
• In early 1897, he wrote in the Kesari, criticising the Congress for ignoring the peasant: “The country's emancipation can only be achieved by removing the clouds of lethargy and indifference that have been hanging over the peasant, who is the soul of India. We must dispel these clouds, and in order to do so, we must completely identify with the peasant —- we must believe that he is ours and that we are his. Only then will the government realise that despising the Congress is despising the Indian nation. Only then will the Congress leader’s efforts be crowned with success.”
• In order to achieve this goal, he organised a no-tax campaign in Maharashtra in 1896-97 with the help of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha's young workers.
• He asked the famine-stricken peasants of Maharashtra to withhold payment of land revenue if their crops had failed, referring to the official famine code, which he had printed in Marathi and distributed by the thousand.
• When the plague struck Poona in 1897, the government was forced to implement strict segregation and house searches. Tilak, unlike many other leaders, remained in Poona, supported the government, and organised his own anti-plague measures. He did, however, criticise the officials' harsh and callous treatment of the plague-stricken people.
• The Chaphekar brothers assassinated Rand, the Chairman of the Poona Plague Committee, and Lt.Ayerst on June 27, 1898, as a result of popular resentment of the official plague measures.
• People were enraged by a variety of practises, not just anti-plague measures. Since 1894, people have been enraged by the government's tariff, currency, and famine policies. Nationalists were becoming increasingly militant, and there were hostile comments in the press. The government was determined to put a stop to this trend and teach the press a lesson.
• In Maharashtra, Tilak was well-known as a militant nationalist as well as a hostile and effective journalist. The government was looking for a way to make a public spectacle of him. The assassination of Rand provided them with the opportunity. The British-owned press and bureaucracy rushed to paint the Rand assassination as a plot orchestrated by the Poona Brahmins, led by Tilak.
• The government looked into the possibility of Tilak being directly involved in Rand's assassination. However, no evidence could be found. Tilak had also condemned the assassination, describing it as the heinous work of a fanatic, but he would not stop criticising the government, claiming that it was a basic function of the press to expose injustice and teach people how to defend their rights. As a result, the government decided to charge him with sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which entails spreading discontent and hatred against the government.
• Tilak was arrested and tried before Justice Strachey and a jury of six Europeans and three Indians on July 27, 1879. The charge was based on a poem titled "Shivaji's Utterances" read out by a young man at the Shivaji Festival and a speech Tilak had delivered at the Festival in defence of Shivaji's killings of Afzal Khan, which was published in the Kesari on June 15th. The prosecution portrayed Tilak's defence of Shivaji's killing of Afzal Khan as an incitement to kill British officials.
• Tilak was accused of propagating the viewpoint in his newspaper that the British had no right to remain in India and that any and all means could be used to remove them. With hindsight, it's clear that the accusation was correct. But the days when freedom fighters would refuse to defend themselves and openly declare their sedition under Gandhiji's leadership were still a long way off.
• Sacrifice politics and open defiance of authority were still in their infancy. It was still necessary to assert that anti-colonial activities were carried out within legal bounds. As a result, Tilak denied the official charges and stated that he had no intention of preaching anti-alien dissent.
• Tilak set a high example of boldness and sacrifice within this "old" style of confronting the rulers. He was well aware that he was launching a new kind of politics, one that would need to win the people's trust and faith through the example of a new type of leader, while avoiding premature radicalism, which would invite repression by the government and lead to the people's cowing down and, as a result, the leaders' isolation from the people.
• Some of Tilak's friends put pressure on him to retract his remarks and apologise. Tilak replied, "My position (as a leader) among the people depends entirely on my character..." Their (government's) goal is to humiliate Poona's leaders, and I don't think they'll find a "kutcha" (weak) reed in me... Then you must remember that, after a certain point, we are all people's servants. If you show a lamentable lack of courage at a critical time, you will betray and disappoint them.'
• Judge Strachey's partisan closing argument to the jury gained notoriety in legal circles, because he defined disaffection as "simply the absence of affection," which amounted to the presence of hatred, enmity, disloyalty, and any other form of ill-will toward the government! The jury found Tilak guilty by a 6 to 3 vote, with the three dissenters being Indian members.
• Tilak was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council at the time, and the Judge sentenced him to eighteen months of solitary confinement! Several other editors of the Bombay Presidency were tried at the same time and received similar harsh sentences.
• Tilak's detention sparked widespread protests across the country. Nationalist newspapers and political organisations, including those run by Tilak's critics such as the Moderates, organised a nationwide protest against the attack on civil liberties and the Press's fiefdom.
• On the front page of many newspapers, there were black borders.
• Many newspapers published special supplements honouring Tilak as a martyr in the fight for press freedom.
• Dadabhai Naoroji, speaking to Indian residents in London, accused the government of instituting Russian (Tsarist) administrative methods and claimed that gagging the press was suicidal.
• Tilak became a popular all-India leader overnight, and he was given the title Lokamanya (respected and honoured by the people). He rose to the status of hero, a living symbol of the new spirit of self-sacrifice, and a new leader who preached through his actions.
• When Surendranath Banerjea made a touching reference to Tilak at the Indian National Congress session in Amraoti in December 1897, he said, "A whole nation is in tears," the entire audience stood up and enthusiastically cheered.
• In 1898, the government amended Section 124A and added a new Section 153A to the penal code, making it illegal for anyone to attempt to ‘discredit' the Government of India or to incite hatred between different classes, specifically against Englishmen in India. This sparked national outrage once more.