K. Vyasa Rao and others

“ Tilak was a sight worth one's life to see. Over and over again the mind runs to catch a glimpse of that calm, serene, satwic face and those motionless limbs which, in their absolute muteness, loudly proclaimed utter defiance of all danger and turmoil. The seething ocean of free-fight made absolutely no impression upon the nerves of that astute warrior-politician and there was not as much as a wrinkle of a muscle in the face. The second factor in the situation was an equally grand endurance on the part of the uncrowned king of the place Mr. Mehta the Lion of Bombay. ”

“ But he has seen time after time the Bureaucracy playing a game of obstruction and what else can he do before his hroice grows cold except be vehement in the expression of his innermost convictions on behalf of his motherland for which he has the love not simply of a patriotic citizen but of a man of faith in the great spiritual laws of his country? No man wants to see his country go to dogs, and when that country is what India is to a Hindu, let it be borne in mind that all his earthly loyalty is only a means for serving the cause of his country. ”

“ How many hundreds were the Indian women that sanctified the prison-houses of South Africa! And how superb was the intoxication that came upon the men-folk as they beheld their own mothers, wives and sisters mock at the crucifixion of the body! Never before in the history of the world had a more signal proof been given of the power of the human soul to defy the arrayed forces of wickedness and embrace suffering in the battle for honour and self-respect. The splendour and ecstasy of it all will last through the ages. ”

“ For the first time in the history of India the one man who acted as though all he had from the Government were for the country, who acted as though he had invested in a bank to hand a cheque to a public benefaction, who behaved as one who in serving the Government did not part with his regard for the good repute of the Government, and who certain of obloquy from high quarters sprang forward to face the rulers with his past prestige and his present conviction—the first man to act in this manner in all India is Sir Subramanya Iyer. ”

“ Far be it from any Indian to say that a good thing, a good idea, a good service becomes bad, because it proceeds from a foreign source; and far be it from him to aspire that India should stew in its own juice. But this servile dependence on foreign good offices in the most vital concerns of the nation from year to year and from week to week is too enfeebling a looking after the well being of India, not to render it ultimately an imbecile. ”

“ Thus was the Indian community in the Transvaal impelled upon the great destiny of “passive resistance.” To register or not to register was now the question : to register and sell their honour and self-respect for a mess of pottage or not to register and take up arms against a “sea of troubles.” Like the voice of God speaking to the inmost soul was Mr. Gandhi's appeal to his countrymen at this hour. There could be no question, he explained, of their submitting to this final and crowning challenge of colonial insolence to Indian manhood. ”

“ Far be it from us to say that men should dispise the tokens of good will of Government. So long as Government does the duty of organised society, whether or not it is directly responsible to the people, it must be the source from which flow tokens of esteem for services to the state and the public. But every man who has been so honoured and rewarded ought to consider his moral responsibility to the cause of good government much greater than that of the man in the street. ”

“ Nowhere is the spirit of renunciation so instinctive as in India, and nowhere is the yearning for freedom—absolute and not seeming but real—so haunting an ambition of the human mind as in India. But all these qualities which go to temper the steel edge of heroism have been allowed to escape in impotent chagrin, in fruitless sighs, in silent lamentations and in the philosophic gravitation to live and let live. The result has been India has remained the dumping ground of foreign administrators, legislators and law-givers ”

“ Those who think and speak of British Rule as though it had always been by our side to keep us as a spoon-fed orphan left in the hands of a foreign matron, and stand aghast at the idea of our burdening ourselves with Self-government, have only to recall the state of Europe and England when the father was born and what it is to-day when the son submits his memorandum for the better government of India ! ”

“ Between steadiness of vision and readiness for action is the frame of the hero encased, and Sir Subramaniem has not only seen life steadily and seen it whole, but has acted as his steady and whole vision impelled him from time to time. Truly, the country seems to have grown younger for his old age.
The child is father of the man is no half truth in the case of Subramaniem—generous to foes, helpful to a fault to friends, loyal to the marrow to a cause that he comes forward to lead, Lord Ampthill's description of him "as the soul of honor" cannot be improved. ”

“ The prison and the gaol were now to be the cells of their own self-discipline. All the forces of darkness in league were powerless to move them from the firm-set purpose of their own hearts. Was spirit greater than matter? Was the body to be nailed to the cross or the soul? Was not Heaven itself beckoning them to the great Heights? In such wise did Mr. Gandhi adjure his countrymen.
The words of the leader awoke a responsive thrill in thousands of intrepid hearts. Like one man they vowed against the registration. ”

“ It is as the embodiment of Satyagraha, as a veritable lamp burning upon the altar, that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi stands to-day before his countrymen. Truth-force or love-force, as he himself has translated the term into English, is to him the greatest of all powers. In proportion as individuals and nations alike fulfil the law of this power and fit themselves into it they live and grow : the rest is death. ”

“ If any country needs sympathy from all quarters it is India more than any other. Was there anything wrong in asking for the sympathy of America—our Allies in the War, an English speaking race, a Democracy pledged to the ideal of peace and expansion of popular liberities. Nor was it as a perpetual policy in a permanent scheme of Indian agitation, but for the purpose of riveting the attention of the British nation to the wrongs endured by India at the discretion of the Bureaucracy at a great critics. ”

“ But whether one is "right or wrong" in doing any of these it is worse than idle to dispute about. For we lack a common standard of judgment—there is no rod to measure and no scale to weigh in such matters. The important test in all these matters is "what for does he do these and how will they affect the country's interests ultimately?" Does or did he do any of them for personal glory or gain, or to injure a cause or community, or to uproot order and law, or has his action tended to stifle public spirit, throw back the country's progress and to leave his countrymen worse? ”

“ Not a lawyer, but a law giver, not simply a great judge but an equally eminent jurist, Muthusamy Iyer sat on the Bench as an emblem of Justice personified, patient, farseeing, riveted to the facts, intent upon the law, with fear and reverence holding fast the sceptre of justice, ever mindful not of the office or of its dignity, but of the weight of its responsibility—with the faith of a man who has to render an account of the slightest miscarriage before the Throne of Him who judges the earthly judge and culprit alike. ”

“ The Higher Power that guides the destinies of mankind is so shrewd that in spite of all the wonderfully mistaken ways of man it sets the circumstances of the world to its own tune and through the very mistakes of mankind fulfils its own purpose—the purpose of shaping the progress of humanity. Just about the time young Balwant Rau was passing through the Law College he came into contact with one of those few young spirits who made modern Maharashtra. Mr. Agarkar felt in unison with Mr. Balwant Rau Gangadhar Tilak and their brains sped in all directions to serve the motherland. ”

“ And down to the remotest generations will linger the pride of how the forefathers braved the fury of the persecutor and staked their all for nothing but their own honour. Nay shall not the motherland herself treasure for ever the story of the deeds of the humblest of her children in a far away land as it has treasured the legend of Rama and Sita, or that of the Pandava brothers? Will not humanity itself the world over feel a quickened sense of its own divinity as it peruses the same golden record? ”

“ Gandhi shared their daily life and hardships, nursed the sick, and fed the hungry. They knew that the Indian women, who had urged them to strike, were cheerfully suffering imprisonment with hard labour, for their sake, and they felt in honour bound to struggle on until they had secured the repeal of the tax that weighed so heavily upon so many of them. And the women amongst them were no less heroic than the men. ”

“ And from this point of view it surely realised its purpose in a measure that the great protagonists of the movement themselves could not at first have dreamed of. The struggle was the means, the struggle was the end. To those who have known the intensity of aspiration and elevation of character that made the fight possible the talk of material results must ever seem a pitiful meanness. Such have received the initiation of the highest self-knowledge. They have been face to face with that mood of the soul which sights nothing but endless horizons of spiritual endeavour and achievement. ”

“ It is the duty of every honest journalist to expose most fearlessly the vagaries of any official whatsoever who oppresses in the name of the authority he possesses the people left in his charge. It is no wonder that Maharatta young men with still the light of greatness of their race burning in them took most seriously to heart the indignities heaped on a prince who in different circumstances might have been the peer of all the Majesties of the world. ”

“ Of course here, there have been no atrocities under British Rule as under the Turkish. There never were. But it is not atrocities alone that provoke men's passion. There are men and communities to whom no hurt less than the loss of a limb is a hurt. There are also others to whom clear abuse of authority under conditions that lead to the irresistible conclusion that a national injury is contemplated is sufficient to provoke their appearance as an embodiment of the sense of honor that feels betrayed if not outraged. ”

“ Tilak is is due, in the greatest measure, to that declaration of faith, courage and sacrifice. There have been men who have suffered, there have been men who have exhibited courage in ecstasy, there have been men who have sacrificed their lives on the altar of a cause, but the world has not seen many who, in the hour of peril, have calmly put faith in the purposes of a Divine Power in preference to their own importance as makers of evolution. ”

“ But to men born for great ends such crises of the soul come only to find them prepared. The South African Indian community were like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, surrounded by ravenous wolves, and Mr. Gandhi chose to be the shepherd. South Africa was the vine-yard of the Lord in which he was called upon to dig and delve, and he chose to be the labourer. ”

“ At what stage, before being asked to reverse their order by the Government of India, did the Madras Government reconsider their policy? A mistake is not the worst thing that a Government could commit; for, all Governments are liable to it, and more so a Government with the limitations and temptations of the Indian Bureaucracy. But to fail to see the mistake, in spite of clearest proof, is certainly a circumstance that makes a reputation for incapacity to cope with the problem of a growing feeling of nationality, by no means inimical to British Ascendancy. ”

“ Ergo, good government is no substitute for Self-government — least of all in the case of a country whose ideal of Government is to make for man's spiritual advancement. All these truths have been seen by many and have yet to be seen by many more. The danger lies however in taking a truth to the knowledge of a people. There is the safe but ineffectual way, and a risky but fruitful way. The risky and fruitful way has been trodden fearlessly by Gandhi, Tilak and Subramanya Iyer among a few others. They are not any of them politicians primarily, they are even patriots only secondarily ”

“ Hotchener would carry the message and why should not the cause of India receive some perfectly legitimate accession of strength by the sympathy of the American public? Were the lady and gentlemen such as to compromise our position by the complexion of their politics? Not so far as he knew. Pacifists and progressives to the core, people who set little store by national or individual selfishness, inspired and upheld by the sentiment that to do unto others as you would be done by is a golden international law,—they were helpers in every good cause by an appeal to the higher nature in man. ”

“ But, their very suffering renders them incapable of suddenly revealing themselves as if under a flash light, when a great cause lies to be strangled, to give with a swift and peremptory wave of a bared, bony arm the mandate to proceed no further arid depart from the scene while all eyes gaze in astonishment amidst a breathless suspense. It reminds one of the classic lore of India where power on the physical plane stood strangely devitalised for wrong-doing in the presence of spiritual authority. ”