Page 124 - DHIS204_DHIS205_INDIAN_FREEDOM_STRUGGLE_HINDI

Unit 9: Establishment of the Indian National Congress: Home Rule Movement, Moderates and Extremists

Achievements of Extremists Success Notes
His efforts and those of Annie Besant were soon to meet with success, and at the annual session of
the Congress in December 1915 it was decided that the Extremists be allowed to rejoin the Congress.
The opposition from the Bombay group had been greatly weakened by the death of Pherozeshah
Mehta. But Annie Besant did not succeed in getting the Congress and the Muslim League to
support her decision to set up Home Rule Leagues. She did manage, however, to persuade the
Congress to commit itself to a programme of educative propaganda and to a revival of the local
level Congress committees. Knowing that the Congress, as constituted at the time, was unlikely to
implement this, she had inserted a condition by which, if the Congress did not start this activity
by September 1916, she would be free to set up her own League.
Tilak, not bound by any such commitment, and having gained the right of readmission, now took
the lead and set up the Home Rule League at the Bombay Provincial Conference held at Belgaum
in April 1916. Annie Besant’s impatient followers, unhappy with her decision to wait till September,
secured her permission to start Home Rule groups. Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Shankerlal Banker and
Indulal Yagnik set up a Bombay paper Young India and launched an All India Propaganda Fund
to publish pamphlets in regional languages and in English. In September 1916, as there were no
signs of any Congress activity, Annie Besant announced die formation of her Home Rule League,
with George Arundale, her Theosophical follower, as the Organizing Secretary. The two Leagues
avoided any friction by demarcating their area of activity: Tilak’s League was to work in
Maharashtra, (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar, and Annie
Besant’s League was given charge of the rest of India. The reason the two Leagues did not merge
was because, in Annie Besant’s words, ‘some of his followers disliked me and some of mine
disliked him. We, however, had no quarrel with each other.
Tilak promoted the Home Rule campaign with a tour of Maharashtra and through his lectures
clarified and popularized the demand for Home Rule. ‘India was like a son who had grown up
and attained maturity. It was right now that the trustee or the father should give him what was his
due. The people of India must get this effected. They have a right to do so. He also linked up the
question of swaraj with the demand for the formation of linguistic states and education in the
vernacular. ‘Form one separate state each for Marathi, Telugu and Kanarese provinces . . . The
principle that education should be given through the vernaculars is self-evident and clear. Do the
English educate their people through the French language? Do Germans do it through English or
the Turks through French? At the Bombay Provincial Conference in 1915, he told V.B. Alur who
got up to support his condolence resolution on Gokhale’s death: ‘Speak in Kannada to establish
the right of Kannada language. It is clear that the Lokamanya had no trace of regional or linguistic
Marathi chauvinism.
His stand on the question of non-Brahmin representation and on the issue of untouchability
demonstrated that he was no casteist either. When the non-Brahmins in Maharashtra sent a separate
memorandum to the Government dissociating themselves from the demands of the advanced
classes, Tilak urged those who opposed this to be patient: ‘If we can prove to the non-Brahmins,
by example, that we are wholly on their side in their demands from the Government, I am sure
that in times to come their agitation, now based on social inequality, will merge into our struggle.
To the non-Brahmins, he explained that the real difference was not between Brahmin and non-
Brahmin, but between the educated and the non-educated. Brahmins were ahead of others in jobs
because they were more educated, and the Government, in spite of its sympathy for non-Brahmins
and hostility towards Brahmins, was forced to look to the needs of the administration and give
jobs to Brahmins. At a conference for the removal of untouchability, Tilak declared: ‘If a God were
to tolerate untouchability, I would not recognize him as God at all.
Nor can we discern in his speeches of this period any trace of religious appeal; the demand for
Home Rule was made on a wholly secular basis. The British were aliens not because they belonged
to another religion but because they did not act in the Indian interest. ‘He who does what is
beneficial to the people of this country, be he a Muhammedan or an Englishman, is not alien.
‘Alienness’ has to do with interests. Alienness is certainly not concerned with white or black skin
... or religion.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 119