22nd JULY 1908 BAL GANGADHAR TILAK SENTENCED TO ANDAMAN -NICOBAR ISLANDS PRISON
In 1879, Vasudev Balwant Phadke of Pune was sentenced to Transportation for Life to Aden, 3200 km from Mumbai, by sea. Some 60-70 of his followers were sentenced to Transportation for Life and deported to the Andaman Islands. Even in exile, Phadke was denied the company of his followers. He died in Aden in 1883 clutching the soil of his motherland which he had kept with himself.
 |
| Vasudeo Balwant Phadke |
In May 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar Ajit Singh (uncle of Bhagat Singh) were transported from Lahore to Mandalay (Myanmar), 3400 km away. So strict was the security that the two leaders did not know that they were imprisoned in the same place. In 1908, at the age of 52 years, Lokmanya Tilak was sentenced to Transportation for 6 years to Mandalay and kept in isolation in an area of 150 ft x 50 ft with only the company of a cook. There was no parole for him even when his wife was on deathbed in 1912. The distance from Mumbai to Mandalay by sea and land is 4800 kms. The average life expectancy of an Indian male in 1908 was 48 years, so it is safe to presume the British wanted Tilak’s dead body to come out of prison.
 |
| Lokmanya Tilak |
 |
| Lala Lajpat Rai |
In 1909, Savarkar's elder brother Ganesh Damodar (Babarao) was sentenced to Transportation for life to the Andaman Islands, for publishing four poems. All his earthly possessions, including even saucepans and broom, were confiscated. His wife Yesu was left homeless, penniless and destitute. She sought refuge in the local crematorium for some time. She never saw her husband again and died in 1918. Permission to visit her husband came a day after she died!
 |
| Savarkar and Babarao |
In the Andamans, Babarao was denied even basic medical treatment; it was a miracle that he survived. Even after his release, he was lodged in Belgaum (solitary confinement) and Sabarmati jails. He was finally released in September 1922 only when the British were convinced he was going to die.
In 1911, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was sentenced to Transportation for Life, twice, to Andaman Islands; the sentences were to be served in succession. Savarkar's personal property and possessions, including his spectacles, were confiscated. His father-in-law Mr Chiplunkar was Dewan of Jawhar principality in Thane district. British authorities forced the Raja of Jawhar to sack Chiplunkar and expel him from Jawhar state overnight.
Transportation to Andaman Islands did not mean prison sentence for life. According to rules, regulations, customs and practice of the British Administration, prisoners were allowed to work outside the prison after a year or two, settle on the island, and call their families from India. Savarkar and his elder brother Babarao were detained in the prison for more than 10 years in flagrant violation of these rules! They were also forced to do physical hard labour all the time.
In 1924, Savarkar was released from jail on condition that he would not leave Ratnagiri district and would abstain from political activities for five years. But the Raj extended this duration periodically so that Savarkar was unconditionally released only in 1937. Many contemporaries of Savarkar including Bhai Parmanand, Hotilal Varma and Hemchandra Das, were sentenced to Transportation for Life to the Andaman Islands.
 |
| Bhai Parmanand |
Apart from the deaths at the gallows, many prisoners committed suicide to escape the harsh prison conditions. One of them was Indu Bhushan, an accused in the Alipore Bomb Case. He was yoked to the oil-mill and tortured sadistically, which turned him into a physical and mental wreck. On 29 April 1912, he ended his agony by committing suicide.
On July 3rd 1908, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was arrested for sedition by the British. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, born Keshav Gangadhar Tilak and popularly known as Lokmanya Tilak, was a popular Indian nationalist and Independence activist who was one of the first popular leaders of the freedom movement.
Tilak was born on July 23rd 1856 in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. His father Gangadhar Tilak was a school teacher and Sanskrit scholar who died when Tilak was sixteen. Tilak later went on to graduate from the Deccan College in Pune in 1877. After graduating from college Tilak became a mathematics teacher in a private school in Pune. He later left the job when he had certain ideological differences with his colleagues. Following his resignation, Tilak formed the Deccan Education Society along with a few of his college friends whose aim it was to improve the quality of education for India’s youth. The Deccan Education Society taught its students nationalist ideas along with an emphasis on Indian culture.
In 1890, Tilak joined the Indian National Congress and was critical of their lukewarm attitude towards the fight for self-governance. Tilak gradually emerged as one of the most important revolutionaries of his time. Towards the end of 1896, a severe plague epidemic had spread from Mumbai (then Bombay) to Pune. By January 1897, the diseases had taken on a worrying proportion. It was then that British troops were brought in to deal with the emergency. The measures taken by the troops included entering private houses, inspecting the occupants and evacuating the diseased to hospitals and destroying people’s personal possessions to prevent the plague from entering or leaving the city. The epidemic was finally brought under control by May 1897.
Even though the actions of the British were well meant, they were perceived as acts of dictatorship and oppression. Following this, Tilak published fiery articles in his Marathi newspaper Kesari against the British. This eventually led to the murders of British officers W.C Rand and Lt. Ayester, who were heading the Special Plague Committee at that time. The British charged Tilak with “incitement to murder” and sentenced him to 18 months in prison. Upon his release from prison, Tilak was regarded a national hero. By then he had also coined the famous slogan “Swaraj [self-rule] is my birthright and I shall have it”.
In 1905, the state of Bengal was portioned, which was a strategy by Lord Curzon who wanted to weaken the nationalist movement which was at its peak then. Tilak then pushed the swadeshi movement and the movement to boycott British goods. The boycott movement involved boycotting foreign-made goods and also the social boycott of Indians who used foreign goods. The swadeshi movement comprised of using goods made by oneself or produced in India. Once the foreign goods were boycotted, the gap created would then be filled by goods produced in India. Hence, Tilak considered the boycott movement and the swadeshi movement as two sides of the same coin.
Tilak was a staunch supporter of nationalism and swaraj and opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and was supported by fellow nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. This trio was popularly known as: "Lal - Bal - Pal”. In 1907, during the annual session of the Congress in Surat, tension erupted between the moderate and radical ends of the party over the selection of the new President of the Congress. The party was then split into the Jahal Matavadi led by Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lajpat Rai and Maval Matavadi.
On April 30th 1908, two young revolutionaries Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose threw a bomb onto a carriage in Muzzafarpur in order to kill the Chief Prisidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford, but by mistake killed two women in the carriage instead. Chaki commited suicide before he was caught, while Bose was hanged.
In his newspaper Kesari, Tilak defended the two young men and called for immediate swaraj. This was followed by the immediate arrest of Tilak by the British on charges of sedition. The Parsi judge, Dinshaw. D Davar trying the case, termed Tilak’s articles in Kesari as “seething with sedition” and accused him of glorifying violence and approving of murder. By the end of the case, Tilak was sentenced to a jail term from 1908 to 1914 in Mandalay in Burma. While in prison, Tilak read and wrote extensively and developed his ideas on the Indian nationalism movement. During his time in prison, Tilak wrote Shrimad Bhagvat Gita Rahasya which went on to become very popular. Many copies of this book were sold and the money was put towards freedom fighting.
By the end of his jail term in June 1914, Tilak had quieted down considerable due to diabetes and the hardships he had undergone in prison. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Tilak contacted the King Emperor of Britain and assured him of his support and used the power of his oration to get new recruits for war efforts. He also embraced the Morley-Minto Reform passed by the British and thought this was a good way to increase the trust between the British and the Indians. Tilak also tried to convince Mahatma Gandhi to leave the idea of complete non-violence and attain swaraj by all means possible. Though Gandhi had immense respect for Tilak, he did not change his mind and stuck to his path of non-violence.
Tilak is remembered for books penned by him which include The Arctic Home in the Vedas and Shrimad Bhagvad Gita Rahasya. The Kesari newspaper started by him is still published as a daily newspaper in Marathi. In 2007, the government of India released a coin to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Also On This Day:
1350 - Saint Namdev passes away.
1941 - Adoor Gopalakrishnan, cinematographer, is born.
1972 - Shimla Non-Arm Agreement on Kashmir is signed between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
1979 - Construction of the main second Howrah Bridge (Vidyasagar Setu) starts.
The Cause
Action by armed revolutionaries, characterized as 'extremists' and 'terrorists', with supposed links abroad inspired new and more draconian legislation between 1905-1914, and the advent of World War I served as a pretext for strengthening the forces of the state, of course in the name of 'national security'. In 1908, the government passed the Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act and the Explosives Substances Act, and shortly thereafter the Indian Press Act, the Criminal Tribes Act, and the Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act.
Although these pieces of legislation have not been etched into the pre-history of anti-terrorist legislation, the purported intent was to prevent 'terrorists' from calling public meetings, publishing material inciting the people to revolt, disseminating revolutionary literature, and so forth. In actual fact, as numerous studies have shown, the legislation was of such wide scope as to render suspect all political activity that was even mildly critical of the British Government of India, and it put an effective end to whatever freedom of expression the Indian press had been allowed. The Foreigners Ordinance of 1914, which restricted the entry of foreigners into India, accomplished the exclusion from India of men harboring evil designs towards the Government of India, ‘suspects’ in the official vocabulary. The 'foreign hand' theory, which is invoked with notorious monotony by the Indian state to the present day to account for the rise of secessionist and communal movements, owes its origins partially to this ordinance. Meanwhile, the Ingress into India Ordinance (1914) allowed the government to indefinitely detain and compulsorily domicile suspects, while the Defence of India Act (1915) allowed suspects to be tried by special tribunals sitting in camera whose decisions were not subject to appeal. Regulation III also continued to be available for the indefinite detention of suspects.
The Legislation
1915 legislation was designed to give the government of British India special powers to deal with revolutionary and German-inspired threats during World War I, especially in the Punjab. A special legal tribunal was set up to deal with such cases without prior commitment and with no appeal. Power was also taken for the internment of suspects.
Search Results
Ajit Vadakayil: GANESH BABARAO SAVARKAR, AN ...
ajitvadakayil.blogspot.com/.../ganesh-babarao-savarkar-unsung-hero-of....Sep 3, 2012 - But alas the site has been banned by Sonia Gandhi and her coterie, (who are more ..... On 09 June 1909, a telegram was sent from Nashik to London .... The Empire of Japan invaded the Andaman islands in 1942 and drove the British out. .... In February 1920, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhara Tilak himself wrote ...
BookStruck: History of Maharashtra
bookstruck.in/chapter.jsp?id=10588This whole thing was illegal, since the territory did not belong to the Portuguese technically. Taking ... Savarkar was tried and sent on exile to the Andaman Islands. ... The death of Lokmanya Tilak in 1920 brought about the end of his era.
Karnataka is born Page 4
www.adyargopal.com/karnaataka4.htmlThe English sent their troops realizing that the Maharajah's army .... Caribbean islandand he called it India, to realize only later .... The Chinese government realized the bad effects of free trade in opium and banned the item. .... Rao Deshpande, the “Lion of Karnataka” (Belgaum) sided with Bal Gangadhar Tilak who was ...
Britain cannot simply Ignore these Anti-Hindu Extremists ...
www.hinduhumanrights.info/britain-cannot-simply-ignore-these-anti-hin...May 18, 2014 - Lajpat Rai was joined by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal in .... After all David Duke was banned when leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Keeping the patriotic spark alive - The Indian Diaspora
theindiandiaspora.com/news.../keeping-the-patriotic-spark-alive.htmAug 15, 2014 - ... below and your username and password will be sent to this email shortly .... It was banned by the British government upon release in Tamil ... as Tirupur Kumaran, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and even Bhagat Singh. ... of British India in the cellular jail in Andaman Islands, was dubbed in Tamil as "Siraichalai".
Civil Services Examination : Battle Against All Odds: Indian ...
wwwsoumyamondal.blogspot.com/2010/06/history.htmlJun 22, 2010 - the convict settlement at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, for the ... Lord Ripon (
1880-1884) was sent with the avowed purpose of ..... preached by Bal Gangadhar Tilak whose political views were ...... (INC) declared illegal. Modi govt to celebrate Patel's birth anniversary, Indira ...
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Modi-govt-to.../44986252.cmsOct 30, 2014 - ... should not forget Indira Gandhi for imposing illegal Emergency Law nationwide and ..... Even Subhash Chandra Bose and Lokmanya Tilak were ...... As soon as the deed was signed, Patel sent a Indian naval ship to the islands and planted Indian flag. ... He gifted coco Islands near Andamans to Burma.
[PDF]History of Modern Maharashtra - University of Mumbai
archive.mu.ac.in/.../M.A.(Part%20-%20I)%20History%20Paper%20-%20I...The Company's Directors sent Lord Wellesley as the Governor-. General of the Company's ...... island and the port of Surat, the two big centers of trade and commerce ...... an illegal trade in salt and opium. He also ...... led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak who were emphatic about the importance of ...... for life to the Andaman islands.Full text of "Full & authentic report of the Tilak trial. (1908 ...
archive.org/stream/.../fullauthenticrep00tilarich_djvu.txtItems 19 - 52 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak was set in nioti'on by his Excellency the Governor in ... one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the Town and island of ...... An intention to produce disaffection is illegal, but the motive for such an ..... It will remain in the hands of Government to send a man to the Andamans without trial.August - Anurupa Cinar's blog - Blogger
anurupacinar.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.htmlAug 14, 2013 - The last wish of a man sent to the gallows was denied! ... The Government soon banned it. .... In 1908, at the age of 52 years, Lokmanya Tilak was sentenced to Transportation for 6 years to Mandalay ... (Babarao) was sentenced to Transportation for life to the Andaman Islands, for publishing four poems.
Andaman Island Packages
Adandamantourism.holidayiq.com/Book Directly with Andaman Experts. Great Deals on Travel Packages.Winner - Best Travel Website - 2015 – IAMAI - India Digital AwardAndaman Package @12000/-
Adwww.paradiseandaman.com/landing.html096795 555855n/6d @ 3 * Hotel, NAC Car, Makruzz PortBlair, Havelock & Neil TourAndaman Island - Pearl Park Beach Resort 8 Reviews
Adwww.tripadvisor.in/HotelsCompare Prices, Reviews, Book Now!TripAdvisor has 40,58,970 followers on Google+
Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra - From your Internet address - Use precise location
No comments:
Post a Comment