INDEPENDENCE DAY!

HAPPY INDIAN INDEPENDENCE DAY!

ON AUGUST THE 15TH 1947, India became an independent country. Many leaders of the Indian independence struggle studied in England. Some, like Gandhi and Nehru, are still well known, but others (based in London’s Highgate), whose methods differed from those of Gandhi, have become a little neglected. My book, illustrated in this post, looks at a group of Indians in London, who struggled for freedom from the British during the reign of Edward VII. They were not sympathetic to the non-violent approach adopted by the Mahatma.

The book is available from Amazon and lulu.com and bookdepository.com

Gandhi and Savarkar in north London

KRISHNAVARMA COVER BOOK BY HITESH BHANUSALI

MK (‘Mahatma’) Gandhi, born in Porbandar (Gujarat) visited London in 1906. He spent the first two days of his stay at India House, the hostel in Highgate founded in 1905 by Shyamji Krishnavarma (born in Kutch, now part of Gujarat). Gandhi did not see eye to eye with Krishnavarma and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who was living in India House. These extracts from my book “IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS” describes Gandhi’s meetings with Krishnavarma and Savarkar.

Extracts

During October 1906, India House received one of its most well-known guests. On the 20^th of that month, MK Gandhi arrived at Waterloo Station, having recently disembarked from a ship that had carried him from South Africa. He was met by the father of Henry Polak (Gandhi’s South African associate), Lewis Ritch, and others of his followers. They travelled together to India House, where Gandhi spent two nights. After that, he moved to the now long-since closed luxurious Cecil Hotel, which used to stand in the Strand. During his stay in London, he attended at least three of the Sunday evening meetings held every week at India House. These meetings were to discuss matters connected with India, to celebrate Indian festivals, and to allow Indians in London to socialise…

… Savarkar was not friendly to Gandhi when he visited India House in 1906. He strongly disapproved of this visitor’s thoughts and actions throughout his life. It is said that on one of Gandhi’s visits to India House, Savarkar, who loved prawns, offered some to the vegetarian visitor, who politely refused them. Savarkar said to Gandhi:

“Well, if you cannot eat with us, how on earth are you going to work with us? … this is just boiled fish … we want people who are ready to eat the Britishers alive…”

Incidentally, Shyamji Krishnavarma was, like Gandhi, a strict vegetarian. He preferred cooked food and had his favourite food, mung dal (a lentil preparation), sent from India. Also, he avoided onions and chillies. Regarding food at India House, especially as it reached its final year, Asaf Ali wrote:

“Within a fortnight of our stay in India House, Rauf [Ali’s brother] and I decided to move out of it. For here food served there defied description. And here were Madrasis, Mahrattas, and Punjabis, each so far apart in tastes…”

Gandhi had not come to Highgate to discuss eating habits with the young revolutionary Savarkar. The future Mahatma, who had praised the work of Shyamji, wanted to confront and argue his case with Shyamji, who had been very critical of the assistance that he had offered the British during their war with the South African Boers.

On one of his visits to India House (Sunday 21^st October), Gandhi spent the whole day there. During the day, he spent time talking to young Indians. In the evening, he spoke with Shyamji. One of the matters that particularly concerned Shyamji was the forthcoming election of the President of the Indian National Congress. BG Tilak, whom Shyamji admired, was one of the candidates. The ‘moderate’ Indian nationalists favoured Dadabhai Naoroji. Shyamji tried to persuade Gandhi to dissuade Naoroji from standing. However, Gandhi felt that Naoroji was the right man to be President. In November 1906, Shyamji wrote an article in Indian Sociologist, condemning Naoroji. He made comments such as:

“We have ample evidence to show that Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji is ever ready to oblige his Anglo-Indian friends at the cost of his country … Mr. Dadabhai is allowing the great reputation he made in the past to damp down the aspirations of the Indians of today … How long does Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji expect that the Indian people will continue to be hoodwinked by him? ”

Three years later, Gandhi published a booklet called Hind Swaraj. It was, in part, a thinly veiled criticism of the extremists like Shyamji and Savarkar.

End of extracts

“IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS” by Adam Yamey may be bought here:

https://www.bookdepository.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/9780244203870

AND here:

https://www.amazon.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/dp/0244203873/

Also on KINDLE

And (in India only):

https://pothi.com/pothi/book/adam-yamey-ideas-bombs-and-bullets

Picture shows Krishnavarma on a book by Hitesh Bhansali

Swami Dayanand Saraswati

Dayananda_Saraswati

Here is an excerpt from my latest book, “IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS”, which deals with the activities of Indian patriots (including Shyamji Krishnavarma, VD Savarkar, Madame Cama, Madan Lal Dhingra, and VVS Aiyar) in Edwardian London between 1905 and 1910 and what inspired them. The excerpt deals with an example of the ‘Ideas’ part of the book’s title. It is concerned with aspects of the life of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, a reformer of Hinduism who was born in Gujarat.

Excerpt starts here:

Swami Dayanand Saraswati (‘Dayanand’; 1824-83) was an influential reformer of Hinduism and the founder of the Arya Samaj movement. He was born in Tankara, which is now in the Morbi district of the State of Gujarat. To escape from a forced marriage in childhood and disillusioned by his family’s slavish Hindu devotional practices, he wandered around India as a sannyasa (religious mendicant) for well over a decade. During this period, he met and became a disciple of Virajanand Dandeesha (1778-1868), who was a scholar and teacher of Sanskrit and the texts of the Vedas. Dayanand promised Dandeesha that he would devote his life to the renaissance of the Hinduism of the Vedas. Dayanand rejected Hinduism of the Puranas and other later texts and became convinced that the ‘pure’ Hinduism as found in the Vedas was the only true form of the religion. He wanted to purify Hinduism by stripping away modifications introduced after the texts in the Vedas were received from Heaven. In 1875, Dayanand published his book Satyarta Prakash (‘Light of Truth’), which expounds his beliefs. Banned in some parts of India when it was published, it contains some quite inflammatory material. Dayanand believed that God is the:

“…eternal source of all knowledge and he reveals it through the Vedas…”, and that is because the Vedas are the sole source of knowledge, all other religions are imperfect. His book contains chapters, which seek to prove that religions apart from pure Hinduism, based solely on the Vedas, are fatally flawed, and therefore to be avoided. Dayanand’s arguments against other religions are based on literal interpretations of selected texts from holy books, such as The Bible and The Koran, without appreciating or admitting that what is written in these texts should not be interpreted literally.

According to Dayanand, the arrival of the Aryans into India (now a subject of some contention) marked the start of a ‘Golden Age’. He wrote:

“In the ‘Golden Days’ of India, saints and seers, princes and princesses, kings and queens, and other people used to spend a large amount of time and money in performing and helping others to perform Homa; and so long as this system lasted, India was free from disease and its people were happy.”

This Golden Age had long passed because, putting it simply, Hindus had modified and ignored the teachings in the Vedas. However, he believed:

“It can become so again, it the same system were revised…”, by which he meant if Hinduism were to be reformed and people returned to a strict adherence to the Vedas, the ‘Golden Age’ would be revived.

Dayanand blamed the decline of India and its subjection by various invaders to the deviation of Hindus and their religious leaders from the practices advocated in the Vedas. He wrote:

“The causes of foreign rule in India are:- mutual feud, differences in religion, want of purity in life, lack of education, child-marriage, marriage in which the contracting parties have no voice in the selection of their life-partners, indulgence in carnal gratification, untruthfulness and other evil habits, the neglect of the study of the Veda, and other mal-practices.”

The Sawmi believed that the advances of the Europeans that allowed them to conquer his India was due to their avoidance of things that had contributed to the downfall of Hinduism. The conquerors’ successes were in his opinion due to their valuing the following: good education; willingness to sacrifice everything for the good of their nations; not imitating others blindly; obeying superiors; helping their fellow countrymen with trade; and not being lazy. Absence of these characteristics, which Dayanand believed to be beneficial for the success of the British, contributed, in his opinion, to the downfall of India. Furthermore, deviation from the Vedas added to his impression that India lacked the ‘superiority’ he detected amongst the British and other Europeans.

In 1875, Dayanand formed the Arya Samaj (‘Aryan’ ‘society’). Its objects were: to promote Dayananda’s version of reformed Hinduism (based only on the original, unmodified texts of the Vedas); to counter attacks on Hinduism made by Christians and members of other religions; to convert back to Hinduism those who had been converted to Islam and Christianity; to reinterpret caste by allocating people into a caste according to their merits rather than by accident of birth; and to promote the idea that the Vedas contained the original plans for what were regarded as modern inventions. As an example of the latter, he wrote:

“… that Krishna and Arjuna went to America in an Ashwatari vessel (i.e., one propelled by electricity) and brought the sage Uddalaka back with them …”

The Arya Samaj, in common with the Brahmo Samaj, strove to reform Hinduism, but differed from the Brahmo Samaj in many respects. Members of Arya Samaj had no faith in the goodness of the British Government, whereas the opposite was true for the Brahmo Samaj. Arya Samaj believed in the superiority of Hinduism over other religions, whereas the Brahmo Samaj put Hinduism on the same level as other religions. Another of many differences between the two movements was that Arya Samaj wanted to revive Vedic traditions and to reject modern western culture and philosophy, whereas the Brahmo Samaj accepted western culture and ideas.

End of excerpt

“IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS” by Adam Yamey may be bought here:

https://www.bookdepository.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/9780244203870

AND here:

https://www.amazon.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/dp/0244203873/

Also on KINDLE

And (in India only):

https://pothi.com/pothi/book/adam-yamey-ideas-bombs-and-bullets

Picture from Wikipedia

It is cheaper in India

I have already written elsewhere (click HERE ) that I recently published a book about the activities of Indian freedom fighters in London between 1905 and 1910. They were led at first by Shyamji Krishnavarma, who was born in Kutch (now in Gujarat), and then by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who later developed the idea of Hindutva.

My book, “IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS” is available on Amazon, bookdepository.com, and lulu.com These online stores are the best way of buying my book IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE INDIA. Using these stores to order the book in India attracts a huge postal charge. So, I have produced an Indian edition of my book, which IF ORDERED IN INDIA attracts a very modest postal charge. To order the Indian version click: https://pothi.com/pothi/book/adam-yamey-ideas-bombs-and-bullets .

Please note that if you use this link to order my Indian version to be sent outside India, you will face a huge postal charge.

I hope that by creating a special Indian edition, my book will now be available to readers in India at a very affordable price.

Veer Savarkar lived here briefly

140 small SINCLAIR

Number 140 Sinclair Road (illustrated above) in west London, not far from Shepherds Bush Green, looks like an ordinary Victorian terraced house, which it is. However, in the first decade of the twentieth century it was home to a few Indian freedom fighters. When the seventeen year old David Garnett, the writer and a future member of the Bloomsbury Group, visited the house in 1909, he met Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) the Bengali nationalist and a father of the Swadeshi movement, which promoted Indian economic independence. He shared the house with his son Niranjan Pal (1889-1959), a young Indian freedom fighter who was to become a founder of the Bombay Talkies film company. Sukhsagar Dutt (1890-1967), a young Indian revolutionary and brother of Ullaskar Dutt who was involved in the use of bombs in Bengal and Bihar and tried at Alipore (Calcutta), also lived at number 140.

In mid to late 1909, VD (‘Veer’) Savarkar (1883-1966) also lived at 140 Sinclair Road as a lodger of Bipin Chandra Pal. Savarkar, who was studying law at the time, was deeply involved in activities aimed at attempting to cause the British to leave India in order that the country became a sovereign nation. Savarkar is now best known for his contributions to the encouragement of Hindu nationalism. His book “Essentials of Hindutva”, published in 1923, is considered a seminal work by promoters of Hindu nationalism.

Savarkar moved from India House in Highgate (founded in 1905 by the barrister Shyamji Krishnavarma from Kutch in Gujarat), a centre of revolutionary Indian independence activists, to 140 Sinclair Road sometime in 1909 before the assassination in London’s Kensington of a senior Indian administrative figure, Sir WH Curzon Wyllie, in July 1909. The victim was shot at close range by Madan Lal Dhingra, a close associate of Savarkar. Savarkar was suspected of having some involvement in the plotting of Curzon Wyllie’s demise. Savarkar’s host in Sinclair Road, Bipin Chandra Pal, was firmly against what Dhingra had done, but accommodated Savarkar, who was pleased that the assassination had been successful until, as I wrote in my book “Ideas, Bombs, and Bullets”:

“… an angry crowd gathered outside, the house, Pal had to tell them that apart from being a paying guest, Veer had no other association with him. Another resident at this address, Pal’s son Niranjan, was a close friend of Veer’s and a regular visitor to India House. Niranjan’s association with India House worried Bipin greatly…”

Soon after this, Savarkar shifted his home in London to a flat above an Indian restaurant in a now non-existent alleyway in Holborn.

From what I have described, the seemingly ordinary terrace house at 140 Sinclair Road has played a small role in the history of India’s struggle for freedom from the British, which was eventually gained in August 1947.

For much more information about Indian patriots in Edwardian London, I invite you to read my recently published book, “Ideas, Bombs, and Bullets”, which focusses on the Indian patriots who congregated at India House in Highgate between 1905 and 1910.

A SMALL house cover

This publication is available at:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/adam-yamey/ideas-bombs-and-bullets/paperback/product-24198568.html

or:

https://www.bookdepository.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/9780244203870

(paperback)

and

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W7CYKPG/

(Kindle – also on Amazon.in)

IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS

A house cover

They were regarded as terrorists by the British police and as patriots by most Indians.

Adam Yamey’s latest book, IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS, explores the activities of a group of Indian freedom fighters active in Edwardian London (1905-1910)

The book relates a true tale of bombs, guns, lawyers, patriots, philosophers, revolutionaries, and scholars. It concerns a little known part of the history of India’s long struggle for independence.

A large Victorian house stands in a residential street in the north London suburb of Highgate. Between 1905 and 1910, it was known as ‘India House’, and was a meeting place and hostel for Indian students, many of whom wished to help liberate India from centuries of British domination. India House was created by a genius from Kutch (now part of present day Gujarat).

In the 19th and 20th centuries before India’s independence, many young Indians came to England to be educated. This is the story of a few of them, who came to Britain in the early 20th century, and then risked sacrificing their freedom, prospects, and lives by becoming involved in India’s freedom struggle.

This book describes the true adventurous exploits of members of Highgate’s India House (including Shyamji Krishnavarma, VD Savarkar, Madan Lal Dhingra, and VVS Aiyar) and its history.

The book is available in paperback:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/adam-yamey/ideas-bombs-and-bullets/paperback/product-24198568.html

and as a KINDLE e-book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W7CYKPG/

From Mandvi to Highgate

Pandit Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857-1930) was born in Mandvi in Kutch. He earned his title of ‘Pandit’ because of his very great knowledge of Sanskrit. In the 1880s, he travelled to England where he became an assistant to Professor Monier Williams at the University of Oxford. Krishnavarma’s studies of Sanskrit at Oxford earned him great fame amongst the Indologists all over the world. He also became a barrister. On hisreturn to India, Krishnavarma served as ‘Diwan’ in various princely states, before returning to England in 1897.

FACE

By 1905, Krishnavarma had become deeply involved in the movement to free India from the grips of the British Empire. That year, he purchased a house in the north London suburb of Highgate. He named it ‘India House’ and it served as both a hostel for Indian students and a centre for plotting the liberation of India from the British.

Between 1905 and 1910, when India House was closed and sold, this place became known as a ‘centre of sedition’ and the ‘most dangerous organisation in the British Empire’. I have almost finished writing a book, to be called “IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS” about Highgate’s India House and the people associated with it.

Here is a brief introduction to my forthcoming book:

“This is about a little known part of the history of India’s struggle for independence. It concerns events centred on a house in Edwardian London. It is a tale of bombs, guns, lawyers, patriots, philosophers, revolutionaries, and scholars.

This book describes the true adventurous exploits of members of Highgate’s India House (including VD Savarkar, Madan Lal Dhingra, and VVS Aiyar) and its history.“

I will give you more news about my book soon, I hope!