Thread by @lilastories

Okay. It's #Savarkar_Jayanti. #Savarkar's birth anniversary. We all know he went to Kalapani. But do we know WHY?

I'm writing a novel based off of those events, so I've been extensively reading on them. A thread:

In 1905, India was in the throes of British rule. The Indian National Congress was nothing more than an old dudes club where they passed pointless resolutions on everything.

Three of its members disagreed. Lala lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal. Lal-Bal-Pal.

They were more or less just writing articles highlighting the atrocities of the British on Indians, and even that was getting shut down. Tilak was sent to prison in Mandalay, Burma for his seditious articles.

Important note: if the British really considered someone a danger, they sent them to prison outside of India, to Burma, Andamans, etc. The ones who went to prison in India were the ones that were no danger to their regime. Keep this in mind.

There's a reason after 1857 they moved Bahadur Shah Zafar to Burma where he died. He was a threat because people rallied around him.

Anyway. In this backdrop, there was a young man studying at Ferguson college in Pune, who had a strong hatred for British rule that stemmed from how they dealt with Indians during the plague - dragging women away, desecrating homes and shrines, the works.

Savarkar came to the attention of Tilak for his strong views and writing. He also had a secret society which had a front organization which was big with organizing Ganesh charurti celebrations in Maharashtra.

And he organized the first bonfire of foreign goods in Pune for which his principal rusticated him.

Anyway. Tilak's friend Shyamji Krishna Varma was a disciple of Dayananda Saraswati, a Sanskrit teacher at Oxbridge, a former Diwan at several princely states.... And finally a lawyer in London who offered scholarships to patriotic Indians to study in London.

Tilak recommended Savarkar for this Shivaji scholarship. Interestingly, the principal who rusticated him also wrote him a glowing recommendation letter. And in mid-1906, Savarkar was off to London.

Fun fact: Sai Paranjpe, the writer for movies like Sparsh and Chashme Baddoor is this principal's granddaughter.

In London, Shyamji had a boarding house with Indian food, so it was a gathering ground for lots of young Indian students and professionals. He also ran a newsletter called Indian Sociologist, which fraternized with Irish, Egyptian, Russian Revolutionaries, and they hung out too.

And Bipin Pal hung out there a lot as well, and lots of Indian luminaries passed through, including Lala Lajpat Rai and Gandhi. Fertile ground for Savarkar to do his work of organizing them into a lean mean revolutionary machine.

What stands out to me is no one really led things there, and there was just lots of garbage discussions and writing incendiary opinion pieces and sparring with each other in newspaper columns. But very little actual work.

Savarkar took on that role. He started the Free India Society, which was basically a front organization from where he recruited for his secret society - Abhinav Bharat. And he also had another idea for awakening his countrymen.

He knew people responded to stories. Especially historical stories. So one of his first moves was to start writing the history of 1857. What was until then called the Sepoy Mutiny, he rephrased it into The First War Of Indian Independence.

He did a lot of research into British archives to back up with fact that it wasn't a disorganized mutiny, but a widely organized move to throw the British out of India. One interesting story of how this book got written:

The librarian who handled the India section of the library was a racist who hated people from the colonies and wasn't shy about saying so to Savarkar's face. The dude held his tongue long enough to have the librarian drop it, become friends with him, and actually

Show him secret archives of the minutes of the British parliament debating 1857 in subsequent years. That was an invaluable addition to his book., Because you got the British lawmaker perspective on this revolt!

So the book's written. It's time to release it. And it's the 50th anniversary of 1857. The British media is full of India-hate. Like there's plays screened depicting Indians as barbarians and marauders which get great applause.

In response, he holds an event attend by hundreds of Indians from around the country where he commemorates the brave martyrs of the First War Of Indian Independence. Gives merch too - buttons saying Free India and Vande Mataram.

Scotland Yard and the India Office aren't happy. They start sending spies to watch on the members of India House. Incompetent cops at first. The members have fun with them, like luring them to a desolate place, and then running off in the only cab available.

But then they start sending Irish and Indian people to infiltrate India House. Shyamji freaks out and goes to France. That leaves Savarkar in charge of India House. And he remakes it in his form.

Now that they are under watch, he realizes his time is limited. And so they need to achieve a lot in as short a time as possible before the British find a way to deport them all. There's no freedom of speech in India, but there is in Britain and they were determined to use it..

He sends the Marathi copy of The First War Of Indian Independence to his brother in nasik, to be published. But the British threaten the printing press and everyone refuses to publish it. They also proscribe the book - FIRST book in history to be banned before it's even published

So they try publishing it in Germany, because it's a center for Sanskrit and they think they'll find devanagari printers. But no, they don't. So back to the drawing board. He translates it to English. And tries getting it published again.

He can't get it published in Britain. He tries France. They won't publish it either because for all their ideas of freedom, they are afraid of offending the British. Can't get it published anywhere in Europe for that reason. Finally, they get it published in The Netherlands!

Imagine how easy it is to publish a book today. Back then, it was such a different world that you couldn't even find anyone to print it, forget publishing it. The British had even found a way to gag Gutenberg.

Anyway. This book got secretly shipped to India under the guise of British novels and children's toys. And it sold out immediately.

This book was so dangerous why? Because it provided a template to fight the British. The backbone of the British empire was the Indian soldier. If the soldiers could be convinced to mutiny, there would no longer exist a British empire. And that's exactly what 1857 taught.

Savarkar was trying to get this message out in every which way possible. That repeating 1857 was the only way to take down the British. The British were scared because it was true!

Now with Shyamji gone, Savarkar kicked his plan into high gear. Guns were banned in India after 1857, unless you were a "martial race", i.e. a community friendly with the British. Guns were easy to buy in Britain. See what I'm getting at?

Yeah. He kept buying pistols and rifles and sending them to India, concealed in books and false bottom bags. Often landing them in Goa, Pondicherry, Chandernagore as they were not under British control. Members of India House also trained in weapon use.

He also wanted his associates to have actual war experience and sent them to the war between Morocco and Spain to learn how to war. Both sides thought they were spies and kicked their asses and sent them back. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained.

And then he wanted to learn how to make a bomb. The Russians were the Masters at that back then. But then, Europe was full of Revolutionaries, and there was no dearth of fake Russian bomb doctors to scam them.

They'd try making bombs but it would just blow up and people would lose an eye or an ear or something. It was a wild goose chase to find a bomb doctor. When they finally found one, he gave them a bomb manual. Yay! Then it turns out, IT'S IN FUCKING RUSSIAN!

Luckily one of the members was dating a German woman who was studying medicine and she knew Russian enough to translate. But she took her own sweet time, and it took her a year to translate it.

Shouldn't complain about Google translate now should we.

Anyway. They made several copies of this translated bomb manual and shipped it off to India.

The folks receiving the guns and bomb manuals in India weren't randos. They were members of Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra, who were connected to Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti in Bengal. A nationwide network.

Some of the beneficiaries of these were
* Ananta Laxman Kanhere
* Khudiram Bose, Prafulla Chaki
* Aurobindo Ghose.
They all attacked and killed British officers in India. Chaki killed himself after. Kanhere and Bose were executed.

Mr. Ghosh.... Well you know how that story went

The thing is, there was a very organized network of Revolutionaries. It wasn't 'misguided youth' or "lone wolves" like Indian history textbooks will tell you. These folks had an international network that was very very effective and had big plans.

Anyway. They connected Savarkar's brother Babarao to Kanhere, and sent him off to Kalapani. Big blow. And they began troubling Savarkar's youngest brother Narayan as well.

if that wasn't sufficient, they began hounding members of India House as well. They actually found a Marathi man named Kirtikar who was sent to spy on them, and especially get close to Savarkar. They controlled his reports to the British, and even installed their own double agent

But they realized the screws were in them. The head of the India Office, Curzon Wyllie, got Savarkar disbarred from Gray's Inn.

In all this, Savarkar's son died of smallpox.

Things came to a head. Something had to be done.

The explosion came from an unlikely source. Madanlal Dhingra had hitherto been a chilled out rich heir who didn't care for school or country and just focused on having a good time. His family were friends with Curzon Wyllie, even

Curzon Wyllie used to organize events for Indian students in London where he'd befriend them and use them to extract information about seditious activities.

Dhingra had enough of that. He went to one of those events, loaded with guns. Walked straight up to Curzon Wyllie.

SHOT HIM IN THE FACE.

BANG BANG HE'S DEAD.

And he surrendered immediately, there was a trial. Law took it's course. He was hanged.

That was the end of India House. They shut it down. It shook a lot of people, this assassination. They began questioning their relationship with Savarkar and some distanced himself from him. Even Bipin Pal who was housing Savarkar told him to leave.

Savarkar moved from place to place, living in increasingly dingy hovels. When his health began failing, he went away to France, to Madam Cama's house, where he recuperated.

When he got better, he realized he couldn't go on living in hiding when all his loved ones were suffering. He decided to surrender to Scotland Yard. He hadn't done anything except write a book. He was confident under British law in Britain he would get only a slap on the wrist.

But soon, the trial turned out to be a sham and they were going to deport him to India, where he would be tried under harsher laws. Holy crap.

Some people tried helping him escape prison, including Irish Revolutionaries. But it all came to nought. There was a spy in their midst who had magically evaded discovery.

Finally, when he was shipped off to India, his friends in Paris decided to save him at Marseilles. He was very closely watched as an undertrial being transported. He didn't even have privacy to use the toilet.

Irrespective, he found a short window when the ship was in Marseilles. He went to the toilet, opened a porthole and jumped out, and swam. Swam for his life.

He reached the shore and began running to make his rendezvous. UNFORTUNATELY His friends were delayed. Again. Because of the spy.

The British officers began screaming THIEF, and the people at the Port of Marseilles caught him. He was actually asking for a cop

So he could tell them he was a political prisoner seeking asylum. He didn't know enough French to say that, and his friends reached a little too late.

The British tried to take him into custody.

This became a big international diplomatic incident between France and Britain.

Ultimately, Britain pressured France enough to give up Savarkar. He got deported to India. And after his sham of a trial, he got the longest possible sentence - two life terms of transportation to the Andamans.

FIFTY YEARS.

They wanted him out of action for fifty fucking years.

Idk if he said this, but in the @amarchitrkatha comic about his life, he says "I doubt the British empire itself will last fifty more years".

AND HE WAS RIGHT. The sentence was passed in 1911. The British empire was no more in the years following 1947.

And that's where I shall leave his story. The rest of it, you know already, in bits and pieces, and misconceptions and nuggets of folklore.

This is the Savarkar I take inspiration from. A man whose vision was so long ranging that his was the template that finally did end up bringing us Independence.

Reading his biography and his book on the First War Of Indian Independence was a prerequisite to joining Bhagat Singh's Hindustan Republican Association (it's not a coincidence it sounds like the IRA)

Tamil versions of his books were found in the barracks of Subhash Bose's Indian National Army in 1945.

Such was his influence.

To follow my progress with the book based on this story, subscribe to my Substack at lila.substack.com

It is big on the shenanigans, lots of guns and bombs and spies and josh, and I email you excerpts and outlines every Thursday, and little tidbits on Mondays.

Sources: @vikramsampath's biography of Savarkar, @sanjeevsanyal's talks, RA Padmanabhan's biography of VVS Aiyar, Emily Brown's biography of Hardayal, Nirode Barooah's biography of Viren Chattopadhyay (Sarojini Naidu's brother), David Garnett's memoir The Golden Echo.

Wow that took me over an hour to write out. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Subscribe to my mailing list. I'm looking for feedback from people better at finding mistakes than I am.

lila.substack.com

Cc @daeroplate @TheEmissaryCo @ShaunakSA @bharathceegee @kmacts

How I am novelizing this story: lila.substack.com/p/india-house-…

Novel excerpts (first draft):
1. lila.substack.com/p/guns-and-gan…

2. lila.substack.com/p/guns-and-gan…

3. lila.substack.com/p/monday-cup-o…

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