NASCENT NATIONALISM in the PRINCELY STATES While Political

33 Chapter II NASCENT NATIONALISM IN THE PRINCELY STATES While political questions, the growth of polity in British India and its ripple effect in the Princely States vexed the Crown of England and the Government of India, the developments in education, communication and telegraphs played the well known role of unifying India in a manner hitherto unknown. It was during the viceroyalty of Lord Duffrine that the Indian National Congress was formed under the patronage of A.O. Hume. In 1885, and throughout the second half of the 19th Century, there existed in Calcutta and other metropolitan towns in India a small but energetic group of non-official Britons-journalists, teachers, lawyers, missionaries, planters and traders - nicknamed ’interlopers’ by the Company’s servants who cordially detested them. The interlopers brought their politics into India and behaved almost exactly as they would have done in England. They published their rival newspapers, founded schools and missions and 34 organised clubs, associations and societies of all sorts. They kept a close watch on the doings of the Company’s officials. Whenever their interests were adversely affected by the decisions of the government, they raised a hue and cry in the press, organised protest meetings sent in petitions, waited in deputations and even tried to influence Parliament and public opinion in England and who by their percept and example they taught their Indian fellow subjects the art of constitutional agitation.' In fact, the seminal role of the development of the press in effective unification within the country and in the spread of the ideas of democracy and freedom that transcended barriers which separated the provinces from the Princely India is not too obvious. It was the press which established regular contact between the moffusil and metropolitan centres, between one province and another and between the British provinces and the Indian States. All those who could read English were therefore able to know what was happening all over the country. In the beginning of the nineteenth century it took about a month before newspapers reached from Calcutta to Bombay. But after the introduction of the steam navigation in the eighteen thirtys, the time was shortened to less than a fortnight. The Indian owned 35 press was closely modelled upon the English owned press and though its influence in the first half of the Nineteenth Century was almost entirely local, it carried news about other provinces of India to a large number of people served by it within a particular region. Perhaps the earliest and the most significant effect of the growth ol the Press in India was to reinforce the cultural and social bonds that already existed between different communities in the country and bring them into closer and more intimate contact with each other. The press which may be said to have had a meaningful ^genesis in Bengal was a concurrent development with the growth of political consciousness and constitutional agitation in India. However, it was Maharashtra, with epicenters in Bombay and Poona, that carried the torch to unexpected heights with vociferous newspapers and journals that were in Marathi, English as well as bilingual. In a vast country like India which had few representative institutions and where forms of agitation were either underdeveloped or only resorted to spasmodically, the press provided a regular, easy and potent means of constitutional agitation. 36 It was not long before that the Fourth Estate in India established itself as a tribune of the people and a permanent opposition to the government by the early years of the twentieth century that brought the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon to a close. In a Report on Native Press (1905) in the Presidency of Bombay- it was recorded that "out of the total of 171 newspapers and 45 periodicals 27% were in the city of Bombay, 16 or 9% were in the Native States. Of the 171 publications 83 or 49% were in the hands of the Brahmans of whom 31 were Chittapavans and 19 were Deshasthas. Of the newspapers, 14 or 8.5% were in English 56 or 34% in Marathi, and the rest were in either Gujarathi, Hindi, Kanarese, Urdu, bilingual or even trilingual. More over the circulation registered a sharp increase for example the Dyan Prakash, a Marathi daily moved from a circulation of 250 to 1200." It was ironical that English education, which had been deliberately introduced in Maharashtra by Monstuart Elphinstone and his successors to wean the people from the old feudal order and to strengthen their loyalty to British rule, produced the very class which was a challenge to that rule. 37 The life and career of Sardar Gopal Hari Deshmukh (1823-92), author and social reformer, popularly called ’Lokhitwadi’, is illustrative of the influence that new education initiated by Elphinstone and nurtured by his successors had on the first generation of progressive Maharashtrians brought up in British India and the Princely States. Rao Bahadur G.S. Sardesai, the author o f ’Marathi Riyasal:’ writes that the Deshinukhs hailed from the village of Pavas in the Konkan. They were chittapavans who had migrated to the court in Poona during the times of Peshwa Sawai Madhavrao in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The Deshmukhs who had been one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Peshwa regime, had suffered under the British conquest of 1818’ having lost a large part of their extensive estate. It is known that Hari Govind Deshmukh was in the employment of Bapu Gokhaie, the general of the Maratha armies. Gopal Hari, the son of Hari Govind was educated at the Poona English School (est. 1823) and was employed as an Assistant Translator of Government Records. He joined the Bombay Judicial Service in 1852 and retired as Judge of the Small Cause Court in 1879. Gopal Hari Deshmukh was member of the Bombay Legislative Council from 1880-82 and was 38 appointed Diwan of Ratlam in 1884. He died in 1892. He was given the honorific ’Rao Bahadur’ and created first class Sardar of the Deccan. Deshmukh was not soured by the misfortunes that had befallen his family during his father’s life time nor alienate him from the new order. On the contrary he tried to hasten the process of reconciliation with the British rule. He was one of the founders of the Dyanaprakash in Poona and a pioneer of Marathi journalism. He considered the British conquest of Maharashtra fundamentally different in that the British had finally put an end to anarchy and introduced standards of efficiency in administration. In ’Shatapatre’, a collection of hundred letters he addressed to the people of India, published in the ’Prabhakar’ of Bombay, between the years 1848-50, Gopal Hari openly admired the new concepts that the British had introduced into Indian policy. He wrote at length about equality before law, freedom of speech and worship but especially of the maxim that the state existed for the welfare of the people and not for the aggrandizement of a family or caste. Foreign rule, with all its faults, struck Deshmukh as a necessary stage in the training of the country for self government. He held up before his compatriots the vision of an Indian Parliament, but he 39 argued that the political reforms of the West, could not be adopted without purging Indian society of outdated ritual, glaring caste inequality and grievous disabilities imposed on women/ On 1st February 1852 with his associate Yashwantrao Madhav Raste, Gopal Hari founded the Deccan Association for the purpose of "ensuring security of land tenure, cheap and speedy justice, allocation of salt tax (later made famous by the Mahatma’s Dandi March in 1921), equalization of customs duties on export and imports, an increased expenditure on education and public works, the prevention of ’drain’ of Indian capital to Britain, preference to educated Indians in public employment, equal number of Europeans with natives to have seats in the Legislative Council of India". But the Poona Deccan Association died a premature death as local British officers nipped it in the bud. Fifteen years had to pass before Poona saw the birth of another organisation called the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (PSS) or the Poona Association. It was only after 1870 that the PSS gained momentum. The Sabha during its first ten years represented the intelligence and wealth of the local community. While most of its members were Hindus, the Sabha 40 also had a fair number of Parsis, Muslims and Christians. It must be mentioned that of the Hindus, the majority were Brahmins. This was not unusual when we consider the fact tiiat the Brahmins were the traditional as well as the modern elite of Poona and the Deccan in general. The more progress!^ of the Indian Princ£S_- Aundh, Akalkot, Jaurkhindi, Jath Kurunwad and Sangli — Chitpavan brahmans all, were not just members, but office bearers, though figure heads. While in the early years the Sabha’s most active members were G.V. Joshi, S.H. Sathe’ and S.H. Chiplonkar,^ it was "the arrival in Poona in November 1871 of Mahadev Govind Ranade then subordinate judge, that infused new life and vigour into the Sabha"^ Ranade though a government servant took a keen interest in public affairs. He was a versatile man — a scholar, a judge, an educationist, a religious and social reformer, an economist and a politician. Soon he became the mentor of the Sabha. The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha did much to stimulate political activity in Western India. Thanks to the example and exertions of the Sabha, political associations grew up in many parts of the Deccan, spanning the Bombay Presidency.

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