Srinivasa Sastri and Annie Besant – I

SRINIVASA SASTRI AND ANNIE BESANT - I

The Rt. Hon’ble V. S. Srinivasa Sastri was born on 22nd SeptembeR, 1869. Dr. Annie Besant was born on 1st October, 1847. Sastri, junior to Besant by 22 years, had the good fortune of coming into close contact with this great woman and working together with her in the struggle for the political freedom of India. Though Sastri did not become one of the inner circle of Besant’s admirers and never became a theosophist, there was deep mutual affection and admira­tion between the two. Sastri looked upon Dr. Besant with reverence, though characteristically enough, he never allowed his worshipful attitude to blunt the edge of his judgement of her sayings and doings. He paid to Dr. Besant, as to Mahatma Gandhi, the highest tribute a friend can pay to a political contemporary–that of keeping alive tender, personal relations in the midst of differences on public issues. It is always stimulating to the mind to contemplate on great person­alities and to compare and contrast them. It is particularly fascinating to study the similarities in the outlook of these two great personalities and to observe the differences in their nature and temperament.

Mr. Sastri and Dr. Annie Besant were both great orators of world fame. As a young lad of 21, when he was a student of The Teachers’ Training College at Saidapet, Sastri heard one of Besant’s great orations. He vividly described to me the overpowering impres­sion of that speech on his aspiring and impressionable mind and its sensational effect which made him feel as if every sentence of her oration was writ large on his mind and kept him awake through the greater part of the night. Little did Srinivasan then dream that one day he too would be reckoned as one of the world’s great orators and that he would have the privilege of speaking on the same platform with Dr. Besant to English audiences and winning laurels in her senior company. He spoke always after her when the audiences were still under a transport of high emotion, wrought by her marvelous oration. But he ascended the platform with a calm and dignified assurance of manner and compelled attention and hearing by the magnetic charm of his personality and the magic of his utterance. Sastri’s celebrated “silver tongue” could not rival the resonance of Besant’s voice which was like a melodious megaphone. Nor could it convey the clarion-like reverberation of her torrent of thrilling words. Sastri’s oratory was of a different kind. His slow, sure sentences marked by a polished delivery in which the pauses matter­ed as well as the phrases, with their choice of the inevitable word, with their warm and vivid, but withal restrained emotion, and with their faultless reasoning, delighted his audiences and provided an intellectual treat of the highest order. Fortunate were those audiences, who could listen from one and the same platform to the matchless oratory of Dr. Besant and to the incomparable eloquence of Srinivasa Sastri.

Srinivasa Sastri was one of the most cultured of men and had a cultivated mind, supported by great learning in Sanskrit and English. He lived “long and laborious days” and was a scholar all the time. He worked hard as teacher, legislator, ambassador of goodwill, champion of the cause of Indians abroad, and as India’s representative at the Imperial Conference, London, the Washington Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in Geneva. Though in indifferent health he worked night and day at the Indian Round Table Conference in London in 1931 and 1932, and outside the Conference too in lobby discussions and personal interviews and exchange of views. But his disposition was modest and quiet and his high serious temperament was combined with an ability to relax and even seek refined enter­tainments like witnessing a good drama or a good film. He was the reverse of Chaucer’s Clerk; he seemed less busy than he was. His hard and persistent work was visible only to the intimate few and not to the many. He, however, fell short of the titanic energy of Dr. Annie Besant. Sastri himself recognised that the industry and energy of Dr. Besant who was an encyclopedia of human endeavour, was unequalled in her time. She was always serious and sublime. She had not the gift of humour or the play of wit which Sastri could command. Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer writes that she was not easily moved to laughter and quotes from one of her critical contemporaries who observes: “She can be majestic, she can be condescending and she can be pleasant but she did not possess the gift of laughter, nor could she appreciate the light badinage of society conversation.” Sastri could laugh, and laugh loud, though his demeanour was tooserious to the onlooker, and sometimes even melancholy. While his subdued and somewhat retiring manner did mark him out as a brilliant  conversationalist in larger groups, in intimate circles, he was good in both listening and making others listen. But Sastri would be the first to say that in this case, the adage that comparisons are odious, will be most true and that it is difficult to think of another person either of Besant’s magnitude or of her singular devotion of spirit.

Even as Headmaster of the Hindu High School Triplicane, Sastri made a mark in the public life of Madras. Doubtless he came under the notice of Dr. Besant in those early days. Sastri, however, was a strange combination of daring and caution, of fervour and circumspection, of faith and scepticism. Though he was greatly drawn to the personality, oratory and the burning faith of Dr. Besant in the great heritage of India and her aspirations for a politically free India, he kept at a distance from, the sweeping influence of Dr. Besant, unlike many intellectuals of Madras, who came under her spell and became her ardent admirers and disciples. Sastri’s master, Gokhale, who was a kind, tender-hearted man, with a natural attitude of reverence towards the elders, looked upon Dr. Besant as a great figure in the world, remarkable for learning, for world-wide experience for titanic energy spent in great causes, and for untiring service to our country in education, religion and politics. Gokhale had actually joined the Theosophical Society as a member. Though he did not take part in the Theosophical consultations and con­ventions, he continued to be a passive member. He knew that Sastri shrank instinctively from some of Besant’s movements and would not become a member of the Theosophical Society. We have it on the authority of Sastri himself that Gokhale often told him: “Do not stay away from her, stand by her.” It is this advice of Gokhale that made Sastri himself come nearer and nearer to Dr. Besant, as the years went by, in the political field and in his personal relations with her. Dr. Besant had a great admiration for Gokhale and a deep affection for him. Sastri’s reverence and loyalty to Gokhale knew no bounds. Thus Sastri and Dr. Besant were united by their common bond of esteem and affection for Gokhle. There is a touching letter from Dr. Besant to Srinvasa Sastri, which reveals the great affection she had for Gokhale and his disciple Sastri. Dr. Besant made a brief stay in Poona on her way to the 39th Session of the Indian National Congress at Belgaum, presided over by Mahatma Gandhi. She writes from the Servants of India Society, on December 17, 1924;

“Dear Srinivasa,

Just a few words to carry my affectionate good wishes to my absent host in your own house. It all looks very neat and pretty, but is empty to me without Gokhale and you.

I shall be staying at Ratansi’s (Vasant Vihar, Mount Pleasant Road), if you feel inclined to send me a word of cheer.

Ever yours affectionately,
Annie Besant.

When Dr. Besant mooted the idea of the All-India Home Rule League, the senior Congress leaders, Dinshah Wacha and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and others were totally opposed to her and feared that her movement would grow so powerful that the Con­gress itself will be overshadowed. Some months before Gokhale passed away in February 1915, Dr. Besant came to Poona and stayed as Gokhale’s guest in his own house. Gokhale was gentle as a dove, but yet he resisted for the moment the torrent of her arguments and passionate pleas. When Gokhale died, Sastri lost his sure guide in all matters and he lost also the protection of his master’s great name for the actions and doings of the Servants of India Society, of which Sastri became President. When he went to see Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, he was holding court as it were. Wacha, known as his “yes-man” was in his company. Mehta questioned Sastri pointedly on his relations with Dr. Besant. He admitted that Gokhale always wanted him to give support to Dr. Besant. But he said that while he was a member of her Parliament in the Y. M. I. A., Madras, he was more or less a silent member and that he had not joined her Home Rule League. Dr. Besant was rather disappointed with his passive membership of the Y.M.I.A. Parliament and with his not joining the Home Rule League, or the Theosophical Society. Besant, however, persisted in her friendship for Sastri and saw in him a political ally who was firmly in the path of consti­tutional agitation. She also admired him as an embodiment of the rich cultural heritage of India with which she completely identified herself. Sastri soon emancipated himself from his doubts and inhibitions about Besant as a political force and saw in her a mighty and benevolent leader for the freedom of India on lines similar to his own and his master Gokhale’s.

However, Sastri, had to pass through a thick cloud of suspi­cion from Besant’s admirers. The climax of this unfortunate misunderstanding came when Lord Pentland, the then Governor of Madras, described by Dr. Besant as “a well-meaning, but weak man, who was pliant in the hands of the Civilian class”, interned her in Ootacamund. It is of melancholy interest to note that Sastri came in calumny for having been responsible for the internment of Dr. Besant, even as Gokhale had in his time to bear the malevolent accusation that he was responsible for the arrest of Tilak. Let the story of the blame which was unjustly laid at his door, be told in Sastri’s own words:

“In my own poor life, humble as I have been, an inci­dent occurred which I cannot but recall with the most intense regret. I mention that to you merely to show that you cannot be too cautious in receiving stories against the leaders of public life. When you hear these stories, if there is to be bias in the matter, let it be in favour of the accused person. You must make it a point to demand the most positive and incontestable proof before you will consent to drag the name of a leader into the mire. You remember the occasion when in Lord Pentland’s Government. Dr. Besant was interned. Upon that occasion I happened to be a mem­ber of the local Council. And it was well-known that I stood on a somewhat friendly footing with Lord Pentland. With these facts, and with the further information that I stood on a different political platform from Dr. Besant’s, that I had declined to be a member of her Home Rule League and that I had ventured to dissociate myself ‘from certain further activities of hers, upon these facts, a number of her followers spread the story that I was responsible for this internment; that Lord Pentland consulted me, as if that was necessary for fortifying himself, and on being so consulted I gave my verdict against Mrs. Besant. I spoke in public against the measure. I wrote. And being on friendly terms with Mr. Montagu I also cabled to him about this matter. These facts were known, but they did not weigh so much as a feather against the story that passed from lip to lip and with every possible embellishment. Everything was done to mar the good relations that subsisted between Mrs. Besant and myself. I am glad to say that some of those who said these things about me came to know the truth in time and acquitted me completely, and it gives me great pleasure to testify that Mrs. Besant herself never lent her ear to these aspersions.”

Sastri’s admiration for Dr. Besant as a champion of India’s self-government was unbounded. In later years, he saw her Home Rule League in proper perspective. Delivering an address at the Gokhale Hall (Madras) on 1st October (her birthday) in 1943, Sastri, speaking of the opposition which Besant faced from senior Congress politicians of the time, says:

“A great mistake did they make, but what I want to tell you is something to my own detriment. And as I am not one of those who cease to learn, I wish to confess that I was filled with misgiving at the apprehension of many elders, and that when she took up the Home Rule League, I ventured to raise my voice against its establishment.

The Home Rule League was started. It caught the enthusiasm of the young in all parts of the country, and while it lasted it was a power in the land and did a great deal of useful and very efficient service. The only thing was that some of us who might have shared in the glory and in the labours were left out. But that was not all. When later I learned to know of Mrs. Besant’s great love for this country, what did I understand? Well, it is no secret; therefore I mention it boldly. She believed in her heart of hearts, she believed that she belonged in her spirit and by her soul to this country, that its culture, religion and philosophy belonged to her and that in future lives she would be born in this country to learn that culture, to spread that philosophy, to teach that religion. To her it was the greatest ambition to be known as an Indian, to be recognised in every home as an Indian, to be welcomed as a sharer in the great inheritance that we all hold as ours.”

With the publication of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report on July 4, 1918, a new chapter opened in India’s political history. Though Besant and Sastri felt the inadequacy of the Montford proposals in conferring real power and responsibility to the people of India, their attitude to the proposals was constructive. Sastri’s approach was “Accept and seek improvements.” Though Besant’s immediate reaction was that the proposals “were unworthy of England to offer and unworthy of India to accept”, she soon realised that Montagu was a real friend of India and sincere to the core, and that we should co-operate with him and help him to give us a better deal. Sastri and Besant became henceforward fellow-political workers, though now and then they differed in details. They tread the common path of constitutional agitation and opposed tooth and nail the Non-Co-operation Movement of Gandhi. But both of them had deep admiration (in Sastri’s case veneration) for Gandhiji’s lofty idealism, the purity of his motives and action and his thorough spirit of renunciation.

The hopes of the Moderates as well as of Besant lay in their trust in Moutagu, and deputations went to England in 1919 to convert the British public and Parliament to support Montagu and to enable him to improve the Reform proposals. Sastri was a member of the Liberal Deputation, while Dr. Besant led her National Home Rule Deputation. There was close collabo­ration between the two Delegations, especially between Sastri and Besant. They addressed some 60 members of Parliament in a Committee Room of the House of Commons.

Sastri gave evidence before the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on July 11, 1919, pleading for the introduction of an element of responsibility in the Government of India and for fiscal autonomy of India. Cables from London described Sastri’s evidence as “highly impressive, informed and dignified”, and as “characterised by phenomenal mastery, independence, outspokenness and dignity”. Dr. Besant and the members of her deputation were proud of Sastri’s performance. Dr. Besant wrote: “The Joint Select Committee was tired, when it heard Sastri, but his admirably lucid criticisms of the Bill expressed in his most polished English and showing a firm grasp of the subject and a clear insight into consequences, soon awakened and rivetted their attention. The members evidently felt the statesmanlike quality of the witness before them and treated him with marked respect.” Mr. Jamnadas Dwarakadas, a member of Dr. Besant’s Delegation, wrote in the Bombay Chronicle: “The one person who is render­ing yeoman service is Mr. Sastri. His undoubtedly superb equip­ment, his lucid and convincing oratory, and above all his selfless devotion to the Motherland have created a very favourable impres­sion on the minds of those who count.” Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, a prominent member of Dr. Besant’s Deputation, said of Sastri’s work: “There is not a name that stands higher in England today than that of Mr. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri. The impression he has created and the work he has done silently and unostentatiously are worthy of all praise.”

On November 22, Dr. Besant and Sastri together cabled to India their views on the Reforms, saying that the Joint Select Committee had rejected all the reactionary recommendations of the Government of India and improved the Bill in many respects. They praised the manner in which the Chairman of the Commit­tee, Lord Selbourne, conducted its proceedings. They belauded Montagu and Lord Sinha: “Mr. Montagu’s courage, ability, tenacity and tact have won a great victory over the forces of reaction. He will have an abiding place in the history of India. Of Lord Sinha’s work, it is superfluous to speak. He has rendered his country unique service.”

Two meetings of importance were held in London in June 1919, which were addressed by the Deputations of the Mode­rates, the All-India Home Rule League of Mrs. Besant, the Home Rule League of Tilak and the All-India Congress. A great change had come over Mr. Tilak who said that he would utilise to the utmost even a fragment of reform in order to get the whole. He was very keen that the various Indian Deputations should act together and said that in that case he would undertake to cable to the All-India Congress Committee and obtain a relaxation of the “mandate” by which the Delhi Congress had bound its delegates. In a letter of June 26, 1919, to Mr. A. P. Patwardhan of the Servants of India Society, Sastri writes in glowing terms of Mrs. Besant’s performance at the National Liberal Club, London:

“Mrs. Besant made the speech of the evening. She was occasionally interrupted, but skillfully got a hold over the audience, and while not abating a jot of India’s ultimate demand or discounting her fitness for Home Rule, counsel­led caution to the young and energy to the old, urged the need of recognizing solid facts and drove home the expedi­ency of supporting Mr. Montagu’s Bill while endeavouring to liberalise it. The speech indicated her extraordinary mastery over the feelings of hearers and her power to triumph even over a hostile atmosphere.”

Unfortunately, repression and reform went side by side in the affairs of India. At the same time as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms were being shaped and there were rising hopes of auto­cratic rule giving place to a measure of self-government, the infamous Rowlatt Act, against which Sastri made his historic speech on February 7, 1919, nullified the conciliatory effect of the Montford Reforms. Both Sastri and Besant opposed the Rowlatt Bill as unmitigated evil. But their considered opinion was that the new legislatures should be filled by patriots of proved ability notwithstanding the awful consequences of the Rowlatt Act, including the terrible Punjab tragedy of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. They both regretted deeply the decision of the Congress to boycott the elections. Their strong faith that by working the Reforms, we could progress towards self-govern­ment in India was soon justified. The Council of State held its first Government Business Day on 14 February 1921 and the Hon’ble V. S. Srinivasa Sastri moved a resolution to examine the repressive laws on the statute book and report on their repeal or amendment. The resolution was accepted by Government. The reports were submitted and accepted, repealing bills were introduced, carried and approved by the Viceroy. Thus disappeared the Rowlatt Act, which was regarded by Sastri as “the origin of all our troubles.” In her “Future of Indian Politics” Mrs. Besant refers to the acceptance of Sastri’s resolution and remarks that the repressive laws were repealed at a time when the Non-Co-operation Movement (1922) was determined to overthrow and destroy Government is “a striking proof of the sincerity of their determination to work in the spirit of the reforms.”

Mrs. Besant also underlined the importance of the changes in the British Government’s policy, raising the status of India in external affairs. The Government of India nominated Indians to the Imperial Council and two of them were raised to the rank of Privy Councillors. She wrote:

“The Rt. Hon’ble V. S. Srinivasa Sastri succeeded in passing there a resolution agreed to by all, except the repre­sentative of South Africa, placing Indians on an equality, within the British Empire with white citizens.” She added: “She (India) was made by Mr. Montagu, an original member of the League of Nations, and wherever the Dominions were granted aught of power, he – remembering that she was not a “Dominion” – added “and India” so that, outside her own land, she has “achieved Dominion status.” This is, of course, an anomaly, but an anomaly that can only end in one way. We are too near these changes and they come so rapidly, that we fail to realise the pace at which we are travelling.”

Mrs. Besant’s attitude and appreciation of the work of Mr. Sastri at the Imperial Conference, in Geneva and Washington and in his Dominion tours, were in marked contrast to the opinion of the Congress leaders who were critical of Sastri’s missions abroad at a time when Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Co-operation Movement was at its height and the non-co-operators were arrested and imprisoned for long terms. After, his return from the Dominion tours, the meetings addressed by him were disturbed. Mrs. Besant’s meetings too were similarly, disturbed. While Sastri who was inwardly very sensitive and suffered, put a brave face and went about uncomplainingly combating the anarchical tendencies and also condemning police excesses. Mrs. Besant was frankly aggrieved and allowed herself even to say that “brickbats will be met with bullets.” The magnanimous and kind-hearted lady was roused to strong language, whether it be against the autocracy of Government as in the Home Rule Agitation days, or against the terrorists, extremists and law-breakers of the post-Montford Reforms era. Sastri too did not mince words and always spoke out in unmistakable terms, both of the doings of the non-co-­operators and Government’s high-handedness and refusal to part with power. But even in his strongest utterances, he controlled the sway of passion and maintained his sweet reasonableness and his language was marked by a silken sauvity which helped soften even his severest blows.

(To be continued)