The recent move by the British Bar, or rather London’s Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, to rescind its 1909 ban imposed on the Indian nationalist Shyamji Krishnavarma is a symbolic step, but one that brings welcome attention on a long, unfairly forgotten, political figure. The ban that disbarred Krishnavarma from practicing was punishment for his support of Indian independence, and this recent decision is one welcomed by many.
In 2003, the urns containing Krishnavarma’s ashes (and those of his wife Bhanumati) were repatriated from Geneva, where these had been interred for 73 years since Krishnavarma’s death in 1930 as per his wishes. He had wanted them there till India secured independence. Efforts to secure these had been initiated in 1988, but such moves secured fresh impetus only in 2003, when Kirit Somaiya, the Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament from northeast Mumbai, filed petitions in the Lok Sabha. The urns travelled from Geneva to Mumbai and then to Mandvi in Kutch, Krishnavarma’s birthplace, in a largely triumphalist procession (‘asthi yatras’) led by then Gujarat CM and now the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. For all this, in a political gathering in 2014, Modi had memorably mixed up Shyamji Krishnavarma with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha.
Claiming Krishnavarma
As has been for some time now, historical reconfiguring has now become a necessary political exercise. The BJP thus claims Shyamji Krishnavarma as one of its own, especially for having been an inspirational figure for Veer Savarkar, Hindu nationalist and original framer of "Hindutva" and its political contours. Broad historical accounts of the nationalist struggle have also generally brushed aside Krishnavarma’s contributions.
In Bipan Chandra's India’s Struggle for Independence, Krishnavarma figures in the chapter on "Congress split and the rise of revolutionary terrorism" thereby conflating the two subjects. Krishnavarma’s mention as a revolutionary terrorist is conjoined with Ajit Singh and Lala Hardayal (Ghadr activists). His name also follows a long mention of Savarkar’s Abhinav Bharat, and the attacks by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in Muzaffarpur, 1908, when Krishnavarma’s radical activities predated Savarkar’s presence in London or even the Bose-Chaki incidents.
Krishnavarma’s career – as reformer, radical thinker and proponent of revolutionary terrorism - was quite checkered, and complicated; it encompassed a range of thoughts and political resistance.
A Checkered Career
Born into a relatively middle class family in Kutch, he moved to Bombay for his education. But it was his aptitude for Sanskrit and mastery of the language that got him attention. Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, was impressed with Krishnavarma enough to ask him to speak on such issues across places in north India, which earned for the latter the epithet of ‘Pandit’. Krishnvarma also impressed the Oxford professor Monier-Williams, then in Bombay, who suggested he study at Oxford.
His hybrid education and diverse scholarly life – first as part of a Hindu reformist organisation and then as an academic at Oxford – gave him an unique insight into the continuity, adaptation and modification of accepted tradition. He returned to India in the late 1880s and worked in numerous capacities in the administration of different princely states. But it was a falling out with an Englishman he had once helped and his subsequent thwarted attempts to secure justice that disillusioned him about British systems.
He left India in 1897 refusing to work as a “colonial collaborator”, though there are stories, never confirmed, linking him with Bal Gangadhar Tilak and then, also the Chapekar brothers, and their killing of Pune’s plague commissioner (WC Rand) in 1897. Tilak was indeed found guilty of inciting this murder.
By the time he travelled to London this second time, he was a relatively wealthy man, thanks to his part ownership of some cotton mill presses in northwestern India and then gambling on the stock exchanges of Paris, London and Geneva. It was in London some eight years later (1905) that with his demand for Home Rule, he also started the magazine The Indian Sociologist that advocated reform in every sphere in India. A few months later, he set up the India House at Highgate, first as a boarding house but it soon became a centre for radical political activity in London.
In several ways, precisely by being in London, he wielded a great influence on an early generation of nationalist figures. Among the many people who visited him were Dadabhai Naraoji and Madame Cama and more militant figures like Lala Hardayal and Veer Savarkar who came as a student in 1906, just a year before Krishnavarma himself would leave London forever.
He would settle in Paris and then Switzerland, in a bid to avoid constant British surveillance and criticism of his activities. In London, the broader message of his anti-colonial resistance helped him reach out to Irish nationalists (then quite a potent threat to the British government), French socialists, Chinese leaders in exile and even suffragists.
As his writings in The Indian Sociologist (and later his letters to The Times that got him the ban in 1909) show, from advocating a peaceful severance of ties with the British, Krishnavarma moved to believing in more violent means, using his knowledge of the law and political science (Herbert Spencer’s works) to argue that he was well within his rights to write such "seditious" things in Britain. Krishnavarma was always more of a fiery and convincing writer, arguing for revolutionary action rather than being an active participant himself.
But it is hard to understand how closely Savarkar and Krishnavarma worked together or indeed if they ever did; as the India House activities show, the latter met a range of radical political figures here. Savarkar came to the India House as a student in 1906; a year later Krishnavarma would move to Paris. But The Indian Sociologist, which continued to come out from London and then Paris (1909 till 1914), remained critical and even advocated violence for the overthrow of British rule.
The periodical came out with a supportive editorial after Madan Lal Dhingra (who came to London as a student in 1906, stayed at the India House and was a follower of Savarkar’s Free India Society) assassinated in July 1909 the civil servant Curzon Wyllie who had earned a harsh reputation while serving in western India during the critical famine years 1899-1900. Its content all through this period, in favour of violence and revolutionary methods, also led to the conviction and a year’s imprisonment for its printer, Arthur Horsley. Krishnavarma’s past run-ins with the authorities, however, made him a suspect figure, for the entire decade 1908-1918.
Switzerland’s example
Switzerland where Krishnavarma and his wife Bhanumati found haven for the last two decades of their lives, offered refuge to other political figures of all "shades, flavours and colours", hounded out from the rest of Europe during this time. Not only was Krishnavarma in contact with other radical figures and old associates such as Madame Cama, Lala Hardayal and Ajit Singh from India but also from Egypt, Java and Ireland and his work was also now broader and more international in scope.
In Switzerland the International Pro India Committee was set up (under Chempakaraman Pillai), first in Zurich and also in Berlin, which actually drew support from the German government to overthrow the British rule. Though attempts were made to rope in Krishnavarma, he maintained his distance from this committee. Instead of active political agitation, he preferred the building of connections between different political groups in exile.
Switzerland also offered to Krishnavarma a new hope of political organisation. In a commentary written in 1907, he said that the Swiss confederation, with its cantons co-existing together, and its constitution – where the commune, canton and the federal systems balanced each other – could serve as an example for the future United States of India to emulate. He admired Swiss federalism and its multilingualism and especially its liberal press laws – having long been a victim of it. It was in Geneva that he also revived The Indian Sociologist in 1920, and ran it till 1922.
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In 2003, the urns containing Krishnavarma’s ashes (and those of his wife Bhanumati) were repatriated from Geneva, where these had been interred for 73 years since Krishnavarma’s death in 1930 as per his wishes. He had wanted them there till India secured independence. Efforts to secure these had been initiated in 1988, but such moves secured fresh impetus only in 2003, when Kirit Somaiya, the Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament from northeast Mumbai, filed petitions in the Lok Sabha. The urns travelled from Geneva to Mumbai and then to Mandvi in Kutch, Krishnavarma’s birthplace, in a largely triumphalist procession (‘asthi yatras’) led by then Gujarat CM and now the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. For all this, in a political gathering in 2014, Modi had memorably mixed up Shyamji Krishnavarma with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, leader of the Hindu Mahasabha.
Claiming Krishnavarma
As has been for some time now, historical reconfiguring has now become a necessary political exercise. The BJP thus claims Shyamji Krishnavarma as one of its own, especially for having been an inspirational figure for Veer Savarkar, Hindu nationalist and original framer of "Hindutva" and its political contours. Broad historical accounts of the nationalist struggle have also generally brushed aside Krishnavarma’s contributions.
In Bipan Chandra's India’s Struggle for Independence, Krishnavarma figures in the chapter on "Congress split and the rise of revolutionary terrorism" thereby conflating the two subjects. Krishnavarma’s mention as a revolutionary terrorist is conjoined with Ajit Singh and Lala Hardayal (Ghadr activists). His name also follows a long mention of Savarkar’s Abhinav Bharat, and the attacks by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in Muzaffarpur, 1908, when Krishnavarma’s radical activities predated Savarkar’s presence in London or even the Bose-Chaki incidents.
Krishnavarma’s career – as reformer, radical thinker and proponent of revolutionary terrorism - was quite checkered, and complicated; it encompassed a range of thoughts and political resistance.
A Checkered Career
Born into a relatively middle class family in Kutch, he moved to Bombay for his education. But it was his aptitude for Sanskrit and mastery of the language that got him attention. Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, was impressed with Krishnavarma enough to ask him to speak on such issues across places in north India, which earned for the latter the epithet of ‘Pandit’. Krishnvarma also impressed the Oxford professor Monier-Williams, then in Bombay, who suggested he study at Oxford.
His hybrid education and diverse scholarly life – first as part of a Hindu reformist organisation and then as an academic at Oxford – gave him an unique insight into the continuity, adaptation and modification of accepted tradition. He returned to India in the late 1880s and worked in numerous capacities in the administration of different princely states. But it was a falling out with an Englishman he had once helped and his subsequent thwarted attempts to secure justice that disillusioned him about British systems.
He left India in 1897 refusing to work as a “colonial collaborator”, though there are stories, never confirmed, linking him with Bal Gangadhar Tilak and then, also the Chapekar brothers, and their killing of Pune’s plague commissioner (WC Rand) in 1897. Tilak was indeed found guilty of inciting this murder.
By the time he travelled to London this second time, he was a relatively wealthy man, thanks to his part ownership of some cotton mill presses in northwestern India and then gambling on the stock exchanges of Paris, London and Geneva. It was in London some eight years later (1905) that with his demand for Home Rule, he also started the magazine The Indian Sociologist that advocated reform in every sphere in India. A few months later, he set up the India House at Highgate, first as a boarding house but it soon became a centre for radical political activity in London.
In several ways, precisely by being in London, he wielded a great influence on an early generation of nationalist figures. Among the many people who visited him were Dadabhai Naraoji and Madame Cama and more militant figures like Lala Hardayal and Veer Savarkar who came as a student in 1906, just a year before Krishnavarma himself would leave London forever.
He would settle in Paris and then Switzerland, in a bid to avoid constant British surveillance and criticism of his activities. In London, the broader message of his anti-colonial resistance helped him reach out to Irish nationalists (then quite a potent threat to the British government), French socialists, Chinese leaders in exile and even suffragists.
As his writings in The Indian Sociologist (and later his letters to The Times that got him the ban in 1909) show, from advocating a peaceful severance of ties with the British, Krishnavarma moved to believing in more violent means, using his knowledge of the law and political science (Herbert Spencer’s works) to argue that he was well within his rights to write such "seditious" things in Britain. Krishnavarma was always more of a fiery and convincing writer, arguing for revolutionary action rather than being an active participant himself.
But it is hard to understand how closely Savarkar and Krishnavarma worked together or indeed if they ever did; as the India House activities show, the latter met a range of radical political figures here. Savarkar came to the India House as a student in 1906; a year later Krishnavarma would move to Paris. But The Indian Sociologist, which continued to come out from London and then Paris (1909 till 1914), remained critical and even advocated violence for the overthrow of British rule.
The periodical came out with a supportive editorial after Madan Lal Dhingra (who came to London as a student in 1906, stayed at the India House and was a follower of Savarkar’s Free India Society) assassinated in July 1909 the civil servant Curzon Wyllie who had earned a harsh reputation while serving in western India during the critical famine years 1899-1900. Its content all through this period, in favour of violence and revolutionary methods, also led to the conviction and a year’s imprisonment for its printer, Arthur Horsley. Krishnavarma’s past run-ins with the authorities, however, made him a suspect figure, for the entire decade 1908-1918.
Switzerland’s example
Switzerland where Krishnavarma and his wife Bhanumati found haven for the last two decades of their lives, offered refuge to other political figures of all "shades, flavours and colours", hounded out from the rest of Europe during this time. Not only was Krishnavarma in contact with other radical figures and old associates such as Madame Cama, Lala Hardayal and Ajit Singh from India but also from Egypt, Java and Ireland and his work was also now broader and more international in scope.
In Switzerland the International Pro India Committee was set up (under Chempakaraman Pillai), first in Zurich and also in Berlin, which actually drew support from the German government to overthrow the British rule. Though attempts were made to rope in Krishnavarma, he maintained his distance from this committee. Instead of active political agitation, he preferred the building of connections between different political groups in exile.
Switzerland also offered to Krishnavarma a new hope of political organisation. In a commentary written in 1907, he said that the Swiss confederation, with its cantons co-existing together, and its constitution – where the commune, canton and the federal systems balanced each other – could serve as an example for the future United States of India to emulate. He admired Swiss federalism and its multilingualism and especially its liberal press laws – having long been a victim of it. It was in Geneva that he also revived The Indian Sociologist in 1920, and ran it till 1922.
