The Book That Shook the British Empire
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Sunderlal (far left) walking with Gandhi ji to Birla House prayer meeting |
NK SINGH
Among the most extraordinary people I have met, and interviewed as a journalist, was Gandhian scholar Pandit Sunderlal (1886-1981).
Pandit
Sunderlal had become a legend in his lifetime. He was better known as the author
of Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj, a 1,000-page tome in Hindi, whose
publication in 1929 shook the British Empire.
The Raj banned the book within four days of its publication. However, by that
time its 1,700 copies had already reached the readers.
The
Government launched a massive drive to confiscate the printed copies of the
book, raiding almost 1,000 houses of citizens across the country who were
suspected to possess its copies.
However,
revolutionaries resorted to clandestine circulation of the banned book that
exposed, with facts and figures, the colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ to
subjugate India.
To
possess and read the ‘subversive’ book became a matter of pride among freedom
fighters. It was even smuggled inside prisons, page by page.
Daylight
robbery
Mahatma
Gandhi raised his voice against the ban, describing it as “daylight robbery” and advised the citizens to refuse to
hand over copies of the book to the police.
In
an article in Young India, Bapu said that the book was a
“praiseworthy attempt to inculcate non-violence”.
Soon
it became a cause celebre. Freedom fighters would recite from the book
on open stage at nationalist meetings and then go to jail for breaking the law.
Motilal
Nehru filed a case in Allahabad High Court to revoke the ban. Top nationalist
lawyer of that period, Tej Bahadur Sapru, appeared in the court to plead the
case.
The
ban was finally lifted in 1937 after the Congress came to power in several
provinces.
Such
was the craze for the four-volume tome that when it was reprinted, the
publisher received pre-publication booking for 14,000 copies. Onkar Press of
Allahabad made it available to readers at the cost price of Rs seven.
Historian
BN Pande
One
little-known fact about the book: He collaborated with his friend, historian Bishambhar Nath Pande, to write it.
Sunderlal
used to dictate it, consulting the volumes of research material he had gathered
for the purpose, even as Pande would write it in longhand.
Pande
was a champion of Hindu-Muslim unity in his own right and would later become the
Governor of Orissa.
Facing
ban on his writings was nothing new for Sunderlal, who had spent several years
in British prisons as a freedom fighter.
Banned
magazines
In
1909 he had started publishing two magazines, Karmyogi and Hindi Pradeep
in Hindi and helped the launch of Swaraj in Urdu.
Karmyogi became very popular and soon
enrolled 18,000 subscribers. In fact, it was at Karmyogi that the
renowned Hindi journalist, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, cut his teeth in the
profession.
However,
the British Government banned all three magazines after one year. It also
confiscated the press that printed the magazines.
In
1918, Sunderlal came out with another Hindi weekly, Bhavishaya, which
became a daily newspaper later. Offended by its anti-imperialist tone, the
Government demanded a surety of ₹ 10,000 – a big amount those days.
The
newspaper managed to furnish the surety. But subsequently, the Government demanded
a second surety of ₹ 14,000. The newspaper folded up.
Born
a Kayastha
Interestingly,
Pandit Sunderlal was not a Brahmin.
He
was born in a Kayastha family of Khatauli, Muzaffarnagar, (UP) on 26 September 1886.
Impressed
by his knowledge after his book was published in 1929, Madan Mohan Malaviya,
the founder of Banaras Hindu University, started calling him Pandit. The name
stuck.
At
one point of time, around 1912, he came into contact with the revolutionaries
of the Gadar Party. Young Sunderlal moved to Solan in Himachal Pradesh and
started living like a monk, assuming the name of Swami Someshwaranand.
His
house in Solan became a centre of revolutionary activity for three years. In
1913 the police raided it in connection with assassination attempt on Lord Charles
Hardinge, then Governor General of India.
Close
to Bapu
He
became so close to Gandhi that when post-partition riots engulfed Pakistan and
India, Bapu sent him to Pakistan as his emissary to meet the rulers of Pakistan
and work out a formula for restoring peace. Through out his life, Sunderlal kept working for the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity.
Sunderlal
was present at that fateful prayer meeting at Birla House on 30th
January 1948 when Bapu was assassinated. In his own words: “I was among the two persons who supported Bapu when he started
falling down after he was shot at. We took his body to a room. Fifteen minutes
later Vallabhbhai came. Jawaharlal reached after some time and started crying.”
I
met Sunderlal in 1970. The occasion was a conference of Sampradayikta Virodhi
Andolan at Allahabad. I had travelled from Patna with some class-fellows from
BN College to attend the conference.
By that time Sunderlal
was 84 – a stooping, frail, old man, with overflowing beard
and thick glasses.
Gandhi & Mao
He stunned the audience when he took to the stage. Recalling his meeting with Chinese
leader Mao Zedong, he overcame with emotion and said in a choked voice, “I felt
as if I was in the presence of Gandhiji.”
Mao and Gandhi? What was the similarity? “He was such a simple, unassuming man. We
were waiting for him in a room and when he walked in, dressed in a coarse
uniform like everyone else, that I thought he was one of the staff members.” The
frail old man was visibly moved, tears rolling down his cheeks.
According
to his memoir, Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru even used him as a backroom mediator in Sino-Indian border
dispute.
Seven years after the Chinese Aggression, I interviewed him on the
subject. Here is that interview, Between the Lines, published in Frontier
of 4 July 1970. It is written in the words of Sunderlal.
nksexpress@gmail.com
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| Frontier 4 July 1970 P1 |
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| Frontier 4 July 1970 P2 |
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