Chapter 99 - Trial and Tribulation
Betrayed Again.
It seems like we have a lot of new readers here thanks to the post about Asian-American books and movies.
Welcome, new readers!
I write historical fiction, and digging into history books, mostly focused on Indian history. I’m sharing chapters from a draft of my novel India House - The Dawn Of Revolution thrice a week here, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday/Sunday. We’re already at Chapter 99, and it’s about 15 more chapters to the end.
My novel is based on the origin story of Indian freedom fighter Vinayak Savarkar in London. It goes into how he used his time as a law student in London to write the real history of the 1857 war, and then organized guns and bombs to be sent into India, where a series of loosely-connected secret societies used them to wage war against the British through targeted political assassinations.
Savarkar is targeted, stripped of his law degree, and chased around London by Scotland Yard after his associate, Madanlal Dhingra, assassinates Lord Curzon-Wyllie in the heart of London, the first political assassination in Great Britain in a hundred years. He is eventually arrested and deported to India on sedition. This chapter below covers his trial in India.
Most Indians only know of his life in the dreaded Cellular Jail in the Andamans, and his political work after. But his life in London is interesting because it shows us where he got his grit and conviction from, the vast underground network he had created, which persisted, and the roadmap he created for Indian independence, which Bose’s Indian National Army eventually got to.
Another thing I do in this novel is to integrate our very Indian characters into life in Edwardian London and Paris, with their own rich tapestry of suffragettes, anarchists, sans-culottes, Russian fugitives, and clueless liberals. I think it’s a fun read. Do read on!
Trial And Tribulation
The crowd outside the Bombay High Court surged like a restless tide, pressing against the stone walls, their fervor palpable. Lathi-wielding policemen shoved them aside with brutal indifference for the third time that day, clearing narrow pathways for the black unmarked vans creeping into the square.
The Trial of the Revolutionaries was to begin.
Thirty-eight men, accused of the murder of Magistrate Jackson and conspiring to overthrow the British Empire, were to face judgment. The public had been barred from the courtroom, but they swarmed the vast grounds and the street, hungry for scraps of news in the shadow of the Gothic court building with its imposing turrets.
Tatya took in the crowd through the windshield of the van he was transported in. It had no windows, and he was squashed between two policemen on either side, two in front and two behind. They were taking absolutely no chances with him.
They had kept him locked in a small cabin the whole way from Aden to Bombay, and in Bombay, the police had not rested until he had been locked away in a distant corner of Dongri Prison. The authorities kept him away from people as much as they could. And even here, as his van approached, the police pushed away all the people trying to get a glimpse of him.
The van screeched to a halt close to the tall doors of the courthouse, and the policemen got Tatya out. His wrists and ankles were shackled to heavy chains, and they led him to the courthouse. They hoped seeing their hero in shackles like this would discourage the crowd assembled from emulating him. But after weeks of confinement, Tatya felt energized by the crowd and the enthusiasm in the air.
