India House Chapter 19 - The Public Enemy

It's insane how much of this is true

This chapter is a fascinating part of forgotten history that shocked me when I grasped the implications of what the sources were saying.

Within a year of being in London, Savarkar and his mentor Shyamji Krishna Varma were writing op-eds in the British papers that were being debated in Parliament! The media was openly calling for their deaths!

I know, right?!

Vikram Sampath presents these facts and news articles very matter-of-factly. Neither he nor anyone else in the media has discussed just how impactful this is. Keep in mind, Savarkar here is barely 26. Gandhi at this point was a 40-year-old activist in South Africa, and I’m not sure he was being debated this hotly in Parliament (I’ll have to look it up).

When I started writing this, I thought the revolutionaries were a ragtag bunch of activists who were fringe, not mainstream in the least, ignored until they made a big impact with a political assassination. But no, they were being actively hunted in the British media. The quotes I have in this chapter are all real, from real op-eds written by Englishmen in mainstream English newspapers. I wrote this a while ago, but I think they are all sourced from Vikram Sampath’s first volume on Savarkar.

In my narrative, I weave this into how the stakes slowly escalate on both sides before political violence becomes an option. Political violence didn’t happen in a vacuum here.

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Previous Chapter:

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The Public Enemy

Harnam kept the clipping from the Cirencester Telegraph tucked into the flyleaf of his thickest lawbook, where he could find it easily when he needed a little reassurance. The print had already begun to fade. But he didn’t care. It was proof: he had been in the newspaper.

It wasn’t the kind of mention he would have wished for. He’d hoped his first appearance in print might be for winning a case or donating generously to the Golden Temple. But still—he was there. His name. In print. In England. It meant something.

He hadn’t planned any of this. He had grown up plowing fields, not reading parliamentary briefs. But here he was, studying at Gray’s Inn on a scholarship from Shyamji. Life had rerouted him completely, and strangely, he was glad. The legal arguments were exhilarating. The dinners, full of talk and wine and sparks of idealism, made him feel part of something bigger.

Since the article, things had settled back into a kind of normal. At Gray’s Inn, everyone was trying to outdo each other with radical ideas, and no one cared if Harnam wore his pin to class. He liked that—being able to stop hiding what he believed.

But he also knew the price of being visible.

The article had done more than flatter him. It had cracked open the floodgates.

London’s press had turned its full attention on India House.

The first strike came from The Globe. The headline alone was enough to make Shyamji clench his jaw: “A Dreaded House of Mystery”. The reporter had cherry-picked lines from Tatya’s speech, and concluded with theatrical dread that “a systematic propaganda of disloyalty is being carried on amongst Indian students, to counteract which every effort ought to be made.”