India House Chapter 22 - The Passing Of The Torch

Machinations in the princely states

This is the last chapter of the first quarter of the book. Maybe it ought to be written tighter, but I’d like your feedback on that. The novel’s going to pick up in action after this (or has it already been doing that?).

I loved writing this section. Essentially, this is Savarkar’s mentor’s entire motivation for funding a boardinghouse that produces revolutionaries, and this is why our villain, Sir Curzon-Wyllie, is targeting India House.

The source for this has been the biography of Shyamji Krishna Varma “The Unknown Patriot” by Dr. Ganesh Lal Varma.

The book is a great read on how the princely states made a valiant effort to resist, or at least preserve the right to self-government of their people. Every attempt was quashed by the British Resident there. They’d effect regime change by taking sides in palace intrigues and supporting the most pliant candidate. So, really, most princes ended up focusing on having a great time and winning over the British.

The particular story that pitched Shyamji Krishna Varma against Curzon Wyllie was a cat-and-mouse game of palace intrigue and regime change in Junagadh State. It was a highly mismanaged state, and when Shyamji took over, he had to use all his wile and intelligence to whip it into shape. In doing so, he angered a lot of people. But, he also realized he could use the chaos to see if he could get the troops to revolt against the British.

For this, he brought in - get this - Damodar Hari Chapekar. And, who suggested Chapekar to him? Tilak. Like, do you get the seriousness of all these connections?

Chapekar committed a political assassination by shooting dead the plague commissioner of Pune. This move led to the arrest of Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak for defending him in an editorial. It also led to Shyamji Krishna Varma decamping from India and heading to London, because he feared his connections to Chapekar and Tilak would get him jailed. And, it also led to a young Vinayak Savarkar to take an oath to fight the British till his last dying breath— which, in turn led him to work with Tilak, and then be mentored by Shyamji.

Further, the British resident found out about this plot, and covertly ousted Shyamji using regime change tactics. The name of the Resident? Sir Curzon-Wyllie. The same guy who went on to spy on and harangue Shyamji and Savarkar. And eventually, Savarkar’s mentee, Madanlal Dhingra, assassinates Sir Curzon-Wyllie.

When these connections kept getting highlighted again and again in primary sources, and NO ONE, including Vikram Sampath, found these interesting enough to talk about specifically, I decided the whole tangled web had to be described in detail in a novel. And here it is. I hope I’ve done justice to it.

Shyamji’s Story