'Chitto jetha bhoyshunno, uchcha jetha shir' is impossible to render in English or in any other language. Three taut words followed by three. A breath taken deep, then let go.
That opening line of Tagore's verse in Bangla is a masterpiece of imagery coiled in sound. The poet's own English translation of it, "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high" has become world famous. It has overshadowed the original. And yet, those who can read both the original and the translation will vouch for this: like thunder following a bolt of lightning, the English translation comes close to but cannot clasp the brilliance of the original.
The poem, first published in 1910 and later included in Gitanjali, stirred the popular imagination both because its language startled and because its meaning empowered. It engendered, a sense of confidence and high purpose.
This column, however, is not about Chitto jetha but its great comrade: Swarajya ha majha janmasiddhahaqqa aahe, ani to mi milavanarach. Five taut words drawn deep in, followed by four aspirated into time.
This line's English version too has become famous, more famous than its original. So much so that no one quite pauses to think if " Swarajya is my birthright and I shall have it" was said by Lokamanya Tilak in English or in the language of which he was an absolute master, Marathi. It was indeed spoken by Tilak in his mother tongue, one hundred and one years ago on June 1, 1916. The venue was Ahmednagar, the purpose: spreading the cause of home rule. Tilak had spoken in a similar vein in Ahmednagar the previous day as well, and in Belgaum the previous month.
The British raj moved against Tilak swiftly, charging him under Section 108 of the Criminal Procedure Code for disseminating - orally - seditious matter punishable under Section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code. The case against him was that, by saying what he did about swarajya, Tilak had committed sedition. It became what is commonly called a cause célèbre. Was asking for swarajya seditious? More, what, indeed, was swarajya, and what was sedition?
Defending Tilak was a lawyer who knew not one word of Marathi or its parent, Sanskrit. But he knew the meaning of Self Rule and Home Rule, and knew what sedition meant. Most pertinently, he also knew and respected Lokamanya Tilak as a patriot and a man of honour. The lawyer was none other than M.A. Jinnah, the future leader of the movement for Partition and founder of Pakistan. Jinnah had, in 1908, failed to have Tilak acquitted in a sedition case that led to his six-year incarceration in Mandalay. But this time he was not going to fail. In his brilliant biography of the Quaid-e-Azam, written in the most chaste Hindi ( Jinnah: Ek Punardrishti, Rajkamal, 2005), V.K. Baranwal writes: "Through his legal contentions and powerful arguments Jinnah was able, this time, to win Tilak an acquittal from the charge of sedition and release from detention."
In Emperor versus Bal Gangadhar Tilak of November 9, 1916, Judge Batchelor of the Bombay High Court gave a historic judgment (which he delivered with another judge, Shah J., concurring eloquently) in which he said: "... it is, I think, reasonably clear that in contending for what he describes as swarajya his object is to obtain for Indians an increased and gradually increasing share of political authority and to subject the administration of the country to the control of the people or peoples of India. I am of opinion that the advocacy of such an object is not per se an infringement of the law..."
Jinnah had been as ' bhoyshunno' as Tilak in the case. His defence carried conviction with the judges, Batchelor and Shah. Tilak's legendary words, "Swarajya is my birthright," vindicated by the court, became a rallying flag for the aspirations of the "peoples of India". And the flagstaff had Jinnah's name etched firmly on it. Janmasiddhahaqqa was Marathi. Jinnah's endorsement was in King's English. Most citations use the Sanskrit 'adhikar' over ' haqqa', but that is linguistic cleansing, not ascriptive veracity. I accept the reference which has Tilak say "janmasiddhahaqqa" - why should Marathi and Urdu not go naturally together? The distinguished jurist, A.G. Noorani, and the political analyst, Sudheendra Kulkarni, have written about this little-known but invaluable Tilak-Jinnah link.
Is wanting a say in decision-making, wanting to be heard without hindrance, voicing opposition, dissenting, the same as sowing hatred against the State and destabilizing the nation? The judges, Batchelor and Shah, showed the difference 100 years ago in Emperor vs Tilak with Tilak being defended by Jinnah.
But what of now? The prosecution can be expected to be prosecutionist and the defence to be defensive, but what of judges? A judge may act with Batchelor's and Shah's care as to an individual's motivation but then, he may not.
One hundred and one years after the historic Batchelor and Shah judgment, we face a piquant fact: logjammed in competing nationalisms, India and Pakistan are using the same law, the same provision, inherited from the same source, namely, the British raj, to strengthen their sinews for tackling dissent under different names. Punishable with imprisonment for life, sedition is defined as bringing or attempting to bring into hatred or contempt, or exciting or attempting to excite disaffection towards the government. Hatred, contempt and disaffection are not objectively patent. They are not like robbery, rape or murder. They inhabit the field of subjective interpretation, ideological posturing.
Are we in India, Pakistan (and Bangladesh) today, as nations and a people, moving towards a situation where the fear of the 'sedition law' will curb dissent, honest, law-abiding, non-violent dissent, from expressing itself? In two outstanding lectures delivered over April and May, this year, namely, the M.N. Roy Memorial Lecture in New Delhi and the Lawrence Dana Pinkham Memorial Lecture in Chennai, the former chief justice of Delhi High Court and chairman of the last Law Commission, Ajit Prakash Shah, has described the position lucidly. In the Roy lecture, he said: "Even if one is eventually acquitted of sedition, the process of having to undergo the trial itself is the punishment - and more importantly, the deterrent against any voice of dissent or criticism. The enforcement or the threat of invocation of sedition constitutes an insidious form of unauthorised self-censorship by producing a chilling effect on the exercise of one's fundamental right to free speech and expression."
On this anniversary of Tilak's " Swarajya is my birthright" call, we will do well to remember three things: one, swarajya is about the right to be oneself. Two, that right has to be exercised non-violently, without hatred but unequivocally. Three, as far as the exercising of this right is concerned, Tilak and Jinnah are on the same page. As are Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Subhas Bose, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Rajagopalachari, Azad, Periyar, Namboodiripad. Their religions - or agnosticisms - were their personal affair, their languages, cultures, cuisine different but in their faith in human rights and republican values, they were and remain together. And so must their 'peoples' be: chitto - bhoyshunno, shir - uchcha.
The author teaches at Ashoka University
