Sharma : But I think his profession was that.
Chavan : I am not justifying it now. But the impression it give to the people was that he was associated with this class. That is what I say, that I got out of these influences very early in my life. I said : It is all irrational.
Sharma : As you read more, you outgrew that influence ?
Chavan : I outgrew that influence very early in my life. As I have told you, I become quite attracted towards the national movement. I read a lot about Savarkar, a very adventurous life of patriotiosm, his sufferings for the country. I thought that there was some higher cause for which one could suffer and one could work hard for that. People were sacrificing their lives and were facing many other difficulties. The life of Lokamanya itself became quite attractive proposition to me. He started going to jail early in his life. He was an educated person, a very intelligent person. He dedicate his whole life for the nation. I thought that this was something very heartening. So my values changed early in life. But I (must say that), I had to outgrow all this with deliberate efforts. Then I was completely in a different association, patriotic associations and names like Lala Lajpat Rai, Motilal Nehru and Deshabandhu C. R. Das became quite attractive to me.
Sharma : Did Hari Narayan Apte's novels attract you?
Chavan : Yes, I mentioned to you that I read historical novels. I remember having read Hari Narayan Apte's novels such as Ushakal, Gad Ala Pan Sinh Gela and Suryeday. Then I was attracted towards another historical novelist, who wrote about Shivaji's period. He was Nathmadhav? So this was a watershed in my life.
I remembered Jatin Das incident because for a growing child's mind, it was a watrshed. Those people (supporters of Satya shodhak movement ) were merely finding faults with Brahminism, because there was, really speaking, a sort of keen competition for services. Opportunities in services and education were denied to the non-Brahmin class. They were monopolised by the Brahmin class who were getting all the advantages under British rule. This was the basic thing. I felt that, this was rather superficial, artificial. I got out of it. But, at the same time, the progressive impulses of the satya shodhak movement reamined, that social equality had got its own place in the scheme of things. It was impressed upon my mind very early. Even when I joined the national movement and started talking about Swaraj. the content of Swaraj, It become a very relevant issue for me. therefore, the karachi Resolution of 1931 was some thing very important document for me- as important as the resolution of Independence passed at the Lahore congress. It was an attempt, where it was tried for the first time to define what Swaraj should mean. I had been to the Karachi Congress as a volunteer from my town. I was about, belive, eighteen years old. I had already bean to jail in 1930. So I was qualified for becoming a volunteer and people in my town collected funds for me, and Batane, a Congress leader, who was our hero, took me with him. I was then reading in the fourth of fifth class in a middle school. As I started going to school late, I was comparatively older than other boys in my elass; I knew something a little more.
