Mr Etiquette

I will mention Keshavanad later, but now we must say good-bye to Mr Etiquette. At his own request, while I was in England, I did not entrust him with any political work. So his name did not appear in any news. But the work he did behind the scene was superb and worthy of a dedicated revolutionary. My work extended from publishing revolutionary literature and its distribution to buying of arms. Whatever funds I expected from Mr Etiquette he never said no or disappointed me. If any disturbance was expected at a public meeting he would arrange a group of ten to twenty men to protect me. So clever was the arrangement that anyone hardly noticed these men. He was well-known among Indian merchants and sent regularly to India large consignments of cloth and machinery. But he concealed my revolutionary literature and my books in them and even organised their distribution at ten to fifteen centres in Punjab. He got my articles translated into Gurumukhi and Punjabi and distributed among soldiers in Punjab. I wrote – ‘You ask where are the arms? But my friends, the arms in your hands are yours. Why not use them?’ Such leaflets were distributed among soldiers in various military camps. British administrators in India became aware of these leaflets and that caused uproar. Some sympathetic military officers warned us and we abandoned that route in time.
 
British rulers were kept in the dark and Mr Etiquette was not disturbed in any way. Throughout my stay in England he drew no attention of the Police in London. When I fell badly ill and moved to Paris for convalescence in 1910 January I heard that he had returned to India. On my return to London I was arrested and sent to India to face trial. There was lot of commotion due to my trial in Bombay and many men were arrested on suspicion of being associated with me, but Mr. Etiquette was not one of them. I did not hear his name even afterwards. May be he remained safe, may be not. Whatever the case, once he took the oath of Abhinav Bharat he never faltered and performed his functions superbly. There were many others like him, who were known only to me. They were too many to mention due to shortage of space and even today I am not in a position to disclose their names. I am sincerely grateful to them all and take this opportunity to pay homage to them.