Jakov "Jaša" Tomić was a Serbian journalist, politician and author from the Serbian region of Vojvodina, which was part of the Austrian Empire when he was born. Modoš, a town in the Serbian part of Banat, was renamed in his honor in 1924.
Biography
At the time of his birth in 1856, the town of Vršac was part of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwarcrown land in the post-1849 Habsburg monarchy. Tomić's family, Serbian Orthodox Christian, was well-to-do having thrived significantly in trade in the region. He attended elementary school in Vršac, then gymnasium in Timișoara and Kecskemét. He was a volunteer in the Herzegovina Uprising, after which he attended medical faculties in Vienna and Prague, but later transferred to the faculty of philosophy and philology. Thereafter, Tomić was involved in Serb politics in Habsburg-controlled parts of present-day Serbia. Combining interests in socialism and Serbian national politics as did many of his generation, namely Svetozar Marković, Mihailo Polit-Desančić, and Nikola Pašić, he eventually found himself much less of a socialist than an ardent Serbian patriot. Tomić was the editor of Srpsko kolo and Zastava magazines and founder of the People's Freethinker Party, which in 1891 became the Radical Party. In 1889, following a drawn-out series of provocations regarding the honour of his wife, Tomić stabbed to death a liberal political rival, Miša Dimitrijević, the editor of Branik magazine, in Novi Sad. He served seven years in prison for murder, emerging in 1896 with no loss of political zeal. Not only political but economic issues had far-reaching importance to him. Tomić, then the most vociferous opponent of the hierarchy, the leader of the Serbian radical party and son-in-law of Svetozar Miletić, blamed the clergy for driving people away from churches because of its insistence on controlling church and autonomous finances: "Whoever has to worry about how to spend so much money has no more time to care for the church and people." In 1918, Tomić became president of the Serb National Council in Novi Sad, where at the Great People's Assembly of Banat, Bačka and Baranja from November 25, he proclaimed the secession of these regions from the Kingdom of Hungary and their unification with the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1919 Jaša Tomić, still, the leader of the Radicals in Vojvodina Province, whose failing health prevented him from taking a more active role was perfectly straightforward in stating to Croat politicians that "we are not one" in nationality. He was also occupied with literary work at the time. Tomić died in Novi Sad in 1922, and was buried at the Uspensko groblje cemetery.
Works
In 1876 under the pseudonym "Volunteer" Milutin Spasić, Tomić wrote a brochure: Srpsko-turski rat 1876.
Pesme, published by A. Pajević in 1879, edited by Kosta Lera.
In 1884 Tomić issued a political pamphlet, Stranke srpskih notabiliteta protiv srpske narodne slobodoumne stranke.
Političko vjeruju, reprinted from Zastava, organ of the Radical Party, 1886.
Književna zrnca, Vol I, 1888.
Treba li narodu politika, 1888.
Posle petstotina godina: razmatranja o Kosovskoj bitci i propasti carstva srpskog, 1889.
Iz prošlosti naših vođa, 1889.
Govor u svoju odbranu prlilikom naknadne rasprave zbog tucindanskog dogadjaja u novom Sadu, 1891.
