Page:Bal Gangadhar Tilak, his writings and speeches.djvu/28

 could not a£Ford to cut itself off from the great mass of the nation or split itself up into warring factions by a premature association of the social reform question with politics. The proper time for that, a politician would naturally feel, is when the country has a free assembly of its own which can consult the needs or carry out the mandates of the people. Moreover, he has felt strongly that political emancipation was the one pressing need for the people of India and that all else not directly connected with it must take a second place; that has been the principle of his own life and he has held that it should be the principle of the national life at the present hour. Let us have first liberty and the organised control of the life of the nation, afterward we can see how we should use it in social matters ; meanwhile let us move on without noise and strife, only so far as actual need and advisability demand and the sense of the people is ready to advance. This attitude may be right or wrong ; but, Mr. Tilak being what he is and the nation being what it is, he could take no other. If, then, Mr. Tilak has throughout his life been an an exponent of the idea of radical change in politics and during the swadeshi agitation the head of a party which could be called extremist, it is due to that clear practical sense, essential in a leader of political action, which seizes at once on the main necessity and goes straight without hesitation or deviation to the indispensable means. There are always two