Page:Bal Gangadhar Tilak, his writings and speeches.djvu/30

 of current Indian politics of the nineteenth centurr in the pure serene or the dim religioufi light of the Witenagemot and the Magna Charta and the constitutional history of England during the past seven centuries, or to accept the academic sophism of a gradual preparation ftr liberty, or merely to discuss isolated or omnihus grievaaces and strive to enlighten the darkness of the ofgcial mind by lutnin- oue speeches and resolutions, as was the general practice of Congress politics till 190d> 'A national agitation in the country which would mak^ the Congress movement a living and acting force was always his ideal, and what the Congress would not do, he, when still an isolated leader of a handful of enthusiasts in a corner of the country, set out to do- in bis own strength and for his own hand. He saw from the drst that for a people circumstanced like Qurs there could be only one political question and one aim, not the gradual improv ement of the present administration into something in the end funda- mentally the opposite of itself, but the early substitution of Indian and national for English and bareau<^ratic control in the affaire of India. A subject nation does not prepare itself by gradual progresa for liberty; it o0ens by liberty its way to rapid progre^. The only progress that has to be made in the preparation for liberty, jfi 'progress, in the awakening of the national spirit and in the oreatioa of the will to be free and the will to adopt the neces- sary meane and bear the necessary sacriiioes for 17 2 D,<iz=<i„Cooglc