Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/141

 through the Co-operative awakening of the masses was as important for the cause of Social Reform as the movement of Social Reform itself. He also felt bound to protest against the extravagances of the Social Reformer who, in his zeal for introducing what he considered modern civilization and the only civilization possible, proved more iconoclastic than constructive, and considered that right Reform which spoke ill of all that was past and ancient in the history of India. Surely to a patriotic mind which most properly believed that the future greatness of any nation could only be possible by the consciousness of its past glory and past achievement, this frenzy for things modern and things foreign must have tasted gall and wormwood. If under such circumstances Mr. Tilak showed the narrowness he did, it certainly did not arise out of any personal ambitions but out of a real conviction that he was taking the only possible course left to him under the imperfections of the moment. From later history we do know Mr. Tilak is not such a fanatic on behalf of Orthodoxy as he was attempted to be made out by his opponents. His endeavour has all along been to shape the present on the foundations of the past with the