Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/163

 far-sighted apostle—was an extention of the principle of moral force and a practical realisation of it in action founded upon self-help. It is needless to go, in any great detail, into the history of the new movement. It is sufficient if the cardinal points in the evolution of Indian life are noted. True enough, at one time during the Swadesi agitation, academic discussion as to perfect Independence was very largely indulged in and true enough also that the extreme school of Nationalism preached the gospel of absolute “hands off” to educate the people to a complete dissociation from the governmental machine in order to put a spoke into it and make it feel its helplessness if people did not co-operate. But none of the methods employed need have terrified a strong Government if its foundations were broad based upon the contentment of the people. But Bureaucracy, being what it was and what it can only be, discovered in all these methods of agitation danger not to itself—that would certainly have been frank and open—but to the British Government and the British Empire. It therefore began to forge one repressive measure after another and this sitting-over-the-safety-valve brought forth