Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/216

 to draw was that the local Bureaucracy, to serve its own purposes and injure Mr. Tilak in all manner of ways, was helping the personal enemies of the great patriot and it was also suggested in some quarters that the prosecution of Mr. Tilak was practically designed to shut his mouth while in England and keep him from explaining the true state of matters in India to the British Democray. To Mr. Tilak such tricks of the trade on the side of the Bureaucracy had become common and he evidently knew also the worth of these tricks. As usual he calmly put up with them and proceeded in his usual tenor.

On the 23rd of August 1916 he filed a revision petition in the High Court of Judicature at Bombay. This time of course the atmosphere was not electrical. As a chronicler who has already been quoted puts it, the very choice of the method, made by Government, of proceeding against Mr. Tilak had brought down the thermometer of feeling to the temperate point. The Judges of the High Court had a calm time of it and they went into the case most patiently and with an undisturbed judicial frame of mind. Justices Batchelor and Shah took the most dispassionate view of matters