Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/109

Rh self-willed, unsympathetic and unlucky administrator is associated the segration-work, with its inevitable corollary of the house-to-house search-parties. Afraid and terror-stricken, the people were, it was thought, unwilling to communicate to the proper authorities plague-attacks of inmates in their houses or to allow their ailing relatives to be taken for treatment to the hospitals. But the administrators of the plague-policy never put themselves the question "Why." Mr. Tilak showed how "as soon as a patient is removed to the hospital, his relations are taken to the segregation camp, some of the infected property is destroyed and his house is kept" practically "open without anybody to take care of the property." He also pointed out that people were more ready to send patients to the hospital started by him and to pay for them than allow them to be taken to the Government Hospital, which was a charitable institution. The question resolved itself into "how to make the work popular" and with this end in view he made a number of constructive suggestions. But it was not in the nature of the officers appointed, to appreciate the popular view-point and accept suggestions, most of which they could have adopted without sacrificing the essentials of their policy. Even then trouble could have been avoided, had the British soldiers not been appointed to conduct the searches. Mr. Tilak held that "howsoever a British soldier may be useful on the battlefield, he is not suited for a work of this kind" and suggested that the work "can be equally, if not more efficiently, carried on by native agency working under Civil Officers than by British soldiers whose ignorance of native manners