Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/129

Rh the Deccan Sabha (Nov. 1895) and thus perpetuated the split.

We are prepared to concede that a frank and friendly secession is far better than surface-unity and so wide is the room for work in this country that even a hundred associations are welcome. To start a new association, however, is one thing; and to do so after making disingenuous insinuations against an established one is quite another; and this is what the importunities of his whining followers led the great Ranade to do. Mr. Tilak severely criticised this conduct. He said:—

"We have been accustomed to the terms, Moderates and Extremists in Social Reform controversies. But we refuse to accept these artificial differences in Politics. Is Mr. Tilak going to destroy the British Government? Are Mr. Ranade and Prof. Gokhale going to be its saviours ? To plume oneself as a Moderate and to say that others are running after the impossible and insinuate that they are actuated by seditious motives shows the height of imprudence. If ever the Sabha has "run after the impossible" and has shown "extremist leanings" it was in Prof. Gokhale's regime. It had to make amends by tendering an apology. Mr. Ranade ought to know that the Sabha incurred suspicion of disloyalty when he himself was guiding its policy. All of us know how he had to move heaven and earth to remove the blot. Should he, knowing all this, now come forward and because he cannot command a majority in the body, throw aspersions at the Sabha?"

This then was the formal birth of the Moderate party. It was this disunity between the "Moderates" and the "Extremists" that emboldened the Bureau-