Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/134

114 For such contemptible opportunism, they tried to temper the tone of the Congress which they had nurtured with true paternal tenderness and solicitude. The Congress thus lost its prestige and shattered its own popularity and became a "mutual admiration society." Its resolutions instead of being the echoes of the national sentiment, were the decrees of a coterie, none too active or progressive. Its Presidents came to be selected with a view to secure Government recognition. Mr. Chandavarkar, who had kept himself aloof from the Congress ever since 1890, was called upon (1900) to discharge the duties of the Congress President. Official emoluments came to be the standard of Congress recognition; and official wrath and persecutions, the mark of neglect by the Congress authorities. Mr. Chandavarkar, in spite of his ten years' desertion of the Congress, could become its President (1900) because he was high in Government favour and was likely to be appointed Acting High Court Judge, Mr. Tilak, in spite of his 20 years' record of courageous and self-sacrificing public services, had his claims for the honour set aside, because the Bureaucracy had chosen to dislike him.

This v/as a period of violent political reaction. Hardly had the discontent due to famine, plague and press- prosecutions begun to grow less acute when the regime of Lord Curzon which, in its beginnings, had raised great expectations, commenced to create a sense of resentment, to which there is no parallel in the earlier history of our public life. People, who were dazzled by Lord Curzon's personality, energy, and eloquence, found it to their cost, that these noble qua-