Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/14



The story of the Life of Lokamanya Tilak is the history of Western India during the 1 ast forty years ; it is the history of the birth and growth of Indian NationaUsm, its impact on the Indian Bureaucracy, its vicissitudes, its struggles, disappointments, successes and reverses. To attempt a task of such magnitude, so eminently fit for a philosopher-historian is at any time a "stroke of temerity." It is still more so at the present juncture when the ashes of the controversies in which Mr. Tilak so prominently figured are hot. Though dead, Mr. Tilak still lives in our midst ; and the time is not yet for a pronouncement of the final verdict of History upon him. That is evidently a work for the next generation when the biographer or historian will be fortified in his judgment by the knowledge of the ultimate success or failure of Mr. Tilak's methods and those of his opponents. My task is