Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/165

 festival, with its inevitable suggestion of the ideal of Swaraj was an eye-sore not only to the Anglo-Indians but to the Moderates as well. The former openly called it sedition, the latter probably thought pretty much in the same way and refused to take part in it. It was reserved for the anti-partition agitation to place before the country a definite ideal, freed from the confusing verbiage that characterised our thought till 1905. Mr. Tilak's ideal thus became the ideal of the country and it was "imposed" upon the National Congress by no less a personage than Dadabhai Naoroji. Neither Mr. Tilak nor Mr. Naoroji preached anything beyond the colonial form of self-government. But the bitter disappointment caused by the Partition of Bengal, together with the utter loss of faith of the people in the sincerity of the rulers carried the ideal of self-government to the logical length. If Mr. Tilak has on a few occasions defended absolute autonomy as being a perfectly 'legal' ideal, we should not forget that even Lord Morley has nothing to say against it and that the Hon'ble Mr. Gokhale has in his Allahabad speech (1907) declared that he would not put any limit to the aspirations of the people.

It was not so much the difference of opinion regarding the ultimate ideal that gave birth to the two schools of thought,—'Moderate and Extremist'. Ideals do not so much affect every day work as ways and means. In a word, the two parties were divided on 'Boycott', The attitude of the Moderates was determined by three things (1) They had not utterly lost their faith in the British Government or the Indian bureaucracy. (2) They had not the courage to go to the logical length of propositions conceded by them. (3) They were oppressed