Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/170

 It is quite natural that when the Nation had, with grim determination, undertaken to find its own salvation, the powers that be should try to put us down by every means at their disposal. The Bureaucrats determined to separate the Mahomedans from the Hindus, and the Moderates from the Extremists; they resolved. to replenish their armoury of repressive laws, to crush the Extremists and break that solidarity which was growing in various provinces. The Bureaucracy knew that to placate Lord Morley they would have to give their consent to the inauguration of a few political reforms here and there; so they practically entered into a compact with the Liberal but too philosophical Secretary of State by means of which 'honest John' was to acquiesce in their repression and they agreed to tolerate political concessions. England had just concluded an alliance with Japan; our rulers had therefore nothing to fear from any complications abroad. They had thus greater facilities to repress us than their successors in 1914 and 1920, and so with ruthless severity they tried the axe of repression on the tender plant of; the National Movement.

The Swadeshi movement, with its watchwords of self-help and self-government, powerfully affected the imagination of the Indian student world. Students became the greatest bulwark of the National agitation. There were well-meaning persons who held that students ought to stand aloof from the public life of the country. Even Mr. Gokhale, though willing to allow students "to take interests in what was going; on around" them was not in favour of allowing them to take an active part even in the elementary work which.