Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/171

 neither breeds nor "leads to dissension and disintegration." Mr. Tilak, on the contrary emphatically held that the "students of to-day are the citizens of tomorrow "and that it was their duty not only to study public questions but to devote part of their leisure in such work as was allotted to them by the trusted leaders of the country. Mr. Tilak said that though it was convenient for the Bureaucracy to forget the part which the youth of England played in the public life of England, India must never neglect to train up her youth in pubHc spirit. If the Risley Circular was to prevent free expression of thought in youth, if the Government Servants' Rules were to prohibit us from participating in public activities in manhood, and if the Pensioners' Code was to guide our actions in old-age, when, indeed was a man independent? Mr. Tilak emphatically condemned the actions of those who, because a particular student attended a swadeshi meeting, fined him in the name of discipline! If, he said, a severe enforcement of false discipline be the price of our acceptance of Government Grant or of the affiliation with the University, why, in the name of patriotism and self-sacrifice should we not break off these chains and declare our educational independence? He accepted the right of elders to guide the students. But he refused to accept the right of any parent, much less teacher, to cut off the light of knowledge and patriotism from the school and college-going children; and when such a prohibition was made only because the parent or teacher had not the courage to assert himself before an unjustifiable fiat of the Bureaucracy, the students were, Mr. Tilak said, fully entitled to disobey.