Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/172

 The Students' movement of 1905 was quite different from the educational boycott of the Non-Co-operation Propaganda of to-day. The Non-co-operator would like to empty school and colleges, to mark his protest against the ruinous system of administration. The stimulus which the movement for National Education received in the Anti-Partition days lay entirely in repression. In Bengal, where the student world was harassed and persecuted, the movement of National Education spread like wild fire, and within less than an year since the movement was inaugurated, nearly 10,000 students enrolled their names in the National Schools and colleges, directed by leaders of the Moderate Party like the late Dr. Rash Behari Ghose and the late Sir Gurudas Banerjea. In Maharashtra, on the contrary, repression being comparatively mild (1905-07), there was less opportunity for National Education to grow. The Samartha Vidyalaya established by Prof. Bijapurkar and patronized by Mr. Tilak was a model institution of its kind and would have shown very good results had not the Government with one stroke of the pen suppressed it (1910).

Mr. Tilak was immensely proud of the Mahomedans. He was convinced that the community with its Imperialistic traditions had a great future before it. He was certain that a combination of the Hindu intellect and the Muslim valour (together with the Parsi enterprise) would be irresistible and was bound to bring about the downfall of the Bureaucracy. He was more afraid of the Moslem inertia than of Moslem opposition. When, therefore, Nabob Salli-Mulla Khan held (December 1906) an "Educational Conference" at Dacca and con-