Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/22

 2 a relentless war on the Indian Bureaucracy for nearly forty years. He alone of all others dared strike the shield of the Government with the " sharp end of the steel." The silent suffering country wanted a man who could speak out without mincing matters, one who could boldly stand up for cur birth-right held in pawn by the rulers of the land. Where could such an one be found except in the great Mahratta race?

Bal Gangadar Tilak was born at Ratnagiri on July 23rd, 1856. Born in a race to which the Peshwas belonged and in a town not far away from the birth-place of Balaji Vishwanath, he was, indeed, destined to play the role of a representative of those who had ruled the greater part of India for nearly a hundred years. In the year of his birth the political atmosphere in India was electric. It was a remarkable year for this remarkable child to be ushered into existence. It was as ominous to the new rulers of the land as this child was destined to be. Lord Dalhousie, the last of the aggressive proconsuls of the British East India Company had just departed, cutting off all the Native poppies that dared appear tall among the degenarates of the vanquished races of India, and while he was thus stretching the red canvas over the country, the last vestiges of the Imperial families of Delhi and of Satara were swept away, with the result that he left a legacy as fatal to his successor as Lord Chelmsford has done to the present Viceroy. Hindus and Mahomedans smarting under the humiliation of eclipsed crescent and Bhagva Zenda had made common cause. The unity was no doubt temporary, the result of a common wrong; the essential condition for a successful