Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/305

 teachings, what became of the rest of the case ? During the Plague at Poona, Mr. Rand had to risk his Ufe daily on behalf of the afiflicted natives. His reward was that he met his death at the hands of an assassin and it was a fair inference that the murder was attributable to Mr. Tilak's utterances in the Kesari and the Mahratta, He (Mr. Tilak) denounced Mr. Rand as a " sullen, suspicious tyrant ", and even made the horrible accusation that Mr. Rand deUberately segregated people who were not suffering from Plague, in order to keep up the figures. British soldiers, who were risking their hves at is. a day, as volunteer sanitary workers, were held up as inhuman beings who would take advantage of the Plague to commit petty thefts and break idols. The whole tenor of Mr. Tilak's article could be summarized thus : — " Murder is right in cer- tain circumstances. It can be apologised for. Shivaji was right in murdering Afzulkhan, because Afzulkhan was an oppressor. So long as we don't murder from selfish motives, we are justified. Have we no Shivaji now ? Murder in such circumstances is no murder." Is it a wonder that a murder ensued ?

Sir Edward Carson then rapidly touched the remaining four libels which, he said were trifles as compared to Tilak's authorship of the murders of Rand and Jackson.

Sir John Simon in summing up the case said that the question was not whether the plaintiff was a person who, had, time and again, published seditious articles, or whether his strong, violent and unrestrained criticism of Government Officers was justified, nor was it the question whether Mr. Tilak had the friendship of Paranjpye and others. The question was whether Sir