Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/373

 Mr. Tilak would be the President of the United States of India ; Mr. Gandhi, if at all he cares to join the public movement, would be the gentlest but most uncompromising opponent of capitalism. To take yet one in- stance more, in the 8th century, Mr. Tilak would have been the Shankaracharya of those times, driving Buddhism out of India with all the weapons of his wonderful scholarship. Mr. Gandhi, instead of fighting intellectually, would have assimilated in his character the noblest features of Buddhism and Neo-Hinduism. There is no limit to the roles Mr. Tilak would have played ; Mr. Gandhi's parts would be few. It is impossible to think of him as we can think of Mr. Tilak, as the foreign minister of India. What, however, Mr. Tilak gains in breadth and variety, Mr. Gandhi does in depth and intensity. Hitherto there has been no political worker who has fought with spiritual weapons. To Mr. Gandhi politics is the hand-maid of spirituality ; with Mr. Tilak, the case was perhaps, the reverse. There has been, I think, no fighter in the political world in modern times who has never used a single angry word. Mr. Tilak's love of strong language is well-known. He never hit below the belt but he gave his opponent na quarter. Mr. Gandhi's political language has always been the language of a Buddha or a Christ. Every word he utters has a " blessing behind it and a peace before it." It is an honour to the Bureaucracy that their foremost opponent is a moral and spiritual giant. Mr. Tilak's leadership was hard-earned and challenged at every step, while that;, of Mr. Gandhi can be described in the language of Caesar. " I came, I saw, I conquered." In his South Africaa