Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/388

 tive force." Only one should like to know what " constructive " work means.

When the pantalooned orators of the National Congress were in vain making passionate appeals to the Government, Mr. Tilak had already pinned his faith on the people. His gospel of Swaraj formed a refreshing contrast to the petty demands formulated from time to time by the National Congress. No doubt the festival of Shivaji was a provoincial affair wherein only the Hindus could participate. Still it did greater national service in Maharashtra during the nineties than the Congress itself. The methods of the national body were outlandish and hence ineffective, uninspiring and unpopular. The Congress stood for the glorification of the British Rule, while the Shivaji festival took the peoples' minds back to that period when the slogan of Swaraj was reverberating throughout the length and breadth of the land. This powerful appeal to a glori- ous past, together with the lessons of courage and self- sacrifice which it inculcated did in those days greater service to Western India than the National Congress. Owing to its inherent limitations, the Shivaji festival could not, of course, usurp the functions of the Congress even in Maharashtra. The festival, however, stands as a symbol of Mr. Tilak's methods of awakening and organizing the people and did exceptionally valuable political work supplementary to that of the Congress.

Mr. Tilak's strenuous efforts to awaken the people together with the organized opposition he led in the famine and plague agitations excited the liveliest apprehension in the minds of some ofiicials and a moment of panic was seized upon to put him down. The prosecu-