Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/56

36 life-members, had the basic principles of the body been put down as articles of faith and had members joining the Society been required to observe them or withdraw from the body. As a result of this laxity, different temperaments could not harmoniously be blended by solemn obligations; this want of harmony inevitably resulted in incompatibility of views, which, in its turn. Increased bitterness and finally brought about rupture in 1890. Mr. Tilak and his associates started their career for the cheapening and facilitating of education. They placed before themselves the aim of establishing an Indian Educational Mission, forming a network of schools throughout Maharashtra on the Jesuitical idea of poverty and self-denial. In the discussions which Mr. Tilak had with Mr. Agarkar in 1879 this ideal was fully accepted. It was over and over repeated on each and every public occasion which they and their associates could get. It was repeated when Mr. Apte gave, on behalf of his colleagues, evidence before the Hunter Commission in 1882 ; it was repeated on the occasion of the visit to the institution of Sir James Fergusson, then Governor of Bombay (Feb. 1884). If Mr. Tilak's colleagues, later on found this oft-repeated pledge inconvenient, if by continuous and sometimes devious tactics they sought to temper its rigour, if regarding him as almost an obstacle in the way they harassed him by magnifying his faults, questioning even his capacity, taxing him with self-assertion and self-glorification under the cloak of Divine disinterestedness and stoicism and by going to the length of passing a vote of censure upon him, surely it was no fault of Mr. Tilak that he felt himself obliged to resign.