, Kanhere said:--

I read of many instances of oppression in the _Kesari_, the
_Rashtramat_ and the _Kal_ and other newspapers. I think
that by killing _sahibs_ [Englishmen] we people can get justice.
I never got injustice myself nor did any one I know. I now
regret killing Mr. Jackson. I killed a good man causelessly.

Can anything be much more eloquent and convincing than the terrible
pathos of this confession?[6] The three papers named by Kanhere were
Tilak's organs. It was no personal experience or knowledge of his own
that had driven Kanhere to his frenzied deed, but the slow persistent
poison dropped into his ear by the Tilak Press. Though it was Kanhere's
hand that struck down "a good man causelessly," was not Tilak rather
than Kanhere the real author of the murder? It was merely the story of
the Poona murders of 1897 over again.

Other incidents besides the Nasik tragedy have occurred since Tilak's
conviction to show how dangerous was the spirit which his doctrines had
aroused. One of the, gravest, symptomatically, was the happily
unsuccessful attempt to throw a bomb at the Viceroy and Lady Minto
whilst they were driving through the streets of Ahmedabad during their
visit to the Bombay Presidency last November. For that outrage
constituted an ominous breach of all the old Hindu traditions which
invest the personal representative of the Sovereign with a special
sanctity.

But in spite of spasmodic outbreaks, of which we may not yet have seen
the end, aggressive disloyalty in the Deccan has been at least
temporarily set back since the downfall of Tilak. The firmer attitude
adopted by the Government of India and such repressive measures as the
Press Act, combined with judicious reforms, have done much; but it was
by the prosecution of Tilak that the forces of militant unrest lost
their ablest and boldest leader--perhaps the only one who might have
concentrated their direction, not only in the Deccan, but in the whole
of India, in his own hands and given to the movement, with all its
varied and often conflicting tendencies, an organization and unity which
it still happily seems to lack.

CHAPTER V.

POONA AND KOLHAPUR.

It is not, after all, in British India (i.e., in that part of India
which we directly administer) that the Brahmanical and reactionary
character of Indian unrest, at any rate in the Deccan, can best be
studied. There it can always be disguised under the "patriotic" asp