hing disaffection towards his Government, just as it
preached disaffection towards the British _Raj_; and the agitation in
Kolhapur itself was reinforced by the advent of a large number of Poona
Brahmans who, in consequence of a recrudescence of plague, fled from
that city to the Maharajah's capital. They flung themselves eagerly into
the fray, and had the audacity even to start a mock "Parliament." But
the Maharajah was determined to be master in his own State, and in Mr.
Sabnis he had found a Prime Minister who loyally and courageously
carried out his policy for the improvement of the administration and the
spread of education amongst the non-Brahman castes. The Maharajah
realizes that Brahman ascendency cannot be broken down permanently
unless the non-Brahman castes are adequately equipped to compete with
them in the public services. Amongst these there is plenty of loyalty to
the ruling chief, for his Mahratta subjects have not wholly forgotten
the tyranny of Chitpavan Brahman rule either under Shivaji IV.'s Prime
Minister or in the less recent times of the Poona Peshwas. One of the
most interesting institutions in Kolhapur is a hostel specially endowed
for non-Brahman, Mahratta, Mahomedan, and Jain youths who are following
the courses of the Rajaram College. The control of education plays in
Kolhapur as conspicuous a part as at Poona in the struggle between the
forces of order and disorder, and it is amongst the Kolhapur youth that
the latter have made their most strenuous exertions and with the same
lawless results.

The first organization started at Kolhapur in imitation of Poona was a
Shivaji club, with which were associated bands of gymnasts, Ganpati
choirs, an anti-cow-killing society, &c., all on the lines of those
founded by Tilak. It was suppressed in 1900 as several of its members
had been implicated in the disturbances at Bir, where a young "patriot"
had proclaimed himself Rajah and collected a sufficient number of armed
followers to require a military force to suppress the rebellion. The
disturbances at Bir were, in fact, the starting point of that new form
of political propagandism which takes the shape of dacoities or armed
robberies for the benefit of the "patriotic" war-chest. After the
suppression of the Kolhapur Shivaji Club, many of its leading members
disappeared for a time, but only to carry on their operations in other
parts of India, where they entered into relations with secret societies
of a