lighting at one of the stations,
attempted to shoot him, but, again fortunately, their cartridges missed
fire. A few weeks later placards giving formulae for the making of bombs
were actually posted up on the doors of schools and other buildings, and
this was followed by a theft of dangerous chemicals from a Kolhapur
private school. Finally ten youths, nine of whom were Brahmans, were
committed for trial on these offences before a special Sessions Judge,
lent by Government, and eight of them were convicted.

Quite as much as these convictions the downfall of Tilak helped to quell
the forces of unrest in the State of Kolhapur as well as in the rest of
the Deccan. For in Kolhapur, as in Poona, it was the Brahman Press
controlled by Tilak that familiarized the rising generation with the
idea of political murder. In the year which preceded the Kolhapur
conspiracy, and just after the first dastardly bomb outrage at
Muzafferpur to which Mrs. and Miss Kennedy fell victims, an article
appeared in the _Vishvavritta_, a Kolhapur monthly magazine, for which
its editor, Mr. Bijapurkar, a Brahman, who until 1905 had been Professor
of Sanscrit at the Rajaram College, was subsequently prosecuted and
convicted. The article, which was significantly headed "The potency of
Vedic prayers," recalled various cases in which the Vedas lay down the
duty of retaliation upon "alien" oppressors. "To kill such people
involves no sin, and when Kshatriyas and Vaidhyas do not come forward to
kill them, Brahmans should take up arms and protect religion. When one
is face to face with such people they should be slaughtered without
hesitation. Not the slightest blame attaches to the slayer." Moreover,
lest these exhortations should be construed merely as a philosophic
treatise on Vedic teaching, the writer was careful to add that "these
doctrines are not to be kept in books, but must be taught even to babes
and sucklings."

Thus in a Native State of the Deccan, just as in British-administered
Deccan, we find the same methods and the same doctrines adopted by the
Brahmans, with the same demoralizing results, in pursuance of the same
purpose, now under one guise and now under another, the maintenance or
restoration of their own theocratic power, whether it be threatened by a
Hindu ruler of their own race, or by "alien" rulers and the "alien"
civilization for which they stand.

CHAPTER VI.

BENGAL BEFORE THE PARTITION.

It is a far cry in every