ned Hindus and
especially amongst the Western-educated. Tilak did not defeat the Bill,
but his unscrupulous attacks, not only upon the British rulers of India
but upon his own more liberal co-religionists, including men of such
ability and character as Telang and Ranade, dealt a sinister blow at the
social reform movement, which practically died out of the Congress when
he and his friends began to establish their ascendancy over it.

It was so much easier for Indians to unite on a common political
platform against British methods of government than on a platform of
social and religious reforms which offended many different prejudices
and threatened many vested interests. The Congress developed into a
purely political body, and like all self-constituted bodies with no
definite responsibilities it showed greater capacity for acrid
criticism, often quite uninformed, than for any constructive policy. As
the years passed on without any tangible results from its expanding flow
of oratory and long "omnibus" resolutions, proposed and carried more or
less automatically at every annual session, it turned away from the old
exponents of constitutional agitation to the fiery champions of very
different methods, and almost insensibly favoured the dangerous growth
both inside it and outside it of the new forces, and of the old forces
in new shapes, which were to explode into the open with such unforeseen
violence after the Partition of Bengal in 1905.

If, however, when that explosion came the Western-educated classes were
against us rather than with us, the explanation cannot be sought only in
their continued exclusion from all real participation in the counsels
of Government, or in the refusal of the political rights for which they
had vainly agitated, or even in a general reaction against the earlier
acceptance of the essential superiority of the West. A much more acute
and substantial grievance, which affected also their material interests,
was the badge of inferiority imposed upon them in the public services.
Not till 1886 had Government appointed a Commission to report upon a
reorganisation of the public services, and its recommendations
profoundly disappointed Indian expectations. For only a narrow door was
opened for the admission of Indians into the higher Civil Service, and
all public services were divided into two nearly water-tight
compartments, the one labelled Imperial, recruited in England and
reserved in practice, as