reach Kolhapur in time.  The conspirators had to fall back upon less potent weapons.  Thanks to the Arms Act, which is one of the favourite grievances of Indian Nationalism, they had great difficulty in obtaining arms, but they secured a few, and on April 16, 1908, when Colonel Ferris, who was retiring, left Kolhapur, some of the conspirators followed him into the train, and, alighting 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.