was always as the allies and the tools of
Government, in its machinations against Hinduism, that the Hindu
reformers and the Mahomedans had in turn been denounced. In order to
invest it with a more definitely religious sanction, Tilak placed it
under the special patronage of the most popular deity in India. Though
Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is the god of learning whom Hindu
writers delight to invoke on the title-page of their books, there is
scarcely a village or a frequented roadside in India that does not show
some rude presentment of his familiar features, usually smeared over
with red ochre, Tilak could not have devised a more popular move than
when he set himself to organize annual festivals in honour of Ganesh,
known as Ganpati celebrations, and to found in all the chief centres of
the Deccan Ganpati societies, each with its _mela_ or choir recruited
among his youthful bands of gymnasts. These festivals gave occasion for
theatrical performances[3] and religious songs in which the legends of
Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to stir up hatred of the
"foreigner"--and _mlenccha_, the term employed for "foreigner," applied
equally to Europeans and to Mahomedans--as well as for tumultuous
processions only too well calculated to provoke affrays with the
Mahomedans and with the police, which in turn led to judicial
proceedings that served as a fresh excuse for noisy protests and
inflammatory pleadings. With the Ganpati celebrations the area of
Tilak's propaganda was widely increased.

But the movement had yet to be given a form which should directly appeal
to the fighting instincts of the Mahrattas and stimulate active
disaffection by reviving memories of olden times when under Shivaji's
leadership they had rolled back the tide of Musulman conquest and
created a Mahratta Empire of their own. The legends of Shivaji's prowess
still lingered in Maharashtra, where the battlemented strongholds which
he built crown many a precipitous crag of the Deccan highlands. In a
valley below Pratabghar the spot is still shown where Shivaji induced
the Mahomedan general, Afzul Khan, to meet him in peaceful conference
half-way between the contending armies, and, as he bent down to greet
his guest, plunged into his bowels the famous "tiger's claw," a hooked
gauntlet of steel, while the Mahratta forces sprang out of ambush and
cut the Mahomedan army to pieces. But if Shivaji's memory still lived,
it belonged to a past which was