ects
of a revolt against alien rule. To appreciate its real tendencies we
must go to a Native State of the Deccan about 100 miles south of Poona.
Kolhapur is the most important of the Native States under the charge of
the Bombay Government, and its ruler is the only ruling Mahratta chief
who can claim direct descent from the great Shivaji, the
"Shivaji-Maharaj" whose cult Tilak made one of the central features of
his political propaganda. He is the "Chhatrapati Maharajah," and is
acknowledged to be as such the head of the Mahratta Princes of India.
One would have thought that such a lineage would have sufficed in itself
to invest the Maharajah of Kolhapur with a certain measure of sanctity
in the eyes of Tilak and his followers. Far from it. His Highness is an
enlightened ruler and a man of great simplicity of character. He takes a
keen interest in the administration of his State, and has undertaken, at
no small cost to his Exchequer, one of the most important irrigation
works yet attempted in any Native State. But he committed what Tilak
and his friends regarded as two unforgivable offences: he fought against
the intolerance of the Brahmans and he is a faithful friend end ally of
the British _Raj_. Hence they set in motion against him, the descendant
of Shivaji, in his own State, exactly the same machinery of agitation
and conspiracy which they have set in motion against British rule in
British India.

It is a curious and most instructive story. There had been long
minorities in Kolhapur, and, especially during the more or less nominal
reign of the present Maharajah's predecessor, Shivaji IV., who
ultimately went mad, the Prime Minister, a Chitpavan Brahman of
Ratnagiri, acquired almost supreme power in the State, and filled every
important post with his fellow caste men, of whom he introduced more
than a hundred into the public service. Under Chitpavan rule the
interests of the people of the soil were systematically neglected in
Kolhapur, as they had been throughout the Deccan in the later days of
the Chitpavan theocracy at Poona, and privileges and possessions were
showered upon members of the favoured caste. On his accession in 1894
the present Maharajah appointed as his Prime Minister, with a view to
very necessary reforms in the administration, a Kayastha Prabhu, Rao
Bahadur Sabnis, who, though a high-caste Hindu, was not a Brahman. There
has long been great rivalry between the Brahmans and the Prabhus, who
belon