Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/56

Upon my mind the writings to Mazzini had created a profound impression. The purity of his patriotism, the loftiness of his ideals, and his all-embracing love for humanity, expressed with the true eloquence of the heart, moved me as I had never before been moved. I discarded his revolutionary teachings as unsuited to the circumstances of India and as fatal to its normal development, along the lines of peaceful and orderly progress; but I inculcated, with all the emphasis that I could command, the enduring lessons of his noble life, lived for the sake of others, his lofty patriotism, his self-abnegation, and his heroic devotion to the interests of humanity. It was Mazzini, the incarnation of the highest moral forces in the political arena—Mazzini, the apostle of Italian unity, the friend of the human race, that I presented to the youth of Bengal. Mazzini had taught Italian unity. We wanted Indian unity. Mazzini had worked through the young. I wanted the young men of Bengal to realize their potentialities and to qualify themselves to work for the salvation of their country, but upon lines instinct with the spirit of constitutionalism. I lectured upon Mazzini, but took care to tell the young men to abjure his revolutionary ideals, and to adopt his spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion in the paths of constitutional development. I persuaded Babu Jagendranath Vidyabhuson and Babu Rajani Kanto Gupta, both distinguished Bengalee writers, to translate into our language the life and work of Mazzini in the spirit of my addresses, so as to place them within the reach of those who did not understand English. I soon popularized Mazzini among the young men of Bengal. No dire consequences followed, for the conditions that create the revolutionary spirit were wanting. They are the work of Governments that misread the signs of the times, and not of the so-called agitator, or of the ardent patriot who works for the amelioration of the lot of his people.

Within a year of the foundation of the Indian Association, the first great opportunity presented itself for realizing some of those great ideals that had given birth to the Association. Reactionary tulers are often the creators of great public movements. They will no doubt deny the charge or repudiate the credit; but they certainly sow the seeds which, in the fullness of time, ensure the enthronement of popular opinion and the triumph of popular causes. The reduction of the maximum limit of age, for the open competitive examination for the Indian Civil Service, from twenty-one to nineteen years, by the orders of the Marquis of Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, created a painful impression throughout India. It