There is no more beautiful book in the sacred literature of the Hindus;
there is none in which the more enlightened find greater spiritual
comfort; yet it is in the _Bhagvat Gita_ that, by a strange perversion,
the Hindu conspirator has sought and claims to have found texts that
justify murder as a divinely inspired deed when it is committed in the
sacred cause of Hinduism. Nor is it only the extremists who appeal in
this fashion to Hindu religious emotionalism. It is often just as
difficult to appraise the subtle differences which separate the
"moderate" from the "advanced" politician and the "advanced" politician
from the extremist as it is to distinguish between the various forms and
gradations of the Hindu revival in its religious and social aspects. But
it was in the courtyard of the great temple of Kali at Calcutta in the
presence of "the terrible goddess" that the "leaders of the Bengali
nation," men who, like Mr. Surendranath Banerjee, have always professed
to be "moderates," held their chief demonstrations against "partition"
and administered the _Swadeshi_ oath to their followers. Equally
noteworthy is the part played by the revival of Ganpati celebrations in
honour of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, perhaps the most popular of
all Hindu deities, in stimulating political disaffection in the Deccan.

Hand in hand with this campaign for the glorification of Hinduism at the
expense of Western civilization there has been carried on another and
far more invidious campaign for the vilification of everything British.
The individual Englishman is denounced as a bloodsucker and a tyrant;
his personal integrity is impugned and derided; his methods of
administration are alleged to be wilfully directed to the
impoverishment, and even to the depopulation, of India; his social
customs are traduced as depraved and corrupt; even his women-folk are
accused of common wantonness. This systematized form of personal calumny
is a scarcely less significant feature of the literature of Indian