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 practically dead and gone. Only a few
years, before an Englishman who had visited Shivaji's tomb had written
to a local newspaper calling attention to the ruinous condition into
which the people of Maharashtra had allowed the last resting-place of
their national hero to fall. Some say it was this letter which first
inspired Tilak with the idea of reviving Shivaji's memory and converting
it into a living force. Originally it was upon the great days of the
Poona Peshwas that Tilak had laid the chief stress, and he may possibly