Government responsible? The only 'constitution' we have is the Penal Code!" Mr. Gokhale in his Allahabad lecture admitted in one breath that every form of agitation from the non-payment of taxes down to the sending of petitions is constitutional; and in another he declared that "constitutional agitation is an agitation to bring about changes in the administration through the constituted authorities!" This novel interpretation of a well-known phrase in constitutional law excludes such severe forms of agitation as the non-payment of taxes!
Mr. Tilak held that though our agitation would be law-abiding in the ordinary sense of the term, still it all rested with the Government whether to make it legal or illegal. A movement which was perfectly legal to-day could by a fiat of the Bureaucracy be made illegal to-morrow. We would certainly refrain from rebellion, murder, arson, and the like. But barring this well-understood limit, there was none other which we could put to our endeavours. Our agitation could not be constitutional because we have had no constitution worth the name. It could not be exactly legal as the power of making laws rested with those whose interests clashed with ours. Therefore, said Mr. Tilak, justice, morality and history must be our only guides.
En passant we may note that when last year the question of changing the creed of the Congress came before the chosen leaders of the people, Mahatma Gandhi with his unerring sagacity, rejected both the words "constitutional" and "legal" and in their place put in "peaceful and legitimate methods," an unconscious paraphrase of the triple limitations of justice, morality and history put by Mr. Tilak,
