Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/77

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TILAK AND SOCIAL REFORM
57

the advisory Committee ought to have spoken out its mind in unmistakable terms and withdrawn, by means of resignation its moral support from the institution. But the members wanted to outwit Mrs. Ramabai and get a reversal of their decision from the American Head Office; this was an impossibility, as the Head Office had implicit trust in Mrs. Ramabai and it was supplying funds to her mainly for the propagation of Christianity. Mr. Ranade and his followers had therefore to play a game of dissimulation; for they knew that once the public faith in Mrs. Ramabai was shattered, nothing could rehabilitate it. It was here that they had a tussle with Mr. Tilak. From the middle of 1891 to the close of 1893, this was one of the burning topics of the day. The taunting and violent way in which papers like the Subodh Patrika and Agarkar's Sudharak fell foul of Mr. Tilak is the more remarkable when we remember how they must have realised their double game. Why should they all have clung up to Mrs. Ramabai, so unreasonably, so fanatically? Could they not have started an institution of their own, under some trust-worthy management? Did they think that female education, even attended with grave risks of conversion to Christianity was so necessary? Apparently they did not, for on Aug. 13th, 1893, they publicly disowned all connection with the institution because it was "conducted as an avowedly proselytizing institution"*[1]. They admitted that "during the past year or so, Pandita Ramabai departed from the lines of strict neutrality"; In trying, therefore to screen Pandita Ramabai from the

  1. * The Sharada Sudan is now avowedly a Missionary institution, located at Kedgaon near Poona.