Accordingly, on the approach of the Ganpati festival in September, 1894, Tilak and his party inaugurated a _Sarvajanik Ganpati_ or public Ganpati celebration, providing for the worship of the god in places accessible to the public (it had till then been a domestic ceremony), and arranging that the images of Ganpati should have their _melas_ or groups of attendants, like the Musalman _tolis_ attending upon the _tabuts_. The members of these _melas_ were trained in the art of fencing with sticks and other physical exercises. During the ten days of the festival, bands of young Hindus gave theatrical performances and sang religious songs, in which the legends of Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to arouse hatred of the “foreigner,” the word _mlenccha_ or “foreigner” being applied equally to Europeans and Muhammadans. As the movement grew, leaflets were circulated, urging the Marathas to rebel as Shivaji did, and declaring that a religious outbreak should be the first step towards the overthrow of an alien power. As may be imagined, these Ganpati processions, which took place on the tenth day of the festival, were productive of much tumult and were well calculated to promote affrays with the Muhammadans and the police. A striking instance occurred in Poona, where a mela of 70 Hindus deliberately outraged Moslem sentiment by playing music and brawling outside a mosque during the hour of prayer. These celebrations helped to intensify Tilak’s seditious propaganda; and although they are barely mentioned in the annual reports of the Police Commissioner, they had become firmly established in Bombay and other places by the date of Mr. Vincent’s retirement, and were destined to impose a heavy burden of extra work on the police-force for several years to come. At the present date the public celebration of the _Ganesh Chaturthi_ still takes place and necessitates special traffic arrangements, when the crowds pour out of the city to immerse the clay-images of the god in Back Bay. But the more disturbing political features of the festival have gradually disappeared. This change may be held to date roughly from Tilak’s second trial for sedition and conviction in 1908, which dealt a severe blow to the seditious side of the movement. A few _melas_ appeared in the following years; but the strength of the movement was broken by the incarceration of the leader of the Extremists and by judicious action on the part of the divisional and detective police.