Even more ominous were the whispers of growing and violent division that reached us at Surat. The Extremist or Nationalist party had taken a new and decisive step in pitching a separate camp for themselves in a distant quarter of the town. For the last two days Mr. Tilak had been there, organizing and addressing them. The day before they had held a full meeting of five hundred delegates, with Mr. Arabindo Ghose in the chair, and Mr. Tilak had spoken at length on the situation, especially denouncing the rumoured withdrawal of the Moderate party from the previous year’s Calcutta resolutions upon Self-government, Swadeshi, Boycott, and National Education. Such a withdrawal was not to be endured. Rather than submit they would oppose the election of the President himself, even though the chair was waiting to receive him. The resolutions were nowhere to be seen. Rumour said they had been altered past recognition. The heading of a Draft Constitution for the Congress was found. There it stood written that the ultimate goal of the Congress was “the attainment by India of self-government similar to that enjoyed by the other members of the British empire.” That was Mr. Gokhale’s work! How inferior to the Calcutta resolution that “the system of Government obtaining in the self-governing British Colonies should be extended to India”! “Other members of the British Empire” might mean Crown Colonies, Dependencies, anything! The Self-governing Colonies must be the model, and nothing else! That the heading of the draft implied nothing else,—that no one in his senses would apply the word “Self-government” to a Crown Colony, did not matter. Undermining ways were at work! The Calcutta resolutions were being tampered with! the Moderates were capturing the Congress in the enemy’s interest! It was not to be endured.