A movement of that nature never dies. “The battle of freedom once begun is carried on from father to son,” is as good to-day as it ever was. Yet the movement may be delayed, or its issue may be confused, or the contrary, according to the wisdom or the folly of its advocates, or the amount of earnestness they put in it, or the amount of influence they have over the masses, as well as by the wisdom or shortsightedness or cunning of those who oppose it. All the world over, progressive political movements have had vicissitudes of fortune, stages of development, times of reactions, defeats and reverses. Governments always begin by ignoring such movements. Then comes a period of ridicule, followed by repression. But their efforts are futile. The food on which the tender plant of liberty thrives is the blood of the martyr. The rope of the hangman, the axe of the executioner, or the shot of the gunner, extinguishes individual life, only to make the desire for corporate life keener and stronger. Banishments, deportations, imprisonments, tortures and confiscations, are the usual weapons of the tyrant to strangle liberty, to extirpate those that are after it, but they have so far proved ineffectual to kill it. Conciliation is sometimes more successful than repression, but conciliation delayed or concessions forced have been proved to be worse than useless. The Nationalist Movement in India has passed through some of these stages, and is passing through the rest. We presume it will be of some interest and use to trace its development, and to make a retrospective review of its successes and failures so far.[42] CHAPTER II INDIA FROM 1757 TO 1857 A. D. Aurangzeb, the 6th Mogul Emperor of India, died in 1707 A. D. Within fifty years of his death, the Mogul sovereignty in India was reduced to its last gasp. The seeds sown by his bigotry, fanaticism, and suspicious nature were ripening and bringing to his successors a harvest of dissensions and discords, of rebellions and revolts. In the North as well as the South, forces had been generated which threatened the end of the Mogul rule. The martyrdom of Guru Teg Bahadur, the Sikh Guru, who was foully murdered at Delhi, where he had gone on a mission of peace, had sunk deep into the hearts of his followers, and his son, Guru Govind Singh, was organising forces which were destined to supplant Mogul rule in the Land of the Five Rivers.[43] In the Deccan, Sivaji’s[44] standard and throne had become the rallying point of the fighting forces of Southern India.