What are the secret forces by which these wretched puppets were set in motion?  Their activity was certainly not spontaneous.  Who was it that pulled the strings?  There is reason to believe that the revolver with which the murder was committed was one of a batch sent out by the Indian ringleaders, who until the murder of Sir W. Curzon-Wyllie, had their headquarters at the famous “India House,” in Highgate, of which Swami Krishnavarma was originally one of the moving spirits.  Upon this and other cognate points the trial of Vinayak Savarkar, formerly the London correspondent of one of Tilak’s organs and a familiar of the “India House,” and of some twenty-five other Hindus on various charges of conspiracy which is now proceeding in the High Court of Bombay, may be expected to throw some very instructive light.

The atmosphere of Nasik was no doubt exceptionally favourable for such morbid growths.  For Nasik is no ordinary provincial town of India.  It is one of the great strongholds of Hinduism.  Its population is only about 25,000, but of these about 9,000 belong to the Brahmanical caste, though only about 1,000 are Chitpavan Brahmans, the rest being mainly Deshastha Brahmans, another great sept of the Deccanee sacerdotal caste.  It is a city of peculiar sanctity with the Hindus.  The sacred Godavery—­so sacred that it is called there the Ganga—­i.e. the Ganges—­flows through it, and its bathing ghats which line the river banks and its ancient temples and innumerable shrines attract a constant flow of pilgrims from all parts of India.  Indeed, many of the great Hindu houses of India maintain there a family priest to look after their spiritual interests.  Nasik was, moreover, a city beloved of the Peshwas, and, next to Poona preserves, perhaps, more intimate associations with the great days of the Mahratta Empire than any other city of the Deccan.  But though no doubt these facts might account for a certain latent bitterness against the alien rulers who dashed the cup of victory away from the lips of the Mahrattas, just as the latter were establishing their ascendency on the crumbling ruins of the Moghul Empire, they do not suffice to account for the attitude of the people generally in presence of such a crime as the assassination of Mr. Jackson.  For if murder is a heinous crime by whomsoever it may be committed, it ranks amongst Hindus as specially heinous when committed by a Brahman.  How is it that in this instance, instead of outcasting the murderer, many Brahmans continued more or less secretly to glorify his crime as “the striking down of the flag from the fort”?  How is it that, when there was ample evidence to show that murder had been in the air of Nasik for several months before the perpetration of the deed, not a single warning, not a single hint, ever reached Mr. Jackson, except from the police, whose advice, unfortunately, his blindly trustful nature led him to ignore to the very end?  How is it that, even after its perpetration, though there was much genuine sympathy with the victim and many eloquent speeches were delivered to express righteous abhorrence of the crime, no practical help was afforded to the authorities in pursuing the ramifications of the conspiracy which had “brought disgrace on the holy city of Nasik”?