The reformer must know that what moves people is the authentic life, not mere writing. The newspaper and journals that Lokmanya Tilak and other reformers ran, the books they wrote, sold little, but had enormous effect. Their writing was known to reflect and be an extension of their exemplary lives. It was the authenticity of their lives which lent weight to their message, to their example. All knew that their lives were an integral whole-they were not moral in public life and lax in private, nor vice versa. They were not full of pious thoughts and scared resolutions within the walls of a temple.
A writer who is merely entertaining his readers, even one who is merely informing them, can do what he wants with the rest of his life. But the writer, who sets out to use his pen to reform public life, cannot afford such dualities. Here is the testimony of one great man about the influence of another, Lokmanya Tilak.
“I believe that an editor who has anything worth saying and who commands a clientele cannot be easily hushed. He delivered his finished message as soon as he is put under duress. The Lokmanya spoke more eloquently from the Mandalay fortress than through columns of the printed paper.”
It is the __________ that influences the people more.
