No one knew better than he how to compel submission by packed meetings and organized rowdyism.
Tilak's propaganda had at the same time steadily assumed a more and more anti-British character, and it was always as the allies and the tools of Government, in its machinations against Hinduism, that the Hindu reformers and the Mahomedans had in turn been denounced.

In order to invest it with a more definitely religious sanction, Tilak placed it under the special patronage of the most popular deity in India.

Though Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, is the god of learning whom Hindu writers delight to invoke on the title-page of their books, there is scarcely a village or a frequented roadside in India that does not show some rude presentment of his familiar features, usually smeared over with red ochre, Tilak could not have devised a more popular move than when he set himself to organize annual festivals in honour of Ganesh, known as Ganpati celebrations, and to found in all the chief centres of the Deccan Ganpati societies, each with its _mela_ or choir recruited among his youthful bands of gymnasts.

These festivals gave occasion for theatrical performances[3] and religious songs in which the legends of Hindu mythology were skilfully exploited to stir up hatred of the "foreigner"-- and _mlenccha_, the term employed for "foreigner," applied equally to Europeans and to Mahomedans--as well as for tumultuous processions only too well calculated to provoke affrays with the Mahomedans and with the police, which in turn led to judicial proceedings that served as a fresh excuse for noisy protests and inflammatory pleadings.

With the Ganpati celebrations the area of Tilak's propaganda was widely increased.
But the movement had yet to be given a form which should directly appeal to the fighting instincts of the Mahrattas and stimulate active disaffection by reviving memories of olden times when under Shivaji's leadership they had rolled back the tide of Musulman conquest and created a Mahratta Empire of their own.