But there was considerable heartburning, and the Moderates were suspected of contemplating some retrograde move at the following annual session.

Tilak was determined to frustrate any such scheme, and before the Congress assembled at Surat he elaborated at a Nationalist conference with Mr.Arabindo Ghose in the chair, a plan of campaign which was to defeat the "moderates" by demanding, before the election of the president, an undertaking that the resolutions of the Calcutta conference should be upheld.

The plan, however, was only half successful.

The first day's proceedings produced a violent scene in which the howling down of Mr.Surendranath Banerjee by the "advanced" wing revealed the personal jealousies that had grown up between the old Bengalee leader on the one hand and Tilak and his younger followers in Bengal on the other.

The second day's proceedings ended in still wilder confusion, and after something like a free fight the Congress broke up after an irreparable rupture, from which its prestige has never recovered.
Tilak's own prestige, however, with the "advanced" party never stood higher, either in then Deccan or outside of it.