"Extremism was a reaction against the ideas and modus operandi of the moderates." Critically explain this statement.

Moderates: ideas and methods

• Moderates such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale believed that British rule could be improved by argument inside the law.
• They used petitions, speeches in councils, and the drain-of-wealth case to ask for Indian share in administration.
• Their modus operandi was annual Congress sessions, prayer, and faith that British public opinion would correct official policy.
• They accepted gradual constitutional progress and did not call for a mass boycott of British goods or offices.

Extremism as reaction

• The partition of Bengal in 1905, the failure of moderate petitions, and racial bars in service made many younger leaders reject that method.
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai asked for Swaraj, boycott, Swadeshi, and national education instead of petition.
• Extremists treated prayer and loyalty as a method that had not stopped the partition, which is the reaction named in the statement.
• The Surat split of 1907 made the clash of methods public inside the Congress.

Critical limit

• Extremism was not only a mood against moderates; it had a positive programme of Swadeshi enterprise, festivals, and political education.
• Some extremist methods stayed within public agitation, while a smaller revolutionary stream used arms, so “extremism” is not one single practice.
• Moderates had already named economic drain; extremists changed the method more than they invented the economic diagnosis.
• After 1916 the Lucknow Pact and later Gandhi’s mass satyagraha show that later nationalism used both constitutional work and extra-constitutional pressure.