Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (born July 23, 1856, Ratnagiri [now in Maharashtra state], India—died August 1, 1920, Bombay [now Mumbai]) was a scholar, mathematician, philosopher, and ardent nationalist who helped lay the foundation for India’s independence by building his own defiance of British rule into a national movement. He founded (1914) and served as president of the Indian Home Rule League. In 1916 he concluded the Lucknow Pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, which provided for Hindu-Muslim unity in the nationalist struggle.

Early life and career

Tilak was born into a cultured middle-class Brahman family. Although his birth place was Bombay (Mumbai), he was raised in a village along the Arabian Sea coast in what is now Maharashtra state until the age of 10, when his father, an educator and noted grammarian, took a job in Poona (now Pune). The young Tilak was educated at Deccan College in Poona, where in 1876,he earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and Sanskrit. Tilak then studied law, receiving his degree in 1879 from the University of Bombay (now Mumbai). At that point, however, he decided to teach mathematics in a private school in Poona. The school became the basis for his political career. He developed the institution into a university college after founding the Deccan Education Society (1884), which aimed at educating the masses, especially in the English language; he and his associates considered English to be a powerful force for the dissemination of liberal and democratic ideals.

The life members of the society were expected to follow an ideal of selfless service, but when Tilak learned that some members were keeping outside earnings for themselves, he resigned. He then turned to the task of awakening the political consciousness of the people through two weekly newspapers that he owned and edited: Kesari (“The Lion”), published in Marathi, and The Mahratta, published in English. Through those newspapers Tilak became widely known for his bitter criticisms of British rule and of those moderate nationalists who advocated social reforms along Western lines and political reforms along constitutional lines. He thought that social reform would only divert energy away from the political struggle for independence.

Tilak sought to widen the popularity of the nationalist movement (which at that time was largely confined to the upper classes) by introducing Hindu religious symbolism and by invoking popular traditions of the Maratha struggle against Muslim rule. He thus organized two important festivals, Ganesh in 1893 and Shivaji in 1895. Ganesha is the elephant-headed god worshipped by all Hindus, and Shivaji, the first Hindu hero to fight against Muslim power in India, was the founder of the Maratha state in the 17th century, which in the course of time overthrew Muslim power in India. But, though that symbolism made the nationalist movement more popular, it also made it more communal and thus alarmed the Muslims.

Rise to national prominence

Tilak’s activities aroused the Indian populace, but they soon also brought him into conflict with the British government, which prosecuted him for sedition and sent him to jail in 1897. The trial and sentence earned him the title Lokamanya (“Beloved Leader of the People”). He was released after 18 months.

When Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, partitioned Bengal in 1905, Tilak strongly supported the Bengali demand for the annulment of the partition and advocated a boycott of British goods, which soon became a movement that swept the nation. The following year he set forth a program of passive resistance, known as the Tenets of the New Party, that he hoped would destroy the hypnotic influence of British rule and prepare the people for sacrifice in order to gain independence. Those forms of political action initiated by Tilak—the boycotting of goods and passive resistance—were later adopted by Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi in his program of nonviolent noncooperation with the British (satyagraha).

Tilak’s approach was strong fare for the moderate Indian National Congress (Congress Party), which believed in making “loyal” representations to the government for small reforms. Tilak aimed at swarajya (independence), not piecemeal reforms, and attempted to persuade the Congress Party to adopt his militant program. On that issue, he clashed with the moderates during the party’s session (meeting) at Surat (now in Gujarat state) in 1907, and the party split. Taking advantage of the division in the nationalist forces, the government again prosecuted Tilak on a charge of sedition and inciting terrorism and deported him to Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), to serve a six-year prison sentence.

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In the Mandalay jail, Tilak settled down to write his magnum opus, the Śrīmad Bhagavadgitā Rahasya (“Secret of the Bhagavadgita”)—also known as Bhagavad Gita or Gita Rahasya—an original exposition of the most-sacred book of the Hindus. Tilak discarded the orthodox interpretation that the Bhagavadgita (a component of the Mahabharata epic poem) taught the ideal of renunciation; in his view it taught selfless service to humanity. Earlier, in 1893, he had published The Orion; or, Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, and, a decade later, The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Both works were intended to promote Hindu culture as the successor to the Vedic religion and his belief that its roots were in the so-called Aryans from the north.

On his release in 1914, on the eve of World War I, Tilak once more plunged into politics. He launched the Home Rule League with the rousing slogan “Swarajya is my birthright and I will have it.” (Activist Annie Besant also established an organization with the same name at about that time.) In 1916 he rejoined the Congress Party and signed the historic Lucknow Pact, a Hindu-Muslim accord, with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan. Tilak visited England in 1918 as president of the Indian Home Rule League. He realized that the Labour Party was a growing force in British politics, and he established firm relationships with its leaders. His foresight was justified: it was a Labour government that granted independence to India in 1947. Tilak was one of the first to maintain that Indians should cease to cooperate with foreign rule, but he always denied that he had ever encouraged the use of violence.

By the time Tilak returned home in late 1919 to attend the meeting of the Congress Party at Amritsar, he had mellowed sufficiently to oppose Gandhi’s policy of boycotting the elections to the legislative councils established as part of the reforms that followed from the Montagu-Chelmsford Report to Parliament in 1918. Instead, Tilak advised the delegates to follow his policy of “responsive cooperation” in carrying out the reforms, which introduced a certain degree of Indian participation in regional government. He died, however, before he could give the new reforms a decisive direction. In tributes, Gandhi called him “the Maker of Modern India,” and Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, described him as “the Father of the Indian Revolution.”