Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak , 1856-1920, Indian nationalist leader. He was a journalist in Pune, and in his newspapers, the Marathi-language Kesari [lion] and the English-language Mahratta, he set forth his nationalist ideals. He sought a Hindu revival based on Maratha traditions and independence [swaraj] from Britain. After the Indian National Congress was founded (1885), Tilak became the acknowledged leader of the extreme wing. He fought the moderate measures of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and advocated resistance to British rule; he was arrested (1897) by the British and imprisoned for 18 months. In 1907 a split took place in the Congress, and Tilak led his extremist wing out of the party. The next year he was again imprisoned, this time for six years. Unlike Mohandas Gandhi , he welcomed the Montagu-Chelmsford Report (1918), which conceded a substantial measure of self-rule.

Bibliography: See biographies by T. V. Parvate (1959) and R. Gopal (1965); S. A. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale (1962); G. V. Saroja, Tilak and Sankara on Bhagvad Gita (1985).

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar (b. 23 July 1856, d. 1 Aug. 1920). Hindu scholar and politician Born in Ratnagiri into an orthodox Chitpavan brahmin familiy, he studied at Poona and obtained a law degree in 1879. Known as Lokamanya (‘revered by the people’), he was imprisoned 1897–9 for alleged sedition in his weekly Marathi-language newspaper Kesari (Lion). At first the radical nationalist was without much influence in the inner circle of the moderate Indian National Congress. However, the nationalist movement was radicalized by the partition of Bengal in 1905, and in 1907 he formed his own movement to demand Indian self-rule. He was imprisoned in 1908, and upon his release in 1914 he formed the Indian Home Rule League, together with Annie Besant. He re-entered the Congress movement in 1915, and in 1919 approved of the Government of India Act, urging cooperation with the British.