Tilak, Bal Gangadhar

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TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR

TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR (1856–1920), revolutionary Hindu nationalist leader, called Lokamanya ("Revered by the People"). Born to a venerable Chitpavan Brahman family in Maharashtra's Konkani village of Chikalgaon on 23 July 1856, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was married at fifteen to Tapi Bai, a Chitpavan girl of ten. A year later, he graduated from high school and immediately enrolled in Pune's Deccan College, where he focused on Sanskrit Vedic studies. Tilak later wrote books on the religious philosophy of the Bhagavad G?t?as well as Vedic astronomy and astrology. Unlike most modern Indian and Western scholars, Tilak believed that the Vedas were composed by ancient tribes, whose "Arctic home" was at the "North Pole" prior to the "Glacial Ice Age." He also studied law in Bombay (Mumbai), which he later found useful in his litigation-plagued career.

Cultural Nationalist

Tilak was one of Maharashtra's most popular cultural nationalists, publishing several important newspapers in Pune, the Mahratta in English and Kesari (Lion) in Marathi, the latter read aloud in village centers to tens of thousands of illiterate peasants, as well as being subscribed to by urban intellectuals. Tilak thus became the cultural leader and political hero of Maharashtra's masses. Tilak denounced Sir Andrew Scoble's "Age of Consent" Bill, which tried to raise the "statutory rape" age for intercourse (with or without a child bride's consent) from ten to twelve years. He called it a "foreign Christian intrusion" in the private household affairs of Hindu Indians. Two years later he publicized the popular revival of annual religious festivals throughout Maharashtra to celebrate the "birthday" of the Hindu divinity Ga?esha, whose elephant-headed statues were carried around every town and village for days before being raucously immersed in rivers or coastal waters. Ganpati festivities, which included paramilitary gymnastics by "Ganesh guards" dressed in khaki uniforms, are considered the birth of modern militant cultural Hindu nationalism. In 1895 Tilak inaugurated a second annual festival in Pune, to honor the birth of Maharashtra's greatest Hindu national hero, Shivaji Maharaj. The Shivaji festivals drew even larger crowds than those for Ga?esha. Speeches in Marathi extolling Shivaji's heroic deeds in waging guerrilla warfare against, and defeating, the foreign Muslim Mughals, excited the most interest among young men, many of whom used their energies and time to make crude bombs in their basements, before long throwing them at British officers driving by in their carriages.

Tried and Transported for Sedition

Tilak's most popular mantra was "Sva-raj ('self-rule' or 'freedom') is my birthright, and I will have it!" At times, his Kesari editorials and powerful Shivaji festival speeches incited those who read or heard his words to violent actions against British officials or other foreigners. One of Tilak's Pune Brahman disciples assassinated an Englishman as he left the governor's Jubilee Ball honoring Empress Victoria in 1897, just half a century before another Maharashtrian Brahman was to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi. Tilak was tried for sedition for several editorials he wrote in his newspaper. He eloquently defended himself and pleaded innocent, but was found guilty in 1908 and was transported to Mandalay Prison in Burma (Myanmar) for six years. He was released at the start of World War I and cabled his "support" for the Allied cause to the king-emperor. He outlived Gopal Krishna Gokhale, his moderate Maharashtrian Brahman rival for leadership of the Indian National Congress, by five years.

Impact on Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi first met Tilak when Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, while visiting Pune at his guru Gokhale's invitation. To Gandhi's mind, gentle Gokhale was like Mother India's greatest river, "the Ganges," which "invited one to its bosom." Tilak, on the other hand, was "the ocean" itself, forbidden to Hindus, who never knew what dreadful dangers lurked beneath its "dark waters." But Tilak's fearless insistence upon "freedom," his successful use of popular religious and cultural Hindu symbols, and his boycott of all things "foreign"—all of which lured India's illiterate peasant population into the nationalist movement—appealed powerfully to Mahatma Gandhi. But ever-scrupulous Gandhi insisted on nonviolence in all his satyagraha struggles. Tilak never feared or worried about violence. "There's no place in politics for saints or religious scruples," Lokamanya Tilak once told Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi "begged to differ," insisting that "religion (Hindu dharma) could no more be removed from 'politics' than from life itself." On 1 August 1920, the day Tilak died, Mahatma Gandhi launched his first nationwide satyagraha in Bombay.

Stanley Wolpert

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Athalye, D. V. The Life of Lokamanya Tilak. Poona: A. Chiploonkar, 1921.

Bhat, V. G. Lokamanya Tilak: His Life, Mind, Politics and Philosophy. Poona: R. B. Nigudkar, 1956.

Karandikar, S. L. Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Hercules and Prometheus of Modern India. Poona, 1957.

Karmarkar, D. P. Bal Gangadhar Tilak. A Study. Mumbai: Popular Book Depot, 1956.

Tahmankar, D. V. Lokamanya Tilak: Father of Indian Unrest and Maker of Modern India. London: J. Murray, 1956.

Wolpert, Stanley A. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953 and 1961.

Encyclopedia of India