Bal Gangadhar Tilak
| Bal Gangadhar Tilak | |
|---|---|
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| Alternate name(s): | Lokmanya Tilak |
| Place of birth: | Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India |
| Place of death: | Bombay,India |
| Movement: | Indian Independence Movement |
| Major organizations: | Indian National Congress |
Bāḷ Gaṅgādhar Ṭiḷak (Marāṭhī: बाळ गंगाधर टिळक) (July 23 1856 - August 1 1920), was an Indian nationalist, social reformer and freedom fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement and is known as "Father of the Indian unrest." Tilak was one of the first and strongest proponents for Swaraj ( complete independence) in Indian consciousness, and is considered the father of Hindu nationalism as well. His famous quote, "Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!" is well-remembered in India even today. Reverently addressed as Lokmanya (meaning "Beloved of the people" or "Revered by the world"), Tilak was a scholar of Indian history, Sanskrit, Hinduism, mathematics, law and astronomy.
Early life
Tilak was born in Madhali Alee(Middle Lane) in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, into a middle class family. He graduated from Deccan College,Pune in 1877. [1] After graduation, Tilak began teaching mathematics in a private school in Pune and later became a journalist. He became a strong critic of the Western education system, feeling it demeaned the Indian students and disrespected India's heritage. He organized the Deccan Education Society to improve the quality of education for India's youth. He taught Mathematics at Fergusson College in Pune.[2]
Political career
Template:Hindu politics Tilak founded the Marathi daily Kesari (Lion) in 1880. In just two years 'Kesari' attracted more readers than any language news papers in India. The editorials gave a vivid picture of the people's sufferings and of actual happenings. They called upon every Indian to fight for his right. The language was so sharp as to create in the most cowardly reader the thirst for freedom. Tilak used to say to his colleagues: "You are not writing for the university students. Imagine you are talking to a villager. Be sure of your facts. Let your words be clear as day light." Tilak strongly criticized the government for its brutality in suppressing free expression, especially in face of protests against the division of Bengal in 1905, and for denigrating India's culture, its people and heritage. He demanded that the British immediately give Indians the right to self-government.
Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in the 1890s, but soon fell into opposition of its liberal-moderate attitude towards the fight for self-government.In 1891 Tilak opposed the Age of Consent bill introduced after the death of a child bride from sexual injuries. The act raised the marriageable age of a child bride from 10 to 12 which was already 16 in Britain since 1885. This was one of the first significant reforms introduced by the British since Indian rebellion of 1857. The Congress and other liberals whole-heartedly supported it but Tilak raised a battle-cry terming it as "interference in Hindu religion." Since then he was seen as a hard-core Hindu nationalist. When, in 1897, bubonic plague spread from Bombay to Pune the Government became jittery. The Assistant Collector of Pune, Mr. Rand, and his associates employed extremely severe and brutal methods to stop the spread of the disease by destroying even "clean homes." Even people who were not infected were carried away and in some cases, the carriers even looted property of the affected people. When the authorities turned a blind eye to all these excesses, furious Tilak took up the people's cause by publishing inflammatory articles in his paper Kesari, quoting the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, to say that no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward. Following this, on 27 June, Rand and his assistant were killed. Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. When he emerged from prison, he had become a national hero and adopted a new slogan, "Swaraj (Self-Rule) is my birth right and I will have it."
Tilak opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and was supported by fellow Indian nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. They were referred to as the Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate. In 1907,the annual session of the Congress Party was held at Surat(Gujrat). Trouble broke out between the moderate and the extremist factions of the party over the selection of the new president of the Congress and the party split into the Garam Dal ("Hot Faction," or extremists), led by Tilak, Pal and Lajpat Rai, and the Naram Dal ("Soft Faction," or moderates). Tilak as well as Gopal Krishna Gokhale regarded this as a 'catastrophe' for the nationalist movement and Tilak did his best to avoid it. But it was too late and older moderates were glad to get rid of the troublemakers(extremists). H.A.Wadya, one of the closest associate of Sir Pherozshah Mehta, wrote ' The union of these men with the Congress is the union of a diseased limb to a healthy body and the only remedy is surgical severence '.
On 30 April 1908 two Bengali youths, Prafulla Chaki and Kudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafurpur in order to kill a District Judge Douglass Kenford but erroneously killed some women travelling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was tried and hanged. British papers screamed for vengeance and their shrill cries became even more insistent when Police raided and found a cache of arms at Calcutta. But Tilak in his paper Kesari defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or Self-rule. The Government swiftly arrested him for sedition. He asked a young Muhammad Ali Jinnah to represent him. But the British judge convicted him and he was imprisoned from 1908 to 1914 in Mandalay, Burma.
Upon his release, Tilak re-united with his fellow nationalists and re-joined the Indian National Congress in 1916. He also helped found the All India Home Rule League in 1916-18 with Annie Besant and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Tilak, who started his political life as a Maratha Protagonist, during his later part of life progressed into a fine nationalist after his close association with Bengal nationalists following the partition of Bengal. When asked in Calcutta whether he envisioned a Maratha type of government for Free India, Tilak replied that the Maratha dominated Governments of 16th and 17th centuries were outmoded in 20th century and he wanted a genuine federal system for Free India where every religion and race were equal partners. Only such a form of Government would be able to safe-guard India's freedom he added
Philosophical and social contribution
Although he was basically a proponent of Advaita Vedanta, he differed from the classical Advaitin view that jnana (knowledge) alone brings release. Tilak added a measure of karma yoga (the yoga of activity) to this, not as subordinate to jnana yoga , but as equal and complementary to it. Tilak proposed various social reforms, such as a minimum age for marriage, and was especially keen to see a prohibition placed on the sale of alcohol. His thoughts on education and Indian political life have remained highly influential—he was the first Congress leader to suggest that Hindi, written in the devanagari script, should be accepted as the sole national language of India, a policy that was later strongly endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi. However, English, which Tilak wished to remove completely from the Indian mind, remains an important means of communication in India. But the usage of Hindi (and other Indian languages) has been reinforced and widely encouraged since the days of the British Raj, and Tilak's legacy is often credited with this resurgence.
In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak reshaped the annual Ganesh festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. [3] He did so "to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropiate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them" in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra.[4][5] Thus, Tilak chose Ganesha as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule because of his wide appeal as "the god for Everyman".[6] [7] Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavillions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day.[8]
His call for boycott of foreign goods also served to inspire patriotism among Indian masses.
Later years and legacy
Tilak was a critic of Mahatma Gandhi's strategy of non-violence, civil disobedience. Although once considered an extremist revolutionary, in his later years Tilak had considerably mellowed. He favored political dialogue and discussions as a more effective way to obtain political freedom for India. His writings on Indian culture, history and Hinduism spread a sense of heritage and pride amongst Indians for India's ancient civilization and glory as a nation. Some consider Tilak as the spiritual and political leader of Mahatma Gandhi. But Gandhi himself considered Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a contemporary of Tilak, as his political mentor. When Tilak died in 1920, Gandhi paid his respects at his cremation in Bombay, along with 200,000 people. Gandhi called Tilak "The Maker of Modern India". Tilak is also today considered the father of Hindu Nationalism. He was the idol of Indian revolutionary Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who penned the political doctrine of Hindutva.
Books
Later, in 1903, he wrote the much more speculative Arctic Home in the Vedas. In it he argued that the Vedas could only have been composed in the Arctics, and the Aryan bards brought them south after the onset of the last Ice age.
Tilak also authored 'Geetarahasya' - the analysis of 'Karmayoga' in the Bhagavadgita, which is known to be gist of the Vedas and the Upanishads.
Other collections of his writings include:
- The Hindu philosophy of life, ethics and religion (published in 1887).
- Vedic chronology and vedanga jyotisha.
- Letters of Lokamanya Tilak, edited by M. D. Vidwans.
- Selected documents of Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, 1880-1920, edited by Ravindra Kumar.
- Trial of Tilak.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
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See also:
- Indian Independence Movement
- Lal Bal Pal
- Kesari
- Lokmanya Tilak College of Engineering
- Archaeoastronomy and Vedic chronology
| Indian Independence Movement | |
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| History: | Colonisation - British East India Company - Plassey - Buxar - British India - French India - Portuguese India - More... |
| Philosophies: | Indian nationalism - Swaraj - Gandhism - Satyagraha - Hindu nationalism - Indian Muslim nationalism - Swadeshi - Socialism |
| Events and movements: | Rebellion of 1857 - Partition of Bengal - Revolutionaries - Ghadar Conspiracy - Champaran and Kheda - Jallianwala Bagh Massacre - Non-Cooperation - Flag Satyagraha - Bardoli - 1928 Protests - Nehru Report - Purna Swaraj - Salt Satyagraha - Act of 1935 - Legion Freies Indien - Cripps' mission - Quit India - Indian National Army - Bombay Mutiny |
| Organisations: | Indian National Congress - Ghadar - Home Rule - Khudai Khidmatgar - Swaraj Party - Anushilan Samiti - Azad Hind - More... |
| Indian leaders: | Mangal Pandey - Rani of Jhansi - Bal Gangadhar Tilak - Gopal Krishna Gokhale - Lala Lajpat Rai - Bipin Chandra Pal - Mahatma Gandhi - M. Ali Jinnah - Sardar Patel - Subhash Chandra Bose - Badshah Khan - Jawaharlal Nehru - Maulana Azad - Chandrasekhar Azad - Rajaji - Bhagat Singh - Sarojini Naidu - Purushottam Das Tandon - Tanguturi Prakasam - Alluri Sitaramaraju - More... |
| British Raj: | Robert Clive - James Outram - Dalhousie - Irwin - Linlithgow - Wavell - Stafford Cripps - Mountbatten - More... |
| Independence: | Cabinet Mission - Indian Independence Act - Partition of India - Political integration - Constitution - Republic of India |
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kn:ಲೋಕಮಾನ್ಯ ಬಾಲ ಗಂಗಾಧರ ತಿಲಕ
sa:बाल गङ्गाधर तिलक
te:బాలగంగాధర తిలక్
ur:بال گنگا دھر تلک
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