Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Indian revolutionary leader and journalist

• Born: July 23, 1856
• Birthplace: Ratnāgiri, India
• Died: August 1, 1920
• Place of death: Bombay, India

Through his oratorical skill, political savvy, and editorship of several newspapers, Tilak showed the Hindu people a connection between ancient tradition and twentieth century nationalism. His politics also were considerably more radical than those of other contemporary Indian leaders, giving the swaraj(self-government) movement a strong push forward.

Early Life

Like two other well-known Indian nationalist leaders, Mahadev Govind Ranade and Gopāl Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (bahl GAHNJ-gehd-ahr TEE-lahk) hailed from Maharashtra. This province boasted a poignant legacy: Its small army had defeated the powerful Muslim empire and, later, was the last Indian force to succumb to the British raj. Tilak also inherited the Chitpavan Brahman tradition, including caste-dictated leadership in religious and communal matters. Although his father’s income remained modest, these priestly rights guaranteed the family some financial benefits, too.

Tilak was a largely self-educated man who left school when his mother died. Eventually choosing a teaching career, he placed great value on learning and sent his son to class at the age of six. Tilak proved to have a facile mind. Though not given to studying, he conducted intellectual debates with his teachers and supposedly even called on headmasters to settle these controversies. The Tilak family departed from village life in 1865 and moved to Poona, then considered an intellectual center of Maharashtra, where Gangadharpant became assistant deputy education inspector. His wife died the following year.

Tilak continued his education and married a ten-year-old Chitpavan Brahman girl, Tapibai; the groom, himself, was fifteen. Neither the couple’s ages nor the years between them proved at all unusual given the customs of the day. However, Tilak soon was to experience an unexpected event his father’s death. Some scholars suggest that being orphaned at the age of sixteen may have sapped emotions from Tilak. While he possessed the passion to inspire masses of people, for example, he seemingly lacked a more personal empathy. Similarly, political solutions moved him in a way that social reform could not.

Following his graduation from high school in 1872, Tilak was enrolled in Deccan College. Sanskrit and mathematics came most naturally to him. Sometimes at the expense of his studies, however, he followed a rigorous daily exercise plan, which helped transform his formerly frail constitution into a vigorous one. Tilak appeared short and sturdy, with a broad, full mustache. In the traditional Brahman mode, he shaved his head, except for a central lock of hair. He wore orthodox garb, a beret-like dhoti cap perched on his head. This is the appearance he would maintain throughout his life.

While adhering to Hindu traditions, Tilak allowed himself to be shaped by other forces; indigenous political movements were starting to shake Maharashtra. Educated reformers, many admiring the advancements promised by Western civilization, formed the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (public society) on April 2, 1870. Its leaders sought to enlighten the masses, while using the colonial system as a vehicle for social change. The brilliant jurist Ranade was at the forefront of this movement. A famine also ravaged the Deccan plateau during the late 1870’s, propelling an insurrection by one Vasudeo Balwant Phadke. Though the British apprehended its leader, this rebellion proved inspirational to certain segments of the population who questioned various political aspects of colonialism.

Meanwhile, Tilak received his bachelor’s degree with first-class honors and, as a senior, started to pursue legal studies. Though he never sought permanent, full-time law practice, he ably used the courtroom to further political causes. Tilak also appeared adept at integrating source material into his arguments and was forceful in presenting his viewpoint. During his law school days at Deccan College, Tilak befriended Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, another student motivated by progressive politics. The two men viewed education as a means of promoting change and sought to create a school that would conform to this ideal. While unable to secure the necessary funding for their venture, both ultimately were engaged to teach and help develop the fledgling New English School. Its founder, Vishnu Krishna Chiplunkar, favored broad learning but within a Hindu, rather than Christian or Western, cultural context.

Life’s Work

Both skilled educators, Tilak and Agarkar aided Chiplunkar in boosting the reputation of the New English School. The institute opened its doors with some thirty pupils in 1890 and, according to one source, boasted approximately five hundred two years later. This success spawned the Deccan Education Society (1894), dedicated to advancing the New English School model. Wealthy Indian families and royalty contributed heavily to this organization, as it reflected pride in the local heritage of which they were a part. Chiplunkar and his colleagues then founded Fergusson College, named for the retiring British governor of Bombay.

The New English School offered a collegial atmosphere, at least during its earliest days. A veteran publisher, Chiplunkar enlisted his two protégés in a new endeavor: providing political education to the older generation via weekly newspapers. Tilak became editor of the English-language Mahratta and Agarkar took charge of the Marathi Kesari. The next year, 1882, the neophyte journalists found themselves embroiled in a lawsuit. Their papers had criticized an Indian-born British official for unduly aggravating and subsequently trying to remove from power a rather unstable local prince. Convicted of slander, Agarkar and Tilak served brief prison sentences. Their bold, patriotic action, however, catapulted them into the public eye.

A new controversy, the Age of Consent debate, soon caused a rift between the young editors; it also gave Tilak his own political platform. In 1884, the reformer Behramji Merwanji Malabari called on British legislators to raise the age of marital consent for girls from the current age of ten to twelve. Reformers had long decried early marriage, citing premature death from childbirth, overpopulation, and poverty as social maladies that could be reduced, if not altogether alleviated. At around the same time, progressives debated education for women and changing the law to allow widows to remarry. Tilak vehemently opposed these measures. He believed that the imposition of British law unjustifiably tampered with Hindu culture, religion, and society; after all, Indians should govern their own lives. His editorials and speeches consequently were written to activate the religious masses. Tilak also argued that women should maintain their traditional roles in the home; education and Western, reformist ideas could turn them away from these values. While orthodox himself, however, Tilak occasionally indicated that social change would be acceptable, if publicly approved. Some scholars also cite his support of voluntary measures to raise the age of consent. Furthermore, he later sent his daughter to the Poona girls’ school.

Tilak’s nationalistic fervor was firmly rooted in his Brahman background. The inconsistencies that he demonstrated owed to personal dynamism, plus the ability to accept various political tactics as long as they led to the desired result: self-governance. Meanwhile, public debate manifested itself at the Deccan Education Society. Tilak left the organization in 1890, ostensibly over internal policy matters. However, by this time, a formal political schism had divided him from his erstwhile friend Agarkar and another faculty member, Gokhale. The latter would become a reformist leader, Indian National Congress president, and Tilak’s foremost political adversary.

Having relinquished his formal teaching duties, Tilak spent more time influencing popular opinion. He became increasingly involved with Congress and helped to organize its 1895 Poona session. Tilak objected to the fact that this meeting coincided and shared facilities with the National Social Conference. His editorials blared “Whose Is the Congress? Of the People of the Classes or of the Masses?” The Congress and Conference subsequently met in separate tents, a permanent split instituted between the two groups. Seeking new methods of rallying the masses behind his platform, Tilak had revived the Ganapti Festival, honoring a Hindu deity. Its success inspired a more politically focused activity: celebration of Shivaji, the Maharashtran who led his people to victory over the powerful Muslim empire. Combined with potent newspaper editorials (Tilak now managed Kesari, too), these events provided constantly growing forums for revolutionary agitation.

Right after the premier Shivaji Festival (1896), plague struck India. Walter Charles Rand, a British official, used strong-arm tactics and generally showed great insensitivity during this crisis. When he was assassinated, the government put Tilak on trial for sedition, citing his incendiary editorials as an agitating force. The gentle, reform-minded Gokhale and other Indian leaders had criticized Rand’s administrative methods, but they typically apologized under pressure from British officials. Tilak, on the other hand, refused to amend his statements. In fact, one of his trial arguments was that the European-dominated jury had no business interpreting subtle nuances of a language they could not speak, read, or write. Although the defendant would serve a prison sentence, his case inspired the masses. He subsequently became known as the Lokamanya, or “Revered of the People.”

The next major controversy to embroil India was the partition of Bengal, a British administrative action taken without consulting local leaders. This measure also diluted Hindu political power, carving out for the Muslim minority a territory in which they could prevail. Bengali Hindus then called for a boycott of British goods, and Tilak broadened the appeal to his native Maharashtra. He also would advocate for the development of Indian commerce and industry, plus a more nationalist-oriented education system that would reduce the emphasis on the English language and Western culture. Gokhale and those who favored constitutional methods of reform lobbied against the boycott and other measures that they believed might cause provocation. Emotions ran high; the 1907 Indian National Congress thus ended in the “Surat split” between nationalists (Tilak) and reformers (Gokhale).

The following year, a bomb intended for District judge Douglas Kingsford accidentally killed a British barrister’s wife and daughter. Tilak and other Indian leaders lamented the death, but a Kesari article stated, “The bomb party has come into existence as a result of the oppression practised by the official class, the harassment inflicted by them and their obstinacy in treating public opinion with recklessness. . . .” Tilak was arrested for sedition, his apartment searched. Police turned up one damaging piece of evidence: a postcard, written in the Lokamanya’s hand, listing four books on explosives.

The trial again questioned the ability of a primarily European jury to judge foreign language works. Tilak also raised freedom of press issues during his twenty-two-hour closing speech. A guilty verdict was rendered: The Lokamanya would be confined to the Mandalay prison, Burma. Eighty textile mills in Bombay subsequently struck and some violence resulted; Tilak indeed had attained a hero’s status.

Tilak finally emerged from prison in 1914, by most accounts a more subdued activist. Another legal complaint was lodged against him two years later, but this time, he won. Tilak proved to be a unifying force during the 1916 Lucknow Congress; there, nationalists and reformers coalesced, opening political representation to Muslims. Unfortunately, cross-culture agreement was only temporary and Hindu-Muslim friction continued to plague the swaraj movement.

Tilak’s last legal battle took place on his own terms, when he went to England to prosecute Sir Valentine Chirol for slanderous remarks. Granted a passport on the condition that he refrain from political agitation, Tilak nevertheless lobbied Labour Party officials sympathetic to India’s cause. He even invited some British political leaders to dinner. Although Tilak lost the lawsuit, his life continued and concluded in a poignant way. A new leader, Mahatma Gandhi, had chosen August 1, 1920, as the inaugural of a noncooperative movement for independence. Tilak died on that day at the age of sixty-four.

Significance

Tilak consistently evoked Shivaji as a nationalistic metaphor. However, this analogy presented ethnical dilemmas. Shivaji allegedly met his Muslim adversary to discuss peace terms, then surprised him with a concealed weapon. Tilak, too, held that the ends justified the means: Western-style reform could not substitute for Indian self-rule, and the latter must override all other goals. Tilak’s Shivaji revival inspired young people, but it also incited them to heckle reformist leaders whom they often unjustly perceived to be colluding with the British. Similarly, his proto-Hindu agitation at times exacerbated rifts between his coreligionists and the Muslims. When Tilak saw that the two peoples could unite for their common cause, however, he urged the concessions accepted at Lucknow. He also referred to the Indians as black and to the British as white. Indeed, an outspoken nature and political flexibility proved to be Tilak’s trademarks. He considered all options, and scholars debate his links to a number of subversive activities. He attempted to develop ties with Nepal, for example, either to encourage that country’s armed intervention or to establish a munitions factory there. Others point to his association with the men who murdered Rand.

Many things have been said about or for Tilak, but his greatest contribution was a truly steadfast, pioneering devotion to Indian self-rule. He motivated his peers, and, though his political rhetoric could be harsh, he encouraged nationalistic involvement at all levels. Speaking on the 1915 death of his adversary, Gokhale, he said, “This diamond of India, this jewel of Maharashtra, this prince of workers, is taking eternal rest on the funeral grounds. Look at him and try to emulate him.” Similarly, Tilak and Ghandhi differed tremendously in personality and outlook, yet on August 2, 1920, Gandhi eloquently eulogized his colleague with the following: “For us, he will go down to the generations yet unborn as a maker of modern India.”

Bibliography

Brown, D. Mackenzie. The Nationalist Movement: Indian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. Chapters are devoted to the individual lives and writings of leading Indian nationalists. A twenty-page section on Tilak offers a good, concise biographical sketch, plus chronological excerpts from his articles urging swaraj.

Cashman, Richard I. The Myth of the Lokamanya. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. According to the author, Tilak proved an astute activist whose broad, popular appeal nevertheless was exaggerated by his followers for the purpose of defining consensus. Cashman argues that Tilak’s legacy remains limited more to his caste and region than to India’s larger nationalist movement. Several maps, a chart, tables, and appendixes support this view.

Keer, Dhananjay. Lokamanya Tilak: Father of the Indian Freedom Struggle. 2d ed. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1969. This work depicts Tilak as one who politically roused the people and brilliantly advocated workable revolutionary tactics, without helping to change social conditions. Debates among Indian leaders are vividly described. Here, Tilak usually appears to be more dynamic, committed, and effective than most of his peers.

Seth, Sanjay. “The Critique of Renunciation: Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Hindu Nationalism.” Postcolonial Studies 9, no. 2 (June, 2006): 137-150. A critique of Tilak’s philosophy of Hindu nationalism.

Takmankar, D. V. Lokamanya Tilak: Father of Indian Unrest and Maker of Modern India. London: J. Murray, 1956. Commemorating Tilak’s centenary and written by a member of his newspaper staff, this official biography stands loyal to its subject. Tilak, stresses Takmankar, was the first to defy boldly the British imperial presence in India. His personal powers charged the people and inspired Asian emancipation movements for years to come.

Wolpert, Stanley A. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Wolpert theorizes that Indian nationalism reflects the often opposing views of Tilak, the revolutionary, and Gokhale, the reformer. By coming into contact with each other, the adversaries also refined their own strong philosophies. The book draws heavily on correspondence, articles, and Marathi sources. Excellent bibliography.