Lokmanya Tilak

One of the earliest architects of the independence movement, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born in Ratnagiri on July 23, 1856. Educated in Poona, where he got his B.A. degree, Tilak’s thinking was greatly influenced by Hegel, Kant, Spencer, Mill and Bentham. After graduating, he spurned the possibility of Government service and devoted himself to the national awakening. He opposed the Consent Bill and, being a staunch nationalist , actually went to the extent of doing penance for drinking tea in a Christian school. He remained dead against the British and when he acquired complete control of two news-papers, Kesari and Maratha, he used them as vehicles to propagate his nationalistic views.
The great famine and plague of 1896 that ravaged Bombay brought him into direct conflict with the authorities. A treatment critic of the measures taken by the British to combat the plague and the harassment of the public, he was tried and jailed for 18 months. He aimed at developing a militant mass movement and roused the people to demand swarajya at the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1908.
When he opposed the partition of Bengal he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. After his release, he launched the Home Rule agitation along with Anie Besant. He rejected Indian Reform Act of 1919 as inadequate and launched the Congress Democratic Party in 1920 to carry on freedom struggle. He did not stop there. He filed a suit against Sir Valentine Chirol in 1918 for defaming him in the book Indian Unrest and fought the case doggedly in London. However, he lost.
Tilak’s contribution to the education system was considerable: he founded the New English School along with Agarkar ad Namjoshi.
Says a political observer: “People like Tilak, Gandhi and Ali brothers chose the path of religious symbolism. I do not see Tilak as a communalist, but the emphasis he gave the fight against the British put a premium on the use of Hindu sysymbol and the greatest manifestation of that the idol of Ganesh. The symbol of Ganesh was first used as a political instrument to fight the British.”
Tilak, in fact, touched the nation’s psychology when he said: “ if you wake up people in the basis of religion it will show results.” Adds a political commentator: “ The difference between Gandhi and Tilak was this- while Gandhi, who operated on an all-India scale and had a frasp of what was wrong with Indian society and its fragmentation, used Hindu symbols very carefully, Tilak, on the other hand, used them very emotionally. Tilak did, in fact, hard back to the golden past—Shivaji was his hero and Shivaji syndrome had a further separatist effect upon India’s future. However, after Gandhi came on the scene. Tilak’s importance declined”. When he died on August 1, 1920, what had come to be known as the Tilak era of the freedom struggle came to an end.