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| BAL GANGADHAR TILAK |
BAL GANGADHAR TILAK
Great Indian Personalities
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a strong believer of Swaraj and his most famous words were "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it". He thought that Indians were superior to the British and should, therefore, not be slaves to the British. Through his books he tried to establish that the Rig Veda was older than the Europeans, and therefore Hinduism and in turn India was more older and therefore superior to the British.Because of the prevalent caste system, more brahmins were the first to go to these universities. The Chitpavan Brahmins from the west coast of India were the ones in the forefront. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was one such Chitpavan Brahmin.
After his education, he and his friend Gopal Ganesh Agarkar started the Deccan Educational Society to encourage Indian youth to study and know more about the world. Tilak felt that education would help uniting the Indian youth. He started the New English School and the Ferguson College at Poona for this.
He even made the Ganesh festival and the birth anniversary of Shivaji as a public festival to encourage the intermingling of people.
Through his newspapers (Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English)) and speeches, he encouraged Indians to resist the wrongs perpetrated by the British. Tilak was very militant in his approach against the British. He used to advocate revolt and protest, even if the people had to go to prison.
When he joined the Indian Nation National Congress, his views were in opposition with that of Mahatma Gandhi's ahimsa. This led to the division in the Indian National Congress - The British charged him with provocating voilence and discontent and imprisoned him in Burma.
He was called by the British as "The Father of Indian Unrest". Gandhi called him the "Maker of Modern India” and Jawaharlal Nehru called him “The Father of the Indian Revolution”.
Born : July 23rd, 1856 at Ratnagiri, Maharashtra
Death : August 1, 1920 at Bombay (Mumbai), Mahashtra, India
Education : Graduated in
- 1876 - Maths and Sanskrit from the Deccan College Poona (now called Pune)
- 1879 - Law from the Government Law College at the University of Bombay (now called Mumbai)
Contributions to the Freedom Struggle :
1. 1881 - Tilak started two weekly newspapers with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar
- "Kesari" newspaper was a Maharashtrian newspaper
- "Mahratta" newspaper was an English newspaper
The purpose of these newspapers was to keep the Indian youth informed about what was happening in the rest of India and the world. It was also a medium to get his thoughts and speeches across to a larger audience. The main aim though was to unite the youth by letting them know that the rest of India was also going up against the British.
2. 1884 - He started with Vishnushastry Chiplunkar and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar the "Deccan Education Society", to improve knowledge and education among the Indian youth. The Society started the following institutions at Poona in 1885 :
- New English School for secondary education
- Fergusson College for higher secondary education
3. In the late 1880s he was involved with the cow protection movement to ban the eating of beef in India
4. 1890 - Tilak joined the Indian National Congress.
5. 1893 - He turned Ganesh festival into a public festival to get the hindus together.
6. 1895 - Tilak founded the Shri Shivaji Fund Committee to start celebrating "Shiv Jayanti", the birth anniversary of Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha Empire. He also started the Shri Shivaji Raigad Smarak Mandal to collect money for reconstructing Shivaji's tomb at the Raigad Fort.
7. In the year 1905, when the British decided to partition Bengal, the Indians opposed it by starting the Swadeshi movement, where foreign goods were discarded and burnt. The movement encouraged the use of only things made in India. During this time, Tilak demaded a tax of 10% on imports which could help encourage Indian enterprises. He also floated the idea for a common language across India to promote national unity.
8. 1907 - Tilak did not mind using force, when required, and was against Gandhi's Ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha. This created two groups in the congress which later split into two parts in 1907
- the group of extremists called "Garam Dal" led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak
- the group of moderates "Naram Dal" was led by Gopalkrishna Gokhale
9. 1907 – After violence broke out is some parts of Maharashtra, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was charged by the British of sedition and inciting terrorism. He was defended by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, but lost his case and was imprisoned for six years at Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar).
10. When he came out of prison in 1914, he was weaker in health and spirit. He was more tolerant and tried to get the two factions of Indian National Congress together and failed.
11. He was also more tolerant of the British and was willing to settle for a Dominion status for India instead of full independence. (**a pronouncement by the Imperial Conference of 1926 described the dominions of Great Britain as “autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealthof Nations.” )
12. 1916 - Tilak formed the Lucknow Pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, which aimed for Hindu-Muslim in the nationalist struggle.
13. Between 1916 and 1918 he got together with Joseph Baptista, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, G. S. Khaparde, Sir S. Subramania Iyer and Annie Besant who was the leader of the Theosophical Society, to start a national alliance across India which would try to demand for the right of India to self govern within the British Empire.
The first league was started in Poona. They were successful for a few years, but then with the rise of Mahatma Gandhi, it was finally merged with the Indian National Congress in 1920 after the death of Tilak.
Books :
1893 - “The Orion” Researches into the ancientness of the Rig Vedas to prove the superiority of Indians over the Europeans
1903 - The Arctic Home in the Vedas was a book about the inception of the Aryans. According to him, the Aryan were residents of the North pole. When the ice age ended around 8000 BC, they shifted to Europe and then to Asia and finally came to India.
1907 - "Geetarahasya" is a Marathi book that unravels the main secret that was explained in the Bhagvad Gita. According to Tilak the secret of the Bhagavat Gita was “Karmayog” or fulfilling one's duties without any expectations. It is also called “Srimad Bhagavadgita Rahasya”.
